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the environment, activities, and prevailing ethos are drawn upon to create a
dramatic framework within which such selves can be made sense of.
Typically for English sociable topic management in general (see
Chapter 5), there is much humour employed in the general handling of
'Cookie's Party' (see also 'Tommy Fields' below). This includes the invocation
of both comical figures per se (e. g. LM failing downstairs [line 6]; the sarcastic
Andy Pandy [line 64-65], DB attending as nob [line 74]), as well as treating
more serious ones humorously (e. g. the 'bonking' couple ripping the shower
off the wall [line 28]). As with most English sociable conversation, what seems
to be important in conversationally handing 'Cookie's Party' is not such
matters as factual accuracy (e. g. whether or not LM actually did fall
downstairs and land on her feet without spilling the can of lager, or whether a
'bonking' couple really did rip the shelves off the wal I- both of which seem
dubious assertions), but rather what might be better termed as dramatic
intensity (Cf. Goffman 1974).
Fundamental to the reading of sociable conversation that I have been
advancing throughout this study is the proposition that such conversation in
both cultures relies not on conversational contributions per se, but rather the
mobilisation of particular sociable selves. That is, sociable conversation is not
a result of linguistic practices but of symbolic ones (see Chapter 7). In
'Cookie's Party', we can clearly identify certain salient English sociable selves
at work. In the first instance these might be subsumed under a heading
specific to this particular conversation like 'party goers'. However, the
construction of such party going selves is achieved through the mobilisation of
more generic selves in line with those identified in Chapter 7. Such generic
selves are mobilised as both conversational players and (that is, the self that
handles the talk) and as conversational images (that is, the self that is
handled in the talk) (see 7.1).
As players - i. e., in effect'harried fabricator[s] of impressions involved
in the ... task of staging a performance' (Goffman 1969,222), the most salient
of these selves mobilised in 'Cookie's Party' are what was referred to earlier
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