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On the interactional unpackaging of a ‘gloss’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Gail Jefferson
Gail Jefferson
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of York
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Abstract

In the reporting of a situation or event, a speaker can sometimes be seen to have omitted or ‘glossed over’ a constituent component. There are times when that component is something a speaker would rather not have the coparticipant know. Sometimes, however, the speaker is willing, indeed eager, to share this material with the coparticipant, but is constrained from simply producing it then and there (the matter being possibly bizarre, risqué, or in other ways problematic). In either case, whether the problematic component is delivered or not (i.e., whether a ‘gloss’ is ‘unpackaged’) can depend upon what the coparticipant does. This report focuses on the ways in which a coparticipant's activities are implicated in the maintaining as-is, or unpackaging, of a ‘glossed’ component. (Sociology, psychology, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 435 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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