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To reiterate, positive threshold breaches occur at moments when positive
alignment threatens the fabric of sociability. At these points, negative faces may
be threatened. Conversely, negative threshold breaches occur at moments
where negative alignment has 'done to far' or become too intense. In such
moments, positive face can be threatened. Threshold breaches in sociability
normally consist of two elements: The breach itself (actual or potential) itself;
and attempts made by fellow participants to repair or remedy the breach in the
hope of restoring sociable equilibrium. I noted above that a positive threshold
breach would be characterised by for instance, participants becoming too
solidaric in their conversational claims, to the point where conversational
autonomy was threatened. In English for example, this might manifest as the
talk topic crying up, as participants found it difficult to add some new and
individuated definitive or evaluative dimension to a topic. A negative threshold
breach would be characterised by excess individuation, beyond the point were
participants found it hard to incorporate individuated claims as 'sociable'. Under
such conditions, positive face threat would occur as the solidarity between
participants would be brought into question.
I will not spend too much time addressing threshold breaches here.
Indeed, in the following analytical chapters I shall focus almost exclusively on
'equilibric' rather than virtual or actual disequilibric conversation. However, in
order to fully illustrate the model set out above, I shall conclude this chapter by
pointing to instances of actual or potential threshold breaches in both cultural
milieu, as evidenced in the conversational data and as drawn from my own
observations. This last aspect of the model is one that I shall suggest in Chapter
9 subsequent studies may focus on.
6.5.1 Disequilibric Negative Alignment (Positive Threshold Breaches)
As narrative is the preferred form of discourse in English sociable
interaction, it is here that sociable equilibrium can be threatened via potential or
actual disequilibric alignment. There appear to be two main ways in which this
can occur. First, the speaker can 'go on too much' in his / her uniqueness claim.
Such asymmetrical claiming of conversational goods (i. e. the turn at talk, or
more precisely the 'turn allocation system [see Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson
17r,