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Postscript: “Old Habits Never Die, They Just Mutate”

Cynthia Gordon

in Making Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interaction

This postscript provides an update on how the families' lives have changed since the data for this study were collected.

Conclusion

Elizabeth Minchin

in Homeric Voices: Discourse, Memory, Gender

This chapter presents a number of conclusions about how a poet in an oral tradition may have formulated and generated the substantial stretches of speech that we encounter in the Iliad and the ... More

This chapter presents a number of conclusions about how a poet in an oral tradition may have formulated and generated the substantial stretches of speech that we encounter in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The first area of discussion is memory and discourse: the stylized speech-formats and question and answer patterns that we observe in Homer have their origins in the pre-patterned forms of everyday speech. The second area of discussion is discourse and gender. Here the evidence is not uniform. There are areas of consistency and inconsistency in Homer's representation of men's and women's talk in the worlds he describes.Less

Questions in the Odyssey: Rhythm and Regularity

Elizabeth Minchin

in Homeric Voices: Discourse, Memory, Gender

This chapter begins a study of the question forms in Homer. It represents an attempt to identify some of the habits that a poet within an oral tradition had to develop, and some of the techniques on ... More

This chapter begins a study of the question forms in Homer. It represents an attempt to identify some of the habits that a poet within an oral tradition had to develop, and some of the techniques on which he came to rely, in order to generate works on a monumental scale. The chapter offers an account of the observable regularities in question forms in Homer's Odyssey: exemplary adjacency pairs, careful use of explanatory material, a predictable range of options for the presentation of question-strings, whether double or multiple questions, and the answers they attract. Stylized rhythmical and structural patterns based on everyday talk have been developed by the tradition to facilitate and sustain poetic composition in an oral context.Less

Introduction

Samuel McCormick

in The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk

The Chattering Mind is less a history of ideas than a book in search of a usable past. It is at once a genealogy of learned discourse on the practice of everyday talk, and, at its furthest reaches, ... More

The Chattering Mind is less a history of ideas than a book in search of a usable past. It is at once a genealogy of learned discourse on the practice of everyday talk, and, at its furthest reaches, an effort to reclaim this genealogy as an important conceptual foundation for ongoing discussions of collective life in the digital age. In service to this argument, this introductory chapter distinguishes the high-modern practice of everyday talk from the early-modern art of conversation, defining former as unwitting, habitual, involuntary, automated, recursive, and machinelike. But these are not its only characteristics.As Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Lacan were all careful to insist, everyday talk also paves the way for alternate, more resolved ways of speaking, thinking, and being with others. Contrary to popular interpretations of their work, all three of these renowned social theorists were convinced and committed to showing that there is more to everyday talk than alienation, inauthenticity, and the corruption of modern selves. Indeed, for Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Lacan, everyday talk was the proving ground, not the killing field, of genuine subjectivity. And so it remains today, this introductory chapter suggests.Less

Speech Acts in Homer: The Rebuke as a Case Study

Elizabeth Minchin

in Homeric Voices: Discourse, Memory, Gender

By relating Homer's speech-formats to cognitive psychology's account of the storage of implicit knowledge, conclusions can be drawn about the mind-based resources on which the poet drew as he ... More

By relating Homer's speech-formats to cognitive psychology's account of the storage of implicit knowledge, conclusions can be drawn about the mind-based resources on which the poet drew as he sang—and on which we draw as we speak. It is argued that the Homeric rebuke was a stylized version of everyday discourse, cued by the rebuke format that the poet had acquired, almost unconsciously, early in life and stored in memory. What the apprentice poet learned from a master-singer was not the rebuke itself, but the special formulation of the rebuke for the purposes of oral song.Less

Conclusion

Samuel McCormick

in The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk

By way of conclusion, the final chapter of this book highlights the individuating potential of chatter, idle talk, and empty speech. In particular, it argues that all of these communicative practices ... More

By way of conclusion, the final chapter of this book highlights the individuating potential of chatter, idle talk, and empty speech. In particular, it argues that all of these communicative practices are techniques of self-cultivation, and that thanks to the network revolution of late-modernity, we are uniquely poised to develop and refine these techniques. As new technologies and techniques of mobile connection continue to blur the lines between proximal presence and physical absence, allowing users to mediate assembled crowds through dispersed publics, and vice versa, a pantheon of modern dichotomies—self versus society, reason version irrationality, normalcy versus deviance—gives way to a host of crosshatched identities, all of which are at once individual and collective, rational and irrational, normal and pathological. Chatter, idle talk, and empty speech structure and sustain these crosshatched identities. And when these communicative practices occur online, their operations and results become fully traceable, providing content generators of every stripe with unprecedented access to their own digital pasts. Whether access of this sort is sufficient to inspire the “psychoanalytic anamnesis” advocated by Lacan, or the “modifications” of average everydayness theorized by Heidegger, or the “examen rigorosum” envisioned by Kierkegaard remains to be seen.Less

The Disclosive Function of Linguistic Signs

Andrew Inkpin

in Disclosing the World: On the Phenomenology of Language

This chapter adds a more specific level to the Heideggerian framework by considering the complex disclosive function linguistic signs have for Heidegger. This task is approached by considering his ... More

This chapter adds a more specific level to the Heideggerian framework by considering the complex disclosive function linguistic signs have for Heidegger. This task is approached by considering his ambivalent attitude toward everyday language use (‘idle talk’), which is presented as both practically necessary and somehow deficient. To understand this ambivalence, it reviews Heidegger’s earlier conception of philosophical concepts’ function as ‘formal indication’, before showing how his earlier views reappear in Being and Time and how, together with the foundational role of purposive understanding discussed in chapter 1, they account for Heidegger’s ambivalence toward everyday language use. Given the disparate factors at work in Heidegger’s conception of linguistic signs, it then proposes a distinction between presentational sense and pragmatic sense, before explaining how the limitations of Heidegger’s discussion define the task for the following chapters.Less

What Is the Stand-Up Comedian?: Intimate Other

Ian Brodie

in A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy

This chapter delves into what the comedian says is a detached observer. In this manner, the stand-up comedian is seen as “outside” enough that what he or she has to say is interesting, as opposed to ... More

This chapter delves into what the comedian says is a detached observer. In this manner, the stand-up comedian is seen as “outside” enough that what he or she has to say is interesting, as opposed to when the comedian is seen as “inside” enough to be permitted to speak frankly with, to, and, for the audience. The chapter argues that stand-up comedy is the professionalization of everyday talk, small talk, or “talking shit”—talk that exists in the informal realm of play and leisure and is distinguished from serious talk. Professionalization brings heightened expectations of consistent competency, particularly stemming from the comedian's place within an exchange economy. The stand-up comedian is, on one level, a professional tourist, endlessly casting his or her gaze on difference, to communicate that experience of difference to an ever-changing audience.Less

Conclusion

Zane Goebel

in Global Leadership Talk: Constructing Good Governance in Indonesia

The concluding chapter considers how the concepts developed throughout the book can contribute to the emerging field of complex sociolinguistics in general, and leadership talk in particular. These ... More

The concluding chapter considers how the concepts developed throughout the book can contribute to the emerging field of complex sociolinguistics in general, and leadership talk in particular. These concepts included interdiscursive hub, mass-mediated chronotopic identity, scalar reflexivity, acts of belonging, and signswitching. All were developed to address issues around the believability of our accounts of language in social life. In doing so, it points to how the concepts and methodologies developed in the book can also contribute to discussions of leadership in Java which to date have not provided any empirical evidence of how leadership is enacted through everyday talk.Less