Download (23MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

effectively consensual facework, could be seen to operate within the wider
sustainable framework of ritual equilibrium, Goffman pointed to a marked
preference for the latter - at least within the Anglo-American cultural milieu
within which Goffman forged his framework and from which his data were
drawn.
The potentially ethnocentric foundation for Goffman's framework of
equilibrium may appear prima facie to undermine the analytical usefulness and
general validity of the notion of ritual equilibrium and supporting facework
practices therein. However, although not personally extending his analysis and
propositions beyond the Anglo-American shores, Goffman was certainly aware
of the issue of cultural variation in equilibric facework practices. An interesting
and oft neglected aspect of Goffman's exposition of facework was comments
made in respect of cultural variation in facework practices and, by implication,
the nature of ritual equilibrium in various cultures. Although these were largely
conjectural, his comments did point to the world outside the cultural context in
which his work was forged to suggest fertile ground for cross-cultural
consideration of facework practices and the nature of ritual equilibrium. For
example, Goffman recognised that, even though face and facework as formal
concepts were posited as universal, the nature of talk as it was played out as
equilibric activity may be subject to considerable cultural variation. Although'lip
service'was posited as a prevailing ethos in Anglo-American society, Goffman
did intimate to the fact that this may not apply universally:
Each person, subculture, and society seems to have its own characteristic
repertoire of face-saving practices. It is to this repertoire that people partly refer
when they ask what a person or culture is "really" like. And yet the particular set
of practices stressed by particular persons or groups seems to be drawn from a
single logically coherent framework of possible practices (ibid p. 13).
Thus, taking into account the universal propensities for face and
facework and the maintenance of ritual equilibrium, and the existence of cross-
cultural variation, Goffman surmised that:
Universal nature is not a very human thing. By acquiring it, the person
becomes a kind of construct, built up not from inner psychic
propensities but from moral rules that are impressed upon him from
without. These rules, when followed, determine the evaluation he will
make of himself and of his fel I ow-partici pants in the encounter, the
20