ABSTRACT
Status-power theory allows for a more revealing scrutiny of interaction than Goffman's sacred-cum-ritual/social-order approach and one way to show this is to apply the former to the latter. A systematic sociology of social relations can only profit from a profusion of explanatory modes. Ordinarily, speakers offer self-limiting introductory remarks, such as, 'In my opinion', only when the topic is complex and invites opinions, the politics of Sino-American relations. The conversationalists are more likely to be tailoring and addressing their remarks for the host as a matter of status-accord to her than to anyone else in the circle. Goffman goes on here to quote Bales's statement about the joking and laughter that occur so frequently at the end of a meeting where a group has achieved a 'successful solution' of its task. The chapter concludes that how a status-power analysis is more apposite and more revealing sociologically than Goffman's relationally tone-deaf approach.
