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Excerpt 7.2 'Doin' Foreigners'
Shortly before this gathering, a local doctor had been arrested on suspicion of
murdering several of his patients. It would later transpire that the doctor in question
would achieve the status of being the world's most notodous serial killer.
JW: A bloke were tellin'me about that doctors
(0.5)
RP: Oh here we go
(0.5)
JW: Yeah (. ) apparently he's been doin foreigners at weekends hahahaha
RP: Ha=You(h)'re horrible
ZW: That's lousy that
Interestingly, and again this may well reflect the predominant styles
highlighted and illustrated in previous chapters, these types of joking selves
proffered in the course of 'serious' topic development rarely occurred in my
German data, but were common in the English conversations (indeed, it
appears that such newsworthy events often provides ripe conversational
resource for sociable presentations).
Working reciprocatively with narrating / narrated selves are audiential
selves, or, in staying with the current typification, what might be termed
narratee selves. In the face of presented narrating selves, fellow sociabilists are
expected to display their receptiveness to the ongoing presentation by showing
that they have 'been stirred' in an appropriate way and to an appropriate degree
(see Goffman 1974). narratee selves commonly display interest, amusement,
aghast, all in the right places, and often to the point of losing control, being
overwhelmed by the contingencies of the unfolding reality. The mobilisation of
narratee selves is apparent in the recipient actions in both 'Crippled DicW
(intense amusement throughout) and 'Doin' Foreigners' (suitable recipient
'comic shocW). Again, there are salient cross-cultural differences between
English audiential selves and their German equivalents. Symbolically, German
audiential selves tend to be more measured, controlled entities, and perhaps
most markedly, evaluative entities.
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