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Category: Other

Description: 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).