Multimodal Analysis of Low-Stakes Conflicts: A Proposal for a Dynamic Model - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 260

prophylactic function of preventing conflicts and ensuring social action. Referring
to Emil Durkheim's conception of sacrum (the untouchable) in The Elementary
Forms of Religious Life ( 1915 ), Goffman affirms the thesis that everyday rituals have
the function of reintroducing sacrum into everyday life. In Durkheim's theory, the
sacrum represents the values of a group which are “embodied” in certain symbols
and behaviors ( rituals ), which express the values related to the dignity of a person—
his/her right to be respected, i.e., to be listened to and appreciated. Thus it can be
concluded that everyday sacrum presupposes a ritual order , which gives stability
to social encounters and helps to maintain social peace. The politeness system
constitutes an instrument for giving stability to the ritual order in a given society, that
is, to keep a ritual balance that expresses and maintains the cultural values which
are recognized as being essential.
In our model, we propose a dynamic conception of interactional (and ritual)
balance (Bonacchi 2013 : 97ff.), in which face needs and face expectations of both
interlocutors are correlated with other factors. Its dynamics lies in the possibility to
properly describe the action as a whole (in its temporal development on a temporal
axis) as well as in paying special attention to the interdependence of various factors
that we define according to our research needs.
The diagram below (Fig. 14.1 ) illustrates the core elements of interactional
balance: face needs and ritual expectations, the distribution of interactional space,
and the allocation of discoursive roles and positions in a given situational context
and within particular power relations. The dynamics of the notion of interactional
balance lies in the consideration that face needs grow throughout an interaction, they
are not static, but instead they condition each other and synchronically develop on
a temporal axis. The notion of interactional balance allows researchers to capture
the way interlocutors create their faces and the expectations they have towards each
other in terms of interdependence. They share a distributed responsibility (Jacoby
and Ochs 1995 : 177) for the success of the interaction, a notion according to which
it is not possible to identify a clear “fault” for a conflictive situation, but always a
correlation of hardly reconcilable communicative and interactional goals.
In this sense, our point of view is a systemic one (Simon 2010 ): we consider
the relationship between interlocutors as well as that between interlocutors and
the background (the environment of the interlocutors) as a system, which includes
interactants, interactional frame, context, etc. Interactants act simultaneously: they
co-construct the interaction in a certain given field of reciprocal dependencies.
In a communicative interaction, each interactant has communicative goals
(what meanings he/she wants to convey and how) and interactional goals (how
he/she defines and constructs his/her relationship to the other in the common
communicative space). For our purposes we define conflict 3

as a dynamic process

3 In scientific literature there are many definitions of conflicts which are compatible with our point
of view. Mack and Snyder ( 1973 ) define a conflict as a temporal disjunction in the flow of an
interaction. They define the following characteristics of conflictive situations: Conflicts involve at
least two people (parties) and are a consequence of the position somebody is in and/or a shortage
of resources. A conflictive situation is aimed at destroying, harming, frustrating, or controlling the