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When personal names are mentioned in conversations

Presumed known, perhaps known and presumed unknown

ORCiD logo with link | University of California, Santa Barbara | University of the WitwatersrandJohannesburg
ORCiD logo with link | University of California, Santa Barbara
Published online: 27 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.25001.whi
Abstract
Sacks and Schegloff (Sacks, Harvey, and Emanuel A. Schegloff. 1979. “Two Preferences in the Organization of Reference to Persons in Conversation and their Interaction.” In Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, edited by George Psathas, 15–21. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; 1996. “Some Practices for Referring to Persons in Talk-in-Interaction: A Partial Sketch of a Systematics.” In Studies in Anaphora, edited by Barbara Fox, 437–485. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) identify a preference for recognitional references to persons over non-recognitional forms of references. Furthermore, they identify as a subsidiary preference that, among recognitional forms, personal names are preferred over recognitional descriptors. However, as Sacks and Schegloff indicate, these preferences in no way limit the use of names to conclusively recognizable persons, nor do they even inhibit references to persons by name when recognition is not at all practicable. In this report, we first describe those practices that manage (and thereby exhibit) levels of confidence regarding the recognizability of personal names. We then examine several environments in which personal names are employed in introducing persons as previously unknown to recipients, and we describe one family of practices for doing so. Finally, we identify storytelling as a principal environment in which personal names are used, and we describe where unknown persons are introduced by storytellers.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Names as recognitional references to persons
  • 3.“If recognition is possible, try to achieve it”
  • 4.Introducing persons
  • 5.Introducing persons in stories told in conversations
    • 5.1Introducing persons by name: As a story begins
    • 5.2Introducing persons by name: When they appear in the story
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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