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somebody who is overly-friendly, gets too close, or appears to be 'creeping' in
some way, overly-underplaying difference as it were. Of course, these breaches
may be the bases of cross-cultural misunderstanding, with one culture
perceiving the other as 'creepy' or alternatively aloof and snobbish. When such
instances of autonomous alignment occur, conversationalists much do much
work to incorporate the offender back into the overarching equilibric bonds
which underlies their solidarity. This area of breach, its repair or avoidance
might warrant further research. Additionally, aggressive uses of both positive
and negative alignments may be addressed. A much harder task may be to
attempt to measure these heuristic boundaries to show for instance, how much
negative or positive alignment is too much and do different cultures or different
contexts have different normative tolerances.
Aside from working on disequilibric terrain or at the boundaries of
equilibrium / disequilibrium, further studies might attempt tot address facework
as alignment in different contexts. The work here has focused on in-group
settings. The formality of the suggested analytical framework allows for analysis
of any setting however where sociable or casual conversation takes place.
Indeed, the studying of different contexts and different relational milieu might
allow for the reincorporation of sociolinguist variable underlying current
politeness research to be mobilised, such as power and social distance or any
of the variant on these developed in work following Brown and Levinson. Work
of this nature may also identify the particular situational selves routinely
mobilised by participants in situ and consider the way these are aligned.
Although I posited my work here as essentially a research enterprise, I
feel the approach taken and findings presented may have practical implications,
particularly for English - German cross-cultural interaction. For example, those
interested in cross-cultural communication might draw on the findings presented
here in aiding the understanding of the nature of sociability in each culture.
Similarly, language teaching may well focus not just on the conversational
grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, but also on the way language can be used to
manifest more symbolic exchanges of conversational selfhood fundamental to
normative
conversation.
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