Jackson2013
| Jackson2013 | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Jackson2013 |
| Author(s) | Clare Jackson |
| Title | “Why do these people’s opinions matter?”: positioning known referents as unnameable others |
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| Tag(s) | CA, Person Reference, Social distance, Complaints, Membership categories |
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| Year | 2013 |
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| Journal | Discourse Studies |
| Volume | 15 |
| Number | 3 |
| Pages | 299–317 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1177/1461445613480587 |
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Abstract
The way we refer to third parties in talk is one means through which relationships between speaker, recipients and referents are made relevant. A range of referring expressions is available and any number of expressions might correctly refer to a referent. One guide to selection is the preference for achieving recognition and the default practice is, where possible, to use a name. This conversation analytic article describes a practice that does not fit the default pattern. In this practice, speakers select a broad social category (typically gendered, e.g. guy, woman, but not always, e.g. people) when a recognitional form could (and perhaps, ought to) have been used. Despite the designed selection of a categorical form, the referent(s) remains recognitional. For example, in one extract, a mother in conversation with her teenage daughter refers to a collective made up of her former husband and his girlfriend as ‘these people’. The daughter has no difficulty working out who ‘these people’ are and recognizes it as a reference to her father and stepmother. I show that this designedly categorical formulation often contributes to hostile action by distancing the referent(s) from parties to the interaction – making the referent(s) unnameable and not connected to the speaker and recipient. The role of demonstrative pronouns – this, that, these – are discussed in relation to constructing social distance between speakers, recipients and referents.
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