ABSTRACT
Just about twenty years ago, working on materials in which people talk about their troubles, I came across a possible phenomenon: Someone inadvertently produces an ambiguous utterance, then attempts to disambiguate it without speaking explicitly. Although it was clear to me that something like that was going on, I found that I had no analytic resources to develop a case for it. I gave a talk to some colleagues at the University of Manchester, presenting the phenomenon as something intriguing but that my conversation analytic resources gave me no handle on, and was told in no certain terms that my muchvaunted conversation analytic methods had utterly failed to handle it. They’re a lively bunch! Even agreement turns into open warfare. At some point, someone suggested that we just go have a drink. So ended my presentation.
