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of such narratives commonly acted as suitably interested, surprised, and
entertained audiences (see Goffman 1974). English sociable topic development
often centred around the affective domain, with habitual uses of humour; wise-
cracks, funny anecdotes, rude / naughty play on words etc. German
conversation was characterised more by discussion of topics common to all
participants. Thus, the cognitive domain was one around which German
conversation tended to develop, with topic talk was based more on close
consideration of fact and the ability to quickly take in, process, and deduce
some proposition. Emotive inner sharing seemed to be generally avoided in
favour of well thought out discussion. A nice difference for this metaphor in
terms of the self might be that English conversations was akin to a
conversational staging of selves, whereas German appeared more akin to a
conversational arena for selves (see table 5.2).
Table 5.2 Some Characteristics of Speaker / Hearer Alignments to
Developing Conversational Topic
English German
Speakers > Took up moderate turn space > Held the floor for extensive
to proffer amusing and periods to outline personal
interesting narrative stances
> Formulated turns on basis of > Formulated turns on the basis
personal feelings towards
of personal knowledge,
experience of a topic
understanding, and logical
reasoning
Recipients > Listened with frequent back- > Listened intently to what
channel markers to signal another person may be saying
amusement and interest
with minimum back-channel
> Intervened when points of markers
agreement were identified > Intervened quickly when flaws
(yeah yeah) in stance were identified (aber
pass auf [but hold on a minute]
A prime function of such topic development was undoubtedly to signal
commonality and solidarity between participants. Once underway however,
there opened up the possibility for development of more individuated nuances
of a common theme. Thus, as well as allowing an expression of commonality of
selves, Reminiscences talk seemed also to facilitate the invocation of a
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