josh blog
Ordinary language is all right.
One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.
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The dismay of seeing the convenience store cashier, who sells people lottery tickets at the convenience store, standing in line at the convenience store, buying a lottery ticket.
'American Indians of more than one tribe apparently take social relationships very seriously, not something to be lightly entered into, and at the same time appreciate that absence may induce change. In any case, they may decline to extend introductions within incidentally formed encounters, refrain from assuming that co-participation in the same with demands or even permits the quick initiation of talk between non-acquainteds, engage in silent courtship, and, to the point here, avoid verbal display when first re-establishing easy contact with a loved-one after a long separation.'
One sometimes feels that an example of Goffman's is inspired more by a movie than by natural observation: 'Individuals pushing clothes carts in wholesale business districts create something of the same problem [of systematically altered traffic conditions due to their inherent limitations on movement and traffic management] for themselves and the pedestrians around them'—but then, he seems to take care only to deploy this kind of example ampliatively or supplementally, as the conclusion of a systematic statement about the general phenomenon exemplified and earlier illustrated with natural, normal, typical cases.