“Participation framework.” When a word is spoken, all those who happen to be in perceptual range of the event will have some sort of participation status relative to it. The codification of these various positions and the normative specification of appropriate conduct within each provide an essential background for interaction analysis-whether (I presume) in our own society or any other.

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. A change in our footing is another way of talking about a change in our frame of events.… Participants over the course of their speaking constantly change their footing, these changes being a persistent feature of natural talk.

The method consists of treating an actual appearance as “the document of,” as “pointing to,” as “standing on behalf of” a pre-supposed underlying pattern. Not only is the underlying pattern derived from its individual documentary evidences, but the individual documentary evidences, in their turn, are interpreted on the basis of “what is known” about the underlying pattern. Each is used to elaborate the other.