a RoUGH, ramBling, strAnGe, muDDy, CONfusing, elLIPtical Kut: from An Archaeology of Plain Talk

The idea that anyone can speak or write plain talk is poked, pondered, pushed, prodded, satirized, and problematized. Furthermore, the article argues that calls for plain talk are elitist, but not in an individual, conscious-choice sense. Instead, the article contends that such calls are social circulations that spiral through elite discourse networks that then get (unconsciously) spoken through the voices of those who inhabit these elite networks. Compelling these calls is the enactment of the same-other binary within which the same plays out the only story it knows, its superiority to and dominance of the other, and its anxious attempted erasure of the other, for the purpose of maintaining its positional perch.