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9.5 Conclusion
To conclude this chapter and the thesis as a whole, I would like to cite
Goffman's observations on cultural variation in facework practices and the
achievement of ritual equilibrium*
Each person, subculture, and society seems to have its own
characteristic repertoire of face-saving practices. It is to this repertoire
that people partly refer when they ask what a person or culture is "really"
like. And yet the particular set of practices stressed by particular persons
or groups seems to be drawn from a single logically coherent framework
of possible practices (Goffman 1967,13).
I would hope that, by addressing two different cultures, who appear to be
I really' unlike each other in terms of their conversational style, I have illustrated
how such a single framework
- that of conversational selves - is drawn upon
variously in the doing of sociable conversation. These are in effect the symbolic
cards with which one must play the culturally specific game of sociability (see fig
9.3).
Figure 9.3 Cultural, Self, Sociable Equilibrium
Range of available
conversational
selves
Mob
and alignment
Sociable
Equilibrium
Culture C..
(Western/Easte(n)
It remains to be seen whether such a broad claim can be validated by
future research. I would hope that, even if I have taken the wrong way in
tackling my specific research problem, others reading this thesis may be
inspired to find the right way.
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