Coda

Extract

These interesting situations in which generics play a key role in interactional pragmatics sparked my memory of solid geometry and spherical trigonometry class at Stuyvesant High School in the early 1960s. Each morning our instructor, the somewhat irascible Mr. Burns, would start off by asking a question on the day's material, calling for a response by ‘[student surname]’. Stuyvesant, in those days an all-male institution, functioned, like prep schools, on a surname basis for both reference and address; the teachers’ names were prefaced by Mr. or Mrs. or Miss, while student names had no prefixed title.