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threatening talk with higher cultural norms and in doing so creates the social,
cultural and conversational context for'straight talk' to ensue. Thus, alignment is in
effect, not merely a 'normalising move' to do with a breakdown of meaning or a
realignment of negatively perceived selves, but also a contextualising one, which
proscriptively aligns action with wider cultural norms, and sets up the context within
which participants may align selves vis-A-vis one another. Alignment in this sense
is analogous to a 'shift' of conversational gears (albeit an temporary one) as part
and parcel of the normative realisation of conversational interaction. Katriel's work
is of particular importance to the present study in that it employs the concept of
alignment to account for cultural variations in communicative style.
Alignment then can generally be perceived of as an intersubjective
phenomenon, which works at the levels of meaning, symbolic selves, and higher
cultural norms.
Although the body of literature addressing alignment appears rather eclectic,
the import for the current discussion should be somewhat evident. That is, in the
preceding discussion, although fundamental dynamics underlying sociable
conversation have been identified, from which examples of conversational claims
have been derived, they have been treated as acts in themselves, rather than acts
as part of an ongoing collaborative activity. No note has been made as to the
trajectory that these moves may lead to in actual conversation. In order for any
comments on the conversational organisation in any culture to be made, one needs
to consider not just this or that move in isolation, but rather, such moves as they
are normatively co-ordinated or choreographed in and as the development of
conversation. For example, consensus and differentiation usually involve - by
definition - more than one speaker. Thus, positive and negative are not just ways of
categorising specific moves in isolation (in terms for example of illocutionary
force
or prepositional
content), but rather, as relational statuses and properties of the
conversational context itself. For instance, when conversational participants
engage in dissent or consensus, they can be regarded as being mutually aligned
with one another. This reading of facework as alignment has important implications
for the way we might set about addressing facework in sociable episodes.
As I noted above, equilibrium was a concept central to Goffman's (1967)
understanding of face and facework. Since Goffman, several scholars have
employed the term to refer essentially to an overarching conversational state (albeit