Eviatar Zerubavel - Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable

taken
for
granted

taken
for
granted

the
remarkable
power
of the
unremarkable

eviatar
zerubavel

Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2018 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press

41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press

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press.princeton.edu

Jacket design by Chris Ferrante

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Control Number 2017959001

ISBN 978-0-691-17736-6

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

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[T]he familiar... is made strange in order that it can be systematically analysed and explored. Hence taken-for-granted assumptions... are subjected to a sociological gaze... where familiar understandings of social life are challenged.

Amanda Coffey, Reconceptualizing Social Policy, 21

Contents

Preface

Ever since first reading Benjamin Lee Whorf in 1971,

My original plan for this book was to examine the three sibling notions of unmarkedness, backgroundness, and taken-for-grantedness, but I soon gave up on the idea and decided to split this project into two separate books. And only in 2014, indeed, after having completed writing Hidden in Plain Sight: The Social Structure of Irrelevance, which focuses specifically on the notion of the background, did I finally feel fully ready to begin working on a book dealing exclusively with unmarkedness and taken-for-grantedness.

Fairly early in the process of writing the book I had already identified the pronounced semiotic asymmetry between the marked and the unmarked as perhaps its most important underlying theme. But as I was writing about it I also started to notice a rather disturbing new asymmetry within my very own body. In February 2016 I was in fact formally diagnosed with Parkinsons disease, which soon led me to become aware of yet a further irony. Not only did I notice a progressive decline in the functioning of my right limbs, I also began to realize that I could no longer take hitherto simple motor tasks such as swallowing, buttoning, or typing for granted, which was particularly ironic given that I was in the middle of writing a book about the phenomenon of taking for granted! While having to deal with both the physical and psychological challenges of learning to live with my new predicament, I was therefore nevertheless also gaining a new, effectively experiential perspective on the traditionally strictly theoretical themes about which I was writing.

I should add here, however, that, especially given its very topic, I made considerable efforts while writing the book to avoid as much as possible taking my own default assumptions for granted. Yet despite all those efforts I finally realized that there is simply no way that, as a white, male, straight, middle-class baby boomer, my own outlook on the world can ever be absolutely free of certain fundamental cultural biases that, like many other white, male, straight, middle-class baby boomers, I habitually take for granted, yet that many other people might not.

Several colleagues, students, and friends played a critical role in my efforts to produce this book. I am especially indebted in this regard to Asia Friedman, Stephanie Pea-Alves, and Ara Francis, whose indispensable advice helped me tremendously in bringing it to look the way it does. I am also particularly grateful to Wayne Brekhus, whose own work on markedness and unmarkedness I consider the most ambitious effort yet to explore their social foundations, as well as to Tom DeGloma, Brittany Battle, Barbara Katz Rothman, Judy Gerson, Richard Williams, Johanna Foster, Debby Carr, Alexandra Gervis, Lynn Chancer, Rachel Brekhus, Lisa Campion, Christine Galotti, Jamie Mullaney, John Levi Martin, Hana Wirth-Nesher, Catherine Lee, Allan Horwitz, Yaacov Yadgar, Viviana Zelizer, Iddo Tavory, and Terence McDonnell, who read early versions of the manuscript and provided me with excellent feedback.

Special thanks also go to Ilanit Palmon for contributing the illustrations for the book, Linda Truilo for copyediting the manuscript, Alan Prince for providing various clarifications regarding language, and Jennifer Waller for giving me some very useful bibliographical tips. And I am particularly grateful to Meagan Levinson for inviting me to publish the book with Princeton University Press as well as for her terrific editorial comments and suggestions. Her great enthusiasm was a tremendous boost during the final stages of completing the book.

Last but not least, endless thanks to my wife, Yael, my daughter, Noga, and my son, Noam. Not only did they read various earlier versions of the book and spent many hours discussing it with me, they also continue to provide me with the great psychological support I so much need as I enter this new non-taken-for-granted stage of my life.

East Brunswick, New Jersey,
August 2017

taken
for
granted

The Marked and
the Unmarked

The unmarked... carries the meaning that goes without saying
what you think of when youre not thinking anything special.

Deborah Tannen, Marked Women, Unmarked Men

When telling people that he was studying suburban gays, writes Wayne Brekhus, I was often asked if I am gay. No one ever asked, however, if I was suburban, thereby tacitly revealing the far greater cultural salience conventionally attached to certain aspects of ones identity than others.

Yet why, indeed, is being gay conventionally considered more culturally salient for determining what one is than being suburban? Furthermore, why is the term openly gay used far more widely than its nominally equivalent lexical counterpart openly straight?

Answering such questions calls for a thorough examination of the concepts of markedness and unmarkedness.

As their etymology implies, the distinction between the marked and the unmarked is essentially the distinction between the remarkable and the unremarkable. In sharp contrast to the former, which figuratively stands out, the latter is viewed as lacking any distinctive features and, as such, is considered nondescript. The distinction thus captures the supposedly fundamental difference between holy places (a shrine), formal attire (a tuxedo), or festive food (a birthday cake) and their effectively mundane cultural counterparts. As further exemplified by the difference between the occurrences we deem uneventful and those we consider news, it is basically a distinction between the ordinary, or plain, and the special.

In sharp contrast to the marked, which is explicitly accentuated, the unmarked remains unarticulated. As such, it is exemplified by the default options on a computer menu. Reflecting what we assume by default, it is thus effectively taken for granted.

The distinction between the marked and the unmarked dates back to a 1930 letter from Nikolai Trubetzkoy to fellow linguist Roman Jakobson pointing to the fundamental contrast between pairs of phonemes, one of which possesses a certain feature that the other does not.

Furthermore, Jakobson also realized that the fundamental distinction between markedness and unmarkedness actually transcends linguistics, indeed noting its overall cultural