ABSTRACT
In the next two chapters, we look at how participants in the briefings realize changes in their footing and the effect this has on interlocutors. As Goffman (1981: 128) himself says: ‘a change in footing implies a change in the alignment we take up to ourselves and the others present as expressed in the way we manage the production or reception of an utterance’. In other words, in the course of the speech event, a participant can often change from ‘I am speaking as representative of x’ to ‘I am speaking as representative of y’, and also ‘I am treating you as representative(s) of x’ to ‘I am treating you as representative(s) of y’, where x and y can be anything from single individuals to groups, to nations, to humanity. Of particular interest here will be to study how shifts of footing are employed deliberately or semi-deliberately as manoeuvres to protect or further speakers’ rhetorical interests.
