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as re-invoking selves. The category of re-invoking selves was used to refer to
the way conversationalists in English sociable episodes routinely invoke past
images of selfhood, ones which are essentially in some way similar to those
past selves available to be drawn upon by other co-present participants in the
gathering. This similarity is usually based in commonality of experiences or
activities and was posited as prime way in which English participants
achieved some degree of positive alignment. 'Cookie's Party' as an event
clearly provides a resource for the invocation and mobilisation of such selves.
In terms of conversational selves as images - i. e., as invoked
characters or images (Goffman 1967; 1969) (see Chapter 7), the most salient
re-invoked selves in 'Cookie's Party' are generally abased ones, again,
symbolic entities frequently mobilised and aligned in the achievement of
English sociable style. These two generic sociable selves - re-invoking and
abased - are at the centre of the sociable organisation of 'Cookie's Party'.
Alongside these primary sets of selves, there is evidence to show that
speakers mobilise at points in the conversation selves which, in Chapter 7,1
associated more with negative alignment, namely, what I referred to earlier as
narrating selves. That is, selves mobilised to present some unique aspect of
selfhood. Such selves however enjoy only secondary status in this particular
episode and operate within the reality of 'Cookie's Party', although
nevertheless allowing for some degree on individuated variation on an
essentially highly solidaric event.
What is fundamental here is that, for the duration of this particular part
of the conversation, all participants are of a one-ness, in terms of their
sociable selves mobilised as players of performers. This positive alignment of
similar sociable selves is essential if the past sociable reality of Cookie's party
is to be sustained, and the positive face needs of each of the participants is to
be met.
In 'Cookie's Party' there is what might be termed a symbolic symmetry
in terms of the distribution across participants of selves as both images and
as players. That is, most participants mobilise to varying degrees re-invoking
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