Download (23MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

Fig. 4.1 Aspects of Sociable Alignment
4.2 Data Collection
Sociable Conversation
t
1) to topic
Alignment
2) positive
(see Ch. 3) 3) negative
As outlined in Chapters 2 and 3, recent research has highlighted the
need to analyse face and facework within the context of naturally occurring
ongoing talk, on the grounds that discourse must be addressed within both its
conversational and situational context as it is produced by ordinary persons in
everyday life to be fully understood (Straehle 1997, Watts 1989, House and
Kasper 1981). Thus, naturally occurring conversation constitutes the main data
source for this study. Essentially the data body consist of around 76 hours of
recordings taken from sociable gatherings (see Chapter 5).
As I outlined at the beginning of Chapter 2,1 have for the past 10 years
or so been a regular visitor to Germany. In that time, I have built up friendships
and acquaintances, as well as familial relationships with native Germans. I have
consequently been involved in countless sociable gatherings. Indeed, it has
been personal contact with and involvement in such gatherings that that has led
me to pursue this particular thesis (see my earlier comments in Chapter 2 and
the Introduction to this study). During this time I have also participated in
numerous English sociable gatherings, again, with participants with whom I
have similarly relational ties. My data sites are not then 'alien worlds' in either
case, but ones with which I have over many years become well acquainted. The
ethnographic commonplace 'research what you have access to' is one then
which has had a fundamental bearing on the methodology. Similar to the types
of settings exploited by previous studies of sociable conversation (e. g. Watson
1958; Watson and Potter 1962; Riesman and Watson 1964; Tannen 1984;
Eggins and Slade 1997 - see Chapter 3), the type of gatherings that I am
1 r),;
p