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Although both'Tommy Fields' and 'Schlange bei Aldi'have demonstrated
instances of negative alignments. Comparatively speaking, these two excerpts
index important differences between English and German conversationalists.
Whereas propositions in objective discussion seem not so fruitful for negative
alignment in English, narrative (the favoured format for negative alignment in
English) seems equally unfertile conversational ground for German negative
alignment. In English, attempts to claim highly individuated stances in objective
discussion are routinely framed as non-serious, or resolved rapidly in an
attempt to assimilate the negative alignment under the umbrella of solidarity. In
German, attempts to claim uniqueness via narrative are often negated, as
interlocutors quickly invoke similar experiences (see 4.2), in effect taking the
wind of uniqueness out of the sails of relayed narrative. I will discuss cross-
cultural differences in greater detail in Chapters 7 and 8.
Thus, prevailing sociable styles can be seen to a reliable conversational
resource for both negative and positive clams, and for the collective alignment
in the ratification and support of these claims.
Having demonstrated how both negative and positive conversational
claims are proffered and ratified in and through alignment practices, I now want
to consider instances of talk where such claims are refused ratification, but
refused equilibrically. That is instances of sociable conversation were one or the
other participant makes a conversational claim which assumes either solidarity
with or autonomy from the preceding or anticipated claims of co-participants
but which, in and through subsequent claims, is not aligned in a way that ratifies
that assumption.
Although I shall focus predominantly on alignment which does ratify and
support both positive and negative claims, and the images of selfhood indexed
therein, as I intimated to above, the purpose of this particular chapter is to
evidence the full range of contingencies which the facework as alignment
approach to sociable episodes allows for. I shall more explicitly point to areas
for further research beyond the empirical focus here in Chapter 9. Importantly,
in addressing the full set of contingencies of the facework as alignment
1 rn