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uniquerness, specifically by knowing personally the victim of a serial killer. Both
RP&EP and JL attempt to make and have supported such claims on the basis
of having some unique relationship with the victim. However, the negative
alignment required to ratify these indivuated claims is problematic, as what is
being claimed as uniqueness turns out to be a more communal experience.
Rather than have these claims ratified and aligned to in a way that signals there
uniqueness and allows that particular claimant to continue along a more
indivuated trajectoy, both sets of particpants effectively repeatedly proffer
without suitable reciprocal alignment. However, again, the particpants manage
to travesrese this piotentialy disequilibric moment in a sociable way, by
expressing simultaneously adding their own nuances on a common theme.
Both these examples demonstrate then how the proferring of
individuated claims aligned to in a manner that does not fully ratify or support.
Of course, such not ratificatory aligfnments can also be evidenced by the
considering German sociable conversation.
In German sociable conversation, non-ratification of negative claims also
occurs. Due to the German predilection for individuated standpoints though, this
is less frequent in objective discussion sequences as by definition, individuated
standpoints are required to make such talk happen and are therefore
normatively supported. As, for instance, was evidenced in the English-German
comparative literature reviewed in Chapter 2, during argumentation sequences,
if a German speaker suddenly agrees with a proposition, the speaker who is
conceded to (i. e. positively aligned to) may well feel somewhat bemused or
even offended (see Kotthoff 1991). In short, when a negative claim is made in
German sociable conversation, co-participants are brought under some
conversational obligation to support this by negatively aligning to it, as are the
recipients of negative narrative claims in English conversation.
Instances of non-ratification of an attempt to initiate negative alignment
do however occur. The following excerpt provides some evidence of this.
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