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specific communicative practices, as scholars employing such techniques have
themselves noted, these data can hardly be regarded asnaturally occurring'
(Kotthoff 1994), nor can the settings be regarded as naturalistic settings but
rather'artificial' (House and Kasper 1981).
Although data drawn from constructed settings have undoubtedly yielded
important findings, several of the scholars conducting comparative research
note the additional benefits of employing naturally occurring data (e. g. Watts
1989; Straehle 1997). House and Kasper for example recognise the need for
research in cross-cultural differences to '... take into account of the entire
discourse, in which [ such ) individual acts are embedded' (1981,183). The
most obvious proponents of this focus on naturally occurring conversation are
Straehle (1997), and Watts (1989), both of whom focused on the collection and
analysis of naturally occurring talk drawn from naturalistic settings. Aside from
noting the validity of naturally occurring conversational data, Watts (1989)
further alludes not only to the need to acquire such data, but also points to the
nature of the settings which might best yield the most naturalistic examples of
naturalistic conversational freeplay, what might generally be referred to as
'closed-group'12.
... I suggest that we turn our research efforts to the intensive
investigation of what goes on in closed group interaction in order to
gain clearer insights into the roots of cross-cultural differences in
politeness behaviour. (pp. 161-162).
Although as I shall make clear below, these two criteria - naturally
occurring talk and closed group settings - will guide my own methodology here
(see Chapter 4), there are intrinsic problems with attempting to analyse the
nebulous and disparate nature of the ongoing flow of naturally occurring
conversational interaction. These seem particularly salient when one attempts
to take a analytical 'broad brush' approach to facework in ongoing naturally
occurring conversation. Indeed, as I shall outline in the following chapter,
although several of the above scholars have pointed to the need to address
naturally occurring conversational interaction if one is to fully understand
facework practices, extant models for the analysis of discourse for facework
maker this a deceptively difficult enterprise. However, as I shall demonstrate
below, this is not an impossible task.
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