Download (23MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

demonstrated that, in and through for example narrative, the self could be
invoked as a replayed figure, as some image of self not'here and now' but
essentially 'there and then'. Further, by for example invoking a self belonging to
some past reality, that self - or aspect of self - can become castigated, or cast
off, or split away from (see Goffman 1967). Thus, the conversational self as
image opens up a range of possibilities of how the person as player or
performer can present or treat the person as image or character. Finally of
course, as I noted in Chapter 1, the accommodative nature of situated
interaction was fundamental to both the presentation and treatment of the self
as player and as image. Of primary importance in Goffman's world was that the
situation be preserved. In terms of facework specifically, I have of course
referred to this throughout as the state of ritual equilibrium. Selves presenting
and presented then should be of a normatively appropriate nature and of one
which could be both 'carried off by any particular participant and supported by
those co-present. This mutual state of affairs was fundamental to the centrality
of the self to ritual equilibrium.
In the following chapter I shall enter into the discussion and further
analysis the second conceptualisation of the self fundamental to the approach
taken in this study, one drawn from the notion of the self as construal, drawn
upon in the discussion of cross-cultural variations in the concept of the self as a
basis for differences in facework (see Chapter 1) - what I shall term the self as
conversational construal (see Chapter 8). Here however I shall base my
discussion and analysis around Goffman's conceptual isati on, grounded in the
'duel mandate' (Goffman 1967) of the self as sociable'player and as sociable
'image'.
A seminal notion intrinsically connected to the concept of face, and by
definition related to the self as player and image not mentioned above is that of
positive social values. I am treating this briefly under a different heading due to
its marked influence by cultural factors as opposed to the above
conceptual i sati ons which should be read as essentially universal in nature.
To recap, in Chapter 21 outlined a set of positive social values that
various extant studies had identified as being associated with German and 194