In this appealing and perceptive book, Eviatar Zerubavel explains how the words we use and do not use reinforce dominant cultural norms. For instance, when we mark “the best female basketball player,” “Black Entertainment Television network,” and “family man,” but leave their counterparts unmarked, we thereby assume them to be ordinary by default. What we mark or leave unmarked is not a matter of personal opinions rather; we base these decisions on our socially constructed, norms, traditions, and social conventions.

The things we assume and take for granted differ across social institutions and cultures in society. Zerubavel shows how marking certain practices, identities, and ideas help certain groups maintain cultural dominance, including—the power to control what others take for granted. The most potent form of marking is known as labeling, which establishes a semiotic asymmetry between the “marked” and the “unmarked.” For example, bridges marked as “Pedestrian Bridges” signal a difference from regular bridges that no one marks as “Motorable Bridges.” In Nigeria, one may find a label for “children’s church” and no label marking “adult’s church.” These obvious distinctions are taken for granted and therefore go unquestioned. They also vary according to culture. For instance, a Nigerian coming to America may not be able to tell whether smoking is permitted anywhere unless signs are indicating whether or not it is prohibited. Zerubavel explains situational variability, as the things we assume by default and take for granted vary not only cross-culturally, but also sub-culturally. A vivid example is how the most revered day of the week for Christians is Sunday and for Muslims is Friday.

When we bring our assumptions to the surface, the results can be both funny and sad. A classic example is Hofstadter’s (2001) riddle about a fatal car accident in which the driver dies immediately on the spot, and his son is rushed to a nearby hospital, after that seeing him, a startled surgeon exclaims: “I cannot operate on this boy – he is my son.” The most straightforward answer would be that the surgeon must be the boy’s mother. I tried this riddle with some friends on different occasions, but it was difficult for them to decipher as eight of ten never thought of the surgeon as a female. Their failure to think of the surgeon as a woman exposes how we take things for granted and how we assume “surgeon” naturally implies a man. Language plays a major role in the process of othering such that whenever we define something, we also indicate what it is not. For instance, when we create compounds words like African American or Religious Democrat, it implies that the person is not a typical American or Democrat respectively and it results in the passive construction of the normative case.

Zerubavel concludes with a fascinating chapter, “Language and Cultural Change.” It is conventional wisdom that language has its roots in culture; we learn to and mark things according to our speech community. In the case of giving consent between opposite sexes in the American Sexual ethics, there has been a great shift as silence used to be a tacit “Yes” but recently if the woman does not give an explicit “Yes,” then it means a “No” which is outright denial. The change, in other words, includes a significant assumption reversal about the meaning of silence. He examines the faults of our language and challenges our understanding of social life. Taken for Granted is a fascinating guide on how language sustains and aggravates social inequalities. Zerubavel’s broad-minded analysis has the power to shift the readers’ worldviews.

However, his research is detailed, but his google based results vary according to location. For example, his illustration with Google search on the terms non-Western and non-Eastern with 3,020,000 and 19,900 respectively. With regards to location, these google search results vary predominantly. Nevertheless, these are little points as Taken for Granted requires us to acknowledge our biases and how we communicate them — whether we understand the implication of what we are saying or not.

An important takeaway from this book is that language itself can betray us. It could trick us into revealing things about others without using words. This is because not only do the words we use carry power, the unused words themselves are sometimes more powerful.

References
Eviatar Zerubavel. Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 160 pp. $19.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780691177366.

Hofstadter, Douglas R. (2001).” Changes in Default Words and Images Engendered by the Rising Consciousness”. Pp. 112-113 in Jodi O’Brien and Peter E. Kollock (eds.), The Production of Reality: Essays and Readings on Social Interaction, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.