Meanings of the unmarked: how ‘default’ person reference does more than just refer

Abstract

It's not that somebody is ordinary, it's perhaps that that's what their business is. And it takes work, as any other business does. (Harvey Sacks, Spring 1970, Lecture 1) The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something – because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. – And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1953, Philosophical Investigations §1.129) This chapter explores one way in which members of a culture work to achieve the appearance of ordinariness, and in so doing render invisible their most heartfelt concerns. The target locus of behaviour is referential practice, in particular verbal reference to persons in everyday conversation. In this domain, as in any other, to be or act ordinary is to attract no special attention to that way of being or acting. For instance, by dressing in overalls, a plumber at work chooses the default, unmarked course of action. He will not be sanctioned or even commented upon for doing so (unlike, say, were he to wear a dress). When we follow a default course of action in this way, we are in one sense not doing anything special; indeed we may be taken not to be ‘doing’ anything at all.

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