"This month" vs. "next month"

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Which day does “next Tuesday” refer to?

If it is November, how do you refer to the upcoming July? Is it "this July" or "next July"?

Answer 1

This July would imply the current year's July, regardless of whether it is in the past or future.

This coming July always indicates future, regardless of year.

Answer 2

Use of a deictic word like this (or that, or next, or last, etc.) with a time word like July or month marks a case of Temporal Deixis, a phenomenon that was definitively explained in Fillmore's 1971 Santa Cruz Deixis Lectures.

Temporal deixis is treated in Lecture 4, Deixis I, but that lecture contains a number of references to the three previous lectures (1, "May We Come In?"; 2, Space; and 3, Time), so reading them in numeric order may be helpful.