"Next Friday" vs. "This Friday" [duplicate]

Duplicate: What day is next Tuesday?

I have always considered next Friday to be not this coming Friday, but the one after. This Friday is the Friday at the end of this week.

I have a Canadian friend, however, who enforces the more literal meaning of next Friday — the Friday that comes next.

Is there a correct meaning for next Friday, or does this entirely depend on cultural differences?

People generally understand next Friday as the Friday after this, that is, if you are on a Thursday, and someone tells you to meet him next Friday, it doesn't mean the next day, but rather, Friday week, the Friday after.

Some pedantics will believe and argue that it is, as you say, the Friday that comes next. That is valid reasoning. However, if you want to be understood by the majority, "next Friday" will mean Friday next week.

So, in order to mean the Friday that actually comes next, you would say this Friday, but next Friday is generally understood by more people to mean the Friday after this.

If on Saturday or Sunday I needed to identify the day 5/6 days hence, I might explicitly add coming to this Friday to clarify what I meant. From then on it's just this Friday - until Thursday, when it's tomorrow.

By the same token, if I were talking about the Friday seven days after that, I'd call it Friday week on the above Saturday and Sunday, reverting to "next Friday* afterwards. Except that by Wednesday or Thursday I might revert to calling the later one Friday week, if I was talking to a Canadian..

Since "this Friday" always indicates "the immediate Friday coming up, no more than 6 days from now.", you'd think that we could always say that "next Friday" is the Friday after the coming-up Friday. That would make sense and would be quite logical.

However, it's just not the case in common speech. "Next Friday" can mean the upcoming Friday or the one after that; If it's important, ask for clarification!