ABSTRACT
People hardly get by without the clichés and other formulaic phrasing they use from day to day. Greeting someone by asking “How are you?” does not imply a request for a detailed account of his or her health. To respond to such a greeting by listing your physical ailments would be to break with social conventions (at least in Australia, where an appropriate response to this salutation would be: “Yeah, I’m okay, thanks. How are you?”). Language of this kind conceals as much as it reveals, allowing people to defer grappling with all sorts of unpalatable truths as they go about the business of their lives.
