ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the effect of 2 language-in-use factors on the introduction and maintenance of referents in instructive discourse. It discusses the results of a production experiment, set up to elicit referential strategies in instructions for use. The experimental conditions were varied along the lines of two language-in-use variables: the goal of the reader and the visual identity of the referents to be referred to in the instruction task. The chapter describes the relevance of instructive discourse for reference research and in particular the relevance of the performance factors used. Research into the mental activation of discourse referents attempts to disentangle the way in which language users distribute and manage their mental attention over referents, a process which is highly determined by the limitations of working memory. Both in introducing referents and in anaphorically referring to referents, instructive writers to a large extent produce perceptually overspecified expressions.
