ABSTRACT
As Sacks makes clear here, in an important respect, being ordinary is a job that people engage in on a daily basis. Furthermore, most of them have no difficulty with this task much of the time. By contrast, as I have shown, minimally active confused speakers seem to have renounced any attempt at being ordinary. Other confused speakers seem more aware of and committed to the achievement of normal interactional appearances. Included among these are those I refer to in this study as moderately active confused speakers. What I mean by this is that they often respond with turns longer than one word, frequently of one or more sentences; they seek clarification and self-select to take a turn on occasion; and finally, there are indications that some of them, at least, are well aware of the shortcomings of their conversational participation. Yet, paradoxically, because they take more part in conversations and therefore expose themselves to a greater extent, there are respects in which these conversationalists appear to be less successful than minimally active confused speakers. There are certainly a number of interactive troubles that we can observe in talk involving these speakers. Some of the problems in the talk and its repair are what might generally be called very ordinary troubles. However, the talk of this group of speakers also involves troubles that can be seen as less ordinary; these troubles focus not so much on the repair work itself but on what has to
be repaired. Again, these troubles point up what anyone should know and thus should be of interest in the consideration of ordinary members' methodic practices.
