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common cognitive and conversational focus of attention. In this sense, I will
focus here on topic that became conversationaL That is, topics that were picked
up and developed by participants. Similar to Tannen then (1984), 1 am using
instances of focused topic talk as the basis for delineating 'sociable 'episode'.
Thus, for the present investigation, the definition of a sociable episode
can be taken to be any instance of extended conversational interaction between
two or more persons focusing on a common topic (theme; issue; event) which
stands apart from the preceding or following talk and in which participants
appear to be collectively and reciprocatively interacting.
In representing conversational topic, I essentially had three choices.
First, I could list all topics that were developed in all episodes in both cultures.
Second, I could choose one or two gatherings from each culture as
representative case studies of the whole data set. Third, I could arrive at some
more summative method of representing topic. I believe the first would have
been practically non-viable. Presenting such a vast array of conversational
topics would have proved unmanageable for both myself discursively, and the
reader textually. This would have produced essentially 'raw' data. The second
choice would at best an over-generalisation, at worst misleading and invalid.
This would have only worked if all the gatherings were similar enough in both
their topic content and handling. Therefore, I have chosen here the third
method. In doing this I have had to take the array of topics identified and try to
represent them under more over-arching but still valid topic categories.
Upon listening to the data, I identified a set of very general categories
within which the majority of topics elaborated and developed in sociable
episode in each milieu seemed to fall. These are presented in table 5.1.
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