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My dad is reading the novel Once Gone and there are several paragraphs as follows:

To her relief, Bill's voice came over the phone.
"Hello," he said.
Riley's heart jumped. She didn't know whether to be relieved or terrified to hear his voice.
"Bill, this is Riley," she said.
"I know who this is," Bill replied.

What we (my dad and I) learned was we should say "I know who that is," not "who this is."

Although I can't tell why, I feel "I know who this is" is also correct. It sounds like "who this is" focuses on the speaker (in this case, Bill). Although Riley was on the other end, when Bill was holding and talking to the phone in his hand, he was imagining the phone to be the representative of Riley. Because the phone was on Bill's side, it was OK for him to say "who this is".

So my questions are:

  • In most cases, do native speakers still say "I know who that is"?
  • Is it OK to say "who this is"?
yaobin
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    I've never heard someone say "I know who that is" under those circumstances. Ever. I'm in the US so unless that is something that is commonly said elsewhere, I'd have to go with "I know who this is". – Kristina Lopez Jan 03 '20 at 22:47
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    I agree with Kristina: No native speaker I've ever heard has ever said "Who is that?" or "I know who that is" in a phone conversation. We use the determiner this to refer to someone whose voice we literally hold in our hand. A third party, hearing us on the phone, might ask us "Who is that?" but this is always used to refer to the party on one's own line. – Robusto Jan 03 '20 at 22:56
  • @Robusto Thanks! So, if the third person Mike was on Bill's side, he would ask Bill "Who is that?" Would Bill still answer with "This is Riley" or would he say "That is Riley"? I think "This is Riley" is correct, right? – yaobin Jan 04 '20 at 04:08
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    The response to "Who is that?" would likely be "It's Riley." Note that Mike might also ask "Who is it?" – Robusto Jan 04 '20 at 05:01
  • Riley says this is Riley, so why wouldn't Bill use the same word? – Yosef Baskin Jan 05 '20 at 00:57

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It is here that the difference between ‘correct/incorrect’ and ‘normal/colloquial is vital. Not everybody uses ‘this’ and ‘that’ in the same way in every situation. This (or someone else might say ‘that’ is because of the vagueness of the difference itself. Roughly, ‘this’ refers to something close (or closer) at hand and ‘that’ for something far (or further) away. The same applies to ‘here’ and ‘there’. So it is true that most people ask “who is this?” on the phone but “who is that?” to someone knocking on the front door. ‘This’ and ‘that’ differ by relative proximity. And that (note the usage) may be mental as well as physical.

My reason for saying that is this.

In the above, the box, the word that refers to what I wrote just before. My this refers to what I am about to write. So the immediately future statement is thought of as ‘closer’ that the immediately recent one. But there might be a further reason for preferring that. Though I might say:

My reason for saying this is that I think of it as close to hand,

The following sentence would be intolerably odd, or at least clumsy:-

My reason for this is this....

We could say

My reason for this is as follows.

So there will always be a grey area where some would use this and others would use that, and neither would be ‘wrong’ or ‘odd’ or ‘clumsy’. And no grammarian can define the way out of a grey area.

Coming to the telephone, people do in general say to the voice right up against their ear

Who is this?

The reply would usually be

It’s Henry

But it could be “this is Henry. That is more like, however, as a reply to “Hello”.

Tuffy
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