The aim of the study is to identify typical usages and functional profiles of French and Italian demonstratives used for endophoric reference (mostly anaphoric and cataphoric) and to classify them in terms of deictic theory. The results indicate that textual functions of demonstratives follow principles of their own that deviate from situational use. The empirical material for the investigation is taken from corpora of modern, mostly written language. The comparative linguistic approach provides a broader perspective extending to neighboring functional elements such as articles and personal pronouns.