Footing

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Footing
Author(s):	Virginia Teas Gill (Illinois State University)
To cite:	Gill, Virginia Teas. (2023). Footing. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/45K2G

Footing (Goffman 1974: 496-559, 1979, 1981: 124-159) refers to the alignments people take up in respect to vocal and embodied actions during social encounters. Goffman recognized that the categories Speaker and Hearer are too general to capture the range of ways people manage their participation as producers and recipients. The concept of footing reflects Goffman’s effort to “decompose” these participation statuses into more precise elements (1979: 16, 1981: 144).

When people take up the position of hearers in conversation, they may align as “ratified” recipients, the people to whom talk was addressed; however, hearers may adopt other footings, such as being “overhearers” of talk in a multiparty setting or “eavesdroppers” on conversations not meant for them (Goffman 1981: 132). Likewise, speakers can adopt specific footings in regard to words they are uttering and perspectives or ideas they are expressing. Via different “production formats” speakers can indicate whether they are using their own words and expressing their own ideas, or those of others: The “animator” is the person who is speaking; the “author” selected the words being uttered; and the “principal” is the one whose ideas, beliefs, or sentiments are being expressed in the utterance (1979: 17-18, 1981: 144-145). Although speakers are commonly the animators, authors, and principals of their utterances, they may shift footing to, e.g., attribute authorship elsewhere and/or indicate that the sentiments they are expressing belong to others or are ones they no longer hold (1981: 151).

Speakers and hearers may change the nature of their participation from moment to moment during an encounter. They may “laminate” one form of participation upon another (Goffman 1981: 154), as when the recipient of a drawn-out story at a party simultaneously listens to other conversations in the room. They may “embed” new forms of participation within ongoing formats, as when a speaker who is recounting an event shifts footing to animate the speech others produced during that event (149).

Goffman drew his insights about footing from recollected, often typified, observations of conversations and social encounters. Using a different methodological strategy, the close examination of recorded conversations, conversation analysts can produce more empirically-reliable, fine-grained analyses of how participants employ vocal and embodied resources to adopt different footings in actual interactions and thereby accomplish sophisticated interactional tasks and social actions. They analyze the ramifications of footing, and footing shifts, for ongoing sequences of action and in terms of how participants “build meaning and action in concert with each other through their mutual participation” in interaction (Goodwin 2007: 46). For example, conversation analysts have examined how speakers use footing to convey a neutral stance, mark/manage delicate matters, negotiate agency, and manage other interactional tasks in a range of everyday and institutional contexts (Clayman 1988, 2006; Gill 1998; Gill & Maynard 1995; Gill, Halkowski & Roberts 2001; Holt 1996; Hutchby 2019, Maynard, 1984: Ch. 3; Rossi & Zinken 2016).

In the extract below, from a primary care medical consultation recorded in the 1980’s (Gill, Halkowski & Roberts 2001), a patient employs footing shifts to raise the possibility that she could have contracted AIDS as a result of a blood transfusion earlier in the decade, and to hint that testing may be warranted. The patient is a 59-year-old woman with adult children. In lines 18 and 20-21, the patient raises the concern by attributing it to her children, reporting, “₤One uh thuh things that’s always worried my kids- ₤ .hh uh:: about that I (ws-) also had blood transfusions °when I had (.) thee hysterectomy.°” She thus positions her children as the principals of the sentiment. Simultaneously, the patient also distances herself from their concern by smiling and using smile voice, portraying herself as amused by it. Continuing, she employs another footing shift to broach the relevance of testing for AIDS. Indicating that her children authored words she is about to animate via reported speech (“°>An they said<° did you ever get tested for AIDS Didju ever get tested fe(h)r A(h)I(h)DS”, lines 24-25), the patient embeds a new scene within the current production format, one where she is both the current speaker and the designated recipient of her children’s ‘insistent’ questions about testing (note the repetition of the question, line 25). She adds another layer to this laminated participation structure by displaying an amused stance toward their questioning, via laugh tokens and various embodied behaviors (for details, see Gill, Halkowski & Roberts 2001: 64-65). Having used the footing shift to animate their question and position herself as its recipient, the patient has also provided herself with an interactional warrant to report her answer: “No:? I never got teste(h)d for AI::DS y(h)a kno:w,” (line 29).

