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Finally, although Watts argued that such politic work variously functioned
at an interpersonal level, to for instance ratify and maintain in-group cohesion,
individual face concerns could be seen to be contingent on speaker
contributions and conversational performance in being to proffer and defend
these contributions. Pointing to German politic (equilibric) work in particular,
Watts noted that for example, for German speakers, holding the floor to proffer
a position, and contradicting other positions was seen of primary importance.
Speakers failing to engage in such politic work may subsequently run the real
risk of being regarded negatively as 'passive' communicative partners.
Watts' observations of familial conversation seem to corroborate many of
House's findings then concerning speaker orientation to ideational and
interpersonal aspects of talk. Importantly, what Watts adds to our understanding
of German - English communicative style is that it may be perceived, not only
as a goal oriented or pragmatic issue, (as for example would be the making of
requests, apologies, or complaints), but also - and perhaps fundamentally - as
a collective enterprise geared towards maintaining in a culturally specific state
of equilibrium by participants recognisable conversational and interpersonal
practices. Thus, both speaker and recipient alignment are implied in this
equilibric reading of verbal interaction. Communicative style is thus a product of
both speaker and recipient general alignment to conversation based on a set of
normative expectations and discourse practices.
The substantial body of work conducted by House and colleagues, and
Watts has primarily focused on British-English communicate style. However,
interestingly these differences are reflected in comparative studies between
German and other English speaking speech communities outside of the British-
English context. Such differences can be seen no more so than in US-English -
German comparative studies, where marked differences have been identified in
the way Germans differ from US-English speakers in terms of their respective
communicative styles (e. g. Byrnes 1986, Friday 1994; Straehle 1997; Kotthoff
1989; 1991; 1993; 1994). Even though strictly speaking the English and
Americans can not be cast as one and the same culture, differences noted
between US-English and German communicative style are remarkably similar to
those outlined in the preceding paragraphs.
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