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(E) Nothing. just explain a little clearer what do you mean?
(S) Skip it. How are your Med School applications coming?
(E) What do you mean, How are they?
(S) You know what I mean.
(E) I really don t.
(S) What s the matter with you? Are you sick?
Simple misunderstandings do not typically evoke these kinds of reactions. The breach in these cases suggests that a
fundamental expectation of normal interaction (i.e., the rules for casual conversation) has been violated, prompting the
subject to wonder if their friend or family member has gone completely off the deep end.
Presumably, if this feature of ordinary conversation (sanctioned vagueness) were not present and procedurally
anticipated, persistent requests for clarification would not likely invoke such perplexed reactions. Of course, this is not
universally the case for all conversational contexts. Requests for clarification are quite common and not always met with
such surprise, which is to say that the content of what is being said does seem to matter as well. Elements of ordinary
conversation are not always clear and thus vagueness is not in all cases sanctioned. At the same time, indexicality does
not simply disappear either. The bifurcation of content and context is an analytic distinction that does not hold under
ordinary circumstances. Content and context act as two sides of the same coin and are mutually determinative; the two
work together and provide the means by which meaning and understanding are produced and maintained. In this sense,
content and context are symmetrically related under normal circumstances. The dependency between the two is equally
distributed so-to-speak. This is simply to say that language is not infinitely malleable relative to a context nor is it
meaningful independent of a context.
Garfinkel s what-do-you-means cases demonstrate the mutuality of content and context
what is being said in
the above examples shapes the context as one of casual conversation; the resulting context, in turn, shapes the normative
expectation of allowing a certain degree of latitude in meaning (sanctioned vagueness). Garfinkel interprets the reactions
in these cases as an illustration of why applying a formal-analytic approach, one which looks to precise meaning as a
basis of action and understanding, does not work. Ordinary conversations do not require the sort of precision required
and expected within formal, scientific contexts. In other words, the background expectations within science and
everyday life function in fundamentally different ways, thus requiring a different set of assumptions and a different
Convention