[Migraine Trouble 13] (Gill, Halkowski & Roberts 2001: 63)

16  DOC:   .hh Alright uh- hu- let’s see- So:=uh >l:emme just
17         look-< (0.5)
18  PAT:   ₤One uh [thuh things that’s always worried] my kids-₤
19  DOC:           [look through some things here    ]
20  PAT:   .hh uh:: about that I (ws-) also had blood
21         transfusions °when I had (.) thee hysterec[tomy.°]
22  DOC:                                             [Mm hm?]
23  DOC:   Mm hm
24  PAT:   °>An they said<° did you ever get tested for AIDS
25         Didju ever get tested fe(h)r A(h)I(h)DS
26         y(h)a [kn(h)ow?] .hh
27  DOC:         [.hh     ]
28  DOC:   We[ll? ]
29  PAT:     [No:?] I never got teste(h)d for AI::DS [y(h)a] kno:w,
30  DOC:                                             [ptch ]

Through the use of footing shifts, the patient puts potentially actionable medical information on the table--she had blood transfusions in the 1980’s yet was never tested for AIDS--while treating it as a delicate matter, avoiding ownership of the concern and the interactional risks that attend such a stance. Given that she is a member of a group considered at low risk for HIV infection in the 1980’s, this might otherwise have been a difficult matter to raise with her physician, as she could be heard to be ‘out looking’ for a dramatic illness (Halkowski 2006) and requesting an unnecessary medical intervention.

Additional Related Entries:

Cited References:

Clayman, S. E. (2006). Footing in the achievement of neutrality. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings (pp. 163-198). Cambridge University Press.

Clayman, S. E. (1988). Displaying neutrality in television news interviews. Social Problems, 35(4), 474-92.

Gill, V. T. (1998). Doing attributions in medical interaction: Patients' explanations for illness and doctors' responses. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61(4), 342-360.

Gill, V. T., Halkowski, T. & Roberts, F. (2001). Accomplishing a request without making one: A single case analysis of a primary care visit. Text, 21(1/2), 55-81.

Gill, V. T., & Maynard, D. W. (1995). On 'labeling' in actual interaction: Delivering and receiving diagnoses of developmental disabilities. Social Problems, 42(1), 11-37.

Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Harvard University Press.

Goffman, E. (1979). Footing. Semiotica, 25(1-2), 1-30.

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Goodwin, C. (2007). Interactive footing. In Elizabeth Holt & Rebecca Clift (Eds.) Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction (pp. 16-46). Cambridge University Press.

Halkowski, T. (2006). Realizing the illness: Patients’ narratives of symptom discovery. In J. Heritage & D. W. Maynard (Eds.), Communication in Medical Care: Interaction Between Primary Care Physicians and Patients (pp. 86-114). Cambridge University Press.

Holt, E. (1996). Reporting on talk: The use of direct reported speech in conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29(3), 219-245.

Hutchby, I. (2019). Performed retelling: Self-enactment and the dramatisation of narrative on a television talk show. Journal of Pragmatics 149, 1-13.

Maynard, D. W. (1984). Inside Plea Bargaining: The Language of Negotiation. Plenum.

Rossi, G., & Zinken, J. (2016). Grammar and social agency: The pragmatics of impersonal deontic statements. Language, 92(4), 296-325.

Additional References:

Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. H. (2004). Participation. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 222-244). Blackwell.

Holt, E., & Clift, R. (2007). Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction. Cambridge University Press.

Levinson, S. C. (1988). Putting Linguistics on a proper footing: Explorations in Goffman’s participation framework. In P. Drew & A. Wootton (Eds.), Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order (pp. 161-227). Polity Press.

Sidnell, J. (2009). Participation. In S. D’hondt, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds), The Pragmatics of Interaction (pp. 125-156). John Benjamins.

Sidnell, J. (2022). Reframing 'footing'. In M H. Jacobsen & G. Smith (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Goffman Studies (pp. 131-142). Routledge.