ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an account of Erving Goffman's work; outlines methods for systematically applying his model to interactional data; extends it to capture links between the micro and the macro worlds. It considers the two case-studies: the paediatric consultations and the AIDS public debate and what they reveal about the functionalist etiquette through which people seem to live a key part of social lives. However, if Goffman's model of ceremonial order and its functionalist rhetoric is basically right, then it should be possible to specify some of the ways in which encounters are systematically linked with the macro-social arena and the effects such links have, both on individual encounters and on the external social world. The chapter examines an extraordinary mix of claims and fears about what was happening across the UK-and remedies as to how it could be put right; all of them the product of a parliamentary inquiry into the crisis.
