26 October 2005

Bango!

I can't believe that after such a long dry spell I hit paydirt twice in two days! And this time it was looking for something I really expected to find.

There's this
paper by Brian Mossop that I'm reading to get ready for a conference. It makes reference to some ideas originally discussed by Goffman. Goffman describes the stances of listeners vis à vis speakers. The listener may be the one directly addressed, or indirectly addressed, an accidental overhearer, or an intentional eavesdropper. At least that's what I remember and I haven't read Goffman in a couple of years.

So I check the web for a quick refresher.

Last time I remember looking up "ratified hearer" and getting
lots of hits (you can see why I don't trust my memory). A ratified hearer is one who is directly addressed by a speaker, the intended audience. The other category is "unratified hearer" — no, I do not mean unratified heater.

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