ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Goffman’s notions of participation and presentation of self can be utilized in examining the interactive competence of an interlocutor with limited language abilities. Specifically, we examine the ways in which an aphasic man with only a three-word vocabulary caused by a severe stroke can present himself as a skilled actor in the presence of others. Despite his limited lexical resources, he can link his utterances and embodied performances to the talk and action of others. Making use of prosody, gesture, and embodied actions he is even able to reconfigure how those in the local interaction are positioned vis-a-vis one another over the course of an interaction. Analysis highlights the relevance of stance taking for the presentation of self in everyday life. Action within interaction cannot be found in the stream of speech alone, but instead is emergent through the meaningful frameworks created by acting and interacting bodies (Goodwin, 2000a; Goodwin et al., 2012). From this perspective, stance and affect are not individual phenomena or primarily manifestations of a single actor’s psychological state, but instead core public features that interactively constitute the action of the moment to be what it is.
