Abstract

No pre-circulated paper, but Marilyn has offered the following by way of orientation:

Twenty years ago I made what from many points of view would seem a rather trivial discovery about English language usage. However since it concerned a concept that is a central item in the social anthropologist’s toolkit, and touched on an area of social life that anthropology has made very much its own, I thought there might be some mileage in investigating further, as I did briefly at the time. Ten years later, I turned to it again, and more or less put it (‘the discovery’) to bed. But it won’t lie down, or leave me alone, and here I am in 2014 worrying at it again. In between whiles I have constantly told myself that I lack the disciplinary skills—historical, linguistic, philosophical, for a start – to do anything serious with the topic. I would like to invite you momentarily on this uncertain journey, not really knowing whether there is anything worth pursuing here, only knowing that minimally it would have to be worthwhile anthropologically speaking!