control of the actors. Every utterance and its hearing bear the
marks of the framework of participation in which the uttering
and hearing occur. All these markings we can openly mimic,
mime, and reenact, allowing us dramatic liberties. Thus, when we
speak we can set into the current framework of participation
what is structurally marked as integral to another, enacting a
dozen voices to do so. (For example, in describing a conversation,
we, as speaker, can enact what had been our unstated response
as listener.)

In what follows, then, I make no large literary claim that
social life is but a stage, only a small technical one: that deeply
incorporated into the nature of talk are the fundamental require-
ments of theatricality.

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