This chapter uses data from a range of settings to explore how conversational poetics can be involved in the dramatization of everyday talk, focusing particularly on the use of exaggerated, parodic, and performative speech in the context of complaining, apologizing, and other potentially delicate or embarrassing activities. The chapter proposes an extended use of the term ‘poetics’ to mean not only word-selections, sound-connections, and lexical patterns, but also the prosodic enunciation of words, and the use of vocal, facial, and bodily modulations in the production of narrative components and receipt items. The chapter suggests that speakers may use hearably ‘nonnatural’ speech production phenomena in the management of a competent, empathic, or accountable self.