ABSTRACT
This chapter makes more explicit how Jefferson’s poetics relates to other observations concerning talk-in-interaction, specifically how category-triggering functions within list-construction. That is, once adequate representivity has been established, a list provides participants with access to co-members of a category. Applying this insight from ordinary talk, the chapter explores text-critical ‘variants’ within lists and concludes that, when ancient scribes were copying a manuscript to produce a new manuscript, they could freely add, omit, or substitute list items that are co-members of the category established by the list in way that to modern scholars suggests ‘differences’, but to the ancient scribes probably simply represented the ‘same’ list. The chapter includes examples from the New Testament, Homer, and the Hebrew Bible.
