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THE WHOLE THING IS PRETTY GHASTLY: SOME GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT GENERALIZATIONS IN
ENGLISH CONVERSATIONS
Joanne Scheibman
Old Dominion University
Friday, May 27, 3:30PM MJH Rm 126
Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center/Mellon Foundation
Graduate Research Program
Definition of generalization varies by context and discipline. Because in Western cultural discourses the making of general
statements about the world is an activity that can be elevated or deprecated, generalization itself is subject to social
valuation. In some cases generalization is viewed negatively. In high school or university writing classes in the United
States and elsewhere, for example, students are routinely directed to provide specific examples to support their
generalizations, which might be defined as 'unsubstantiated opinions'. On the other hand, positive and authoritative treatment
of generalizations is apparent in Western academic and scientific disciplines in which generalizations have an influential
role in construction and advancement of theories.
In this talk I will report on the uses of generalizations from a database of American English conversational utterances. The
set of generalizations examined in the study are those with grammatical subjects that delineate classes of (primarily) people,
entities, and evaluations (e.g. and all these teachers are coming in and saying; worse things could happen to the poor guy;
the French are basically a northern people; and that kind of thing is right in the center of Sonoma). In these conversations
participants generalize (create classes of experience) based on personal and sociocultural expectations and beliefs, not-as is
the case for generalizations used in academic disciplines-based on common attributes of multiple referential entities, events,
or ideas. Because the subject noun phrases of these conversational generalizations are propositionally lean, they index
underspecified classes in discourse. The lack of semantic specificity characteristic of generalizations in these data suggests
that interpretation and use of these expressions in conversation is highly dependent on context and expectation. In particular
the generalizations in these English conversations are used by participants to evaluate, authorize opinions, and demonstrate
solidarity, activities that also provide everyday opportunities for the reproduction of societal discourses.
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