When personal names are mentioned in conversations

Abstract Sacks and Schegloff ( 1979 ; Schegloff 1996 ) 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.