Certain items of talk, for example demonstratives such as "this' and "that", have the property that "instead of being interpreted semantically in their own right, they make reference to something else for their interpretation" (Halliday and Hasan 1976:30). Halliday and Hasan (1976:31) note that such items "are directives indicating that information is to be retrieved from elsewhere" and use the term exophoric reference to designate cases where the information to be retrieved is not in the talk being produced but rather in the situation within which that talk occurs.²