Download (23MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

approach advanced in Chapter 3.1 have drawn on both the observations set
out in Chapter 6 regarding conversational alignment and Chapter 7 regarding
sociable selves to illustrate how facework in sociable episodes can be
demonstrated to be alignment of sociable selves.
Fundamentally, what the preceding analysis has evidenced is that
sociable episodes can be conceived of as being characterised by varying
degrees of both positive and negative alignment, with certain primary
alignments giving a particular skewing to any given sociable episode.
Importantly, these various alignments have been shown to be contingent on
the mobilisation of salient and routinely mobilised sociable selves - ones
regularly drawn upon as symbolic resources by participants in each culture.
Although this drawing from what is in effect a symbolic conversational pool of
routinely available sociable selves has been shown to occur equally routinely
in both cultures, the analysis of the preceding data has evidenced some
cultural variation in terms of the nature of the selves mobilised and the
manner in which they are aligned in the achievement of sociability. This
culturally expressive variation on a universal set of symbolic practices (i. e.
alignment of sociable selves) has been shown to apply to both conversational
selves as images (i. e. figures invoked in talk) and players (i. e. the selves
employed to manage those figures in talk) (see Goffman 1967).
Taking these basic premises of sociable conversation, what the
preceding analysis has demonstrated is that the various sociable selves
mobilised by participants in talk are ratified in and through the reciprocative
mobilisation of supportive sociable selves in both primarily positively aligned
and primarily negatively aligned contexts. For example, re-invoked selves
have been shown to be ratified in and through the mobilisation and alignment
of similar re-invoked selves (see 'Cookie's Party'), and agonistic selves are
ratified in and through the mobilisation of similarly agonised selves (see
'Internationale Arbeitslosigkeit') in the achievement of positively skewed
alignment. Similarly, narrative selves have been shown to be ratified in and
through the mobilisation of appropriate audiential selves (see 'Tommy Fields')
and examinatory selves are ratified in and through the mobilisation of
282