Appendix I: Sources of examples

Summary

Following is a list of major sources of examples and background information about their collection and choice.

Thanksgiving dinner conversation

The largest number of examples is taken from transcripts of tape-recorded conversation. The largest number of these are from two and a half hours of dinner table conversation that I recorded on Thanksgiving day 1978. This conversation comprised the material for my book Conversational style (1984), as well as a number of other papers I have written.With a few exceptions, the examples used here are being used for the first time. Participants in the conversation were six middle-class white professionals between the ages of 29 and 35. The dinner was at the home of Steve (33). Guests included his brother Peter (35) and his best friend Deborah (33), who is also the author. (Names other than mine are pseudonymous.) Steve, Peter, and I are natives of New York City of East European Jewish background. In the course of the study that led to the aforementioned book, I discovered that these three speakers used many similar discourse strategies which together constitute a conversational style that I characterized as “high-involvement”: When faced with a choice between observing positive face by showing involvement vs. observing negative face by refraining from imposing, they were more likely to choose to show involvement and risk imposing.