Membership Categorisation Analysis Research Papers (original) (raw)

In this article, I analyze the religiosity of Bompietro of Bologna as reported in the register of the inquisition of Bologna, 1291-1310. I attempt to show that Bompietro’s religiosity was above all practical; its doctrinal content seems... more

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- Inquisition, Heresy, Catharism, Heresy and Inquisition

Tato kapitola se zaměřuje na první osobu množného čísla a jiná kolektivní označení, kterými odkazujeme k různým sociálním skupinám a kategoriím. K čemu vlastně zájmena v plurálu a kolektiv-ní označení referují? Co zakládají, reprodukují a implikují? Jak je lidé v praxi používají? Podíváme se, jakými směry se můžeme při hledání odpovědí na podobné otázky ubírat. Oblast svého zájmu zúžíme prostřednictvím pojmu identity (zejména tzv. kolektivní identity), který patří mezi nejrozšířenější způsoby, jak se v současnosti sociologové (ale nejen oni) snaží problematiku reflektované skupinové příslušnosti uchopit a konceptualizovat.

- by Jakub Mlynář
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- Sociology, Pronouns, Membership Categorisation Analysis, Collective Identity

The article examines the various ways in which 'solidarity' is invoked and signified through narrative and categorial devices in a political debate following the UK's vote to leave the EU in 2016. Analysing a floor debate in the European Parliament concerning a white paper released by the European Commission on the future of the EU held in March 2017, we investigate how politicians deploy references to 'solidarity' in service of different political agendas. Our research highlights the strategic use of 'core' values in political debate through the way different speakers appeal to 'solidarity' as a selfevident positive value within the EU, but which is then mobilised through different relevant actors and scenarios to argue contrastive political positions. Our analysis demonstrates how narrative positioning and categorybound normative expectations are harnessed to serve the aims of political persuasion by "populating" a shared principle of governance with purposeful sets of identities and interrelations.

Καταγράφονται και αναλύονται διεξοδικά, μέσα από το εθνομεθοδολογικό πλαίσιο της Ανάλυσης Συμμετοχικής Κατηγοριοποίησης/Ανάλυσης της Συνομιλίας, δημόσιες επιτελέσεις και αποδόσεις φύλου οι οποίες (ανα)παράγουν την καθημερινή σεξιστική απαξίωση των γυναικών –με γνωστούς αλλά και με νέους τρόπους, και με τα ανάλογα στερεοτυπικά κατηγορήματα–, τεκμηριώνοντας ότι η συνεχιζόμενη, πατριαρχική, έμφυλη κατηγοριοποίηση διεκπεραιώνεται, νομιμοποιείται και ανατρέπεται με κοινωνικές πρακτικές.

- by Marianthi Makri-Tsilipakou
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- Sexuality, Ethnomethodology, Greek, Membership Categorisation Analysis

This article examines how a group of Tanzanian journalists co-construct their identities as members of the same culture by producing talk that aligns them with several shared membership categories (Sacks 1972, 1979, 1992). The speakers propose and subsequently reaffirm, resist, or transform the categories ‘Westernized’ and ‘ethnically marked’ in order to align or realign themselves as co-members of the same group of white collar workers. In the first excerpt, the participants critique Tanzanian youth who dress like rap singers, providing turn-by-turn slots for co-affiliation, thereby establishing an intercultural difference between themselves and their fellow Tanzanians who adopt Western ways uncritically. In this excerpt, the participants employ interculturality for affiliative positioning by drawing a boundary between themselves and those Tanzanians whom they identify as ‘outsiders’ through their talk. The disjunction between the two groups is accomplished through codeswitching, shared humor, and pronoun usage. The second excerpt demonstrates how the recently-established shared insider identity is re-analyzed by the group when one of the participants in the office is constructed as uncooperative, and his ethnicity is named as the source of his inability to work with his colleagues in a suitable manner. Thus, his status as an ‘outsider’ becomes made real through explicit categorization of him as a non-member due to the interculturality of ethnic difference. This participant resists the ethnification (Day 1998) he receives, however, and through this resistance, he succeeds in reintegrating himself into the group. This reintegration is accomplished through affiliative language structures including codeswitching, teasing, and the nomination of new shared categories by the ethnified participant. My analysis provides further documentation that interculturality is a continuously dynamic production of identities-in-practice (Antaki and Widdicombe 1998), rather than a consequence of fixed social characteristics.

- by Pascal Delwit
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- European History, Political Sociology, European Studies, Comparative Politics

Οι αντιλήψεις των παιδιών σχετικά με την ταυτότητα του φύλου τους επηρεάζονται από τα πρότυπα που υπάρχουν στα πλαίσια ανάπτυξής τους, όπως είναι η οικογένεια, το σχολείο, το φιλικό τους περιβάλλον και τα Μέσα Μαζικής Επικοινωνίας. Τα κείμενα μαζικής κουλτούρας που απευθύνονται σε παιδιά μέσω των Μέσων Μαζικής Επικοινωνίας ασκούν ισχυρή επιρροή στην ανάπτυξη της ταυτότητας του φύλου τους. Καθώς πρωταγωνιστής σε αυτό το είδος κειμένων μαζικής κουλτούρας είναι οι ταινίες της εταιρείας Disney, η κοινωνιογλωσσική μελέτη τους καθίσταται καίριας σημασίας. Σκοπός της παρούσας έρευνας είναι η διερεύνηση, η ανάλυση και η συγκριτική μελέτη των κοινωνιογλωσσικών αναπαραστάσεων της ταυτότητας του φύλου ή αλλιώς της έμφυλης ταυτότητας σε κείμενα μαζικής κουλτούρας που απευθύνονται σε παιδιά. Το δείγμα της μελέτης είναι η ταινία κινουμένων σχεδίων «Η Πεντάμορφη και το Τέρας» (1991) και η ταινία ζωντανής δράσης «Η Πεντάμορφη και το Τέρας» (2017), καθώς πρόκειται για δύο διαφορετικές κινηματογραφικές εκδοχές του ίδιου παραμυθιού από την ίδια εταιρεία παραγωγής ταινιών, την εταιρεία Disney, οι οποίες απευθύνονται σε παιδιά και απέχουν χρονικά μεταξύ τους 26 έτη, επιτρέποντας τη διερεύνηση των αλλαγών στις κοινωνιογλωσσικές αναπαραστάσεις της έμφυλης ταυτότητας των αρσενικών και των θηλυκών μυθοπλαστικών τους χαρακτήρων με το πέρασμα του χρόνου. Η έρευνα ακολούθησε ποιοτικό ερευνητικό σχεδιασμό, και συγκεκριμένα εθνογραφικό σχεδιασμό και μελέτη περίπτωσης με ποιοτική περιγραφική ανάλυση περιεχομένου, συνδυάζοντας τις θεωρητικές αρχές της Κριτικής Ανