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in both cultures as conversational resources for sociability. The data presented
here can be seen to reflect these categories. The English episodes presented
here can be classed as examples of a reminiscence (excerpt 'Cookie's Party')
and reportable (excerpt'Tommy Fields'), whilst the German episodes can be
classed as examples of a biographical (excerpt 'Stu di ere n als Hobby'
['Studying as a Hobby']) and agoniser (excerpt 'Internationelle Arbeitslosigkeit'
['International Unemployment']). In terms of how these topic types are generally
handled (see Chapter 5), each episode has been selected as epitomising
salient aspects of English and German sociable conversation. I am confident in
attesting to the representativeness of each episode from both my extensive
experience of participation in sociable gatherings in both cultures, corroboration
with my wife Elke, but more importantly from my close and sustained
observation of the conversational data gathered for this study (see Chapter 4).
As with Chapters 6 and 7,1 shall begin with the English data (8.2.1)
followed immediately by a similar consideration of the German data (8.2.2).
8.2.1 English Alignment of Sociable Selves
The two sociable episodes I wish to consider here are'Cookie's Party'followed
by'Tommy Fields'. Upon listening to the conversations in my initial stage of
analysis (see Chapter 4) it became quickly clear that these data were what I
knew to personally to be characteristic of English sociable conversation, and
what marked my own body of English conversational data. I shall treat each
episode separately although overlap between the two episodes in terms of topic
handling and development, and selves mobilised will be apparent.
Beginning then with 'Cookie's Party', here we have typical example of
English sociable conversation between friends and close acquaintances, and
one exemplary of my own conversational data in general.
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