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communicative style between English and German speakers and apparent
cultural variations in the importance accorded to self and other face concerns in
verbal face-to-face interaction (Blum-Kulka and House 1989; Byrnes 1986;
Fetzer 1996,1997; Friday 1994; Hellweg, Samovar, and Skow 1994; House
1979,1982a, 1982b, 1982c, 1989; House and Kasper 1981; Kofthoff 1989,
1991,1993,1994; Straehle 1997; Watts 1989). The remit was to consider these
differences within one particular conversational context; that of the sociable
gathering. In particular, I attempted to focus on instances of sociable
conversation (Riesman and Watson 1964; Simmel 1949 [19111; Watson 1958;
Watson and Potter 1962). In an attempt to delineate in some way such
moments of sociability, I focused in from considering alignment to sociability as
a situated type of activity per se, to look at more closely at conversational
behaviour in what I termed main phases of sociability. Drawing on the notions of
topic and the general notion of episode (Katriel 1986; Malone 1997; Penman
1990; Tannen 1984; Watson and Potter 1962; Wood and Kroger 1994), 1
identified my main unit of analytical interest as conversational behaviour within
what I termed 'sociable episodes'.
I began the comparative analysis in Chapter 5 by providing a broad and
largely ethnographically informed account of sociability in both milieus.
Participants in both cultures were shown to equally recognise and align to their
entrances into and departures from the situational world of sociability. In what I
termed aligning for alignment, I identified certain differences between each
lingua-culture in the first instance in terms of the type of topics generally
favoured, and the extent to which and nature of topic development. Much of
what was said in Chapter 5 corroborated aspects of communicative style
identified in the previous studies outlined in Chapter 2, particularly those relating
to naturally occurring conversational between close friends and acquaintances.
In effect this chapter demonstrated that the concept of sociability as being a
recognisable context and requiring and certain demonstration of intent to be
sociable was common to both cultures, but that the process of sociable
conversation per se appeared subject to cultural variability.
In Chapter 6,1 looked more closely as sociable conversation in each
milieu. Here I was able to demonstrate that the sociable contingencies
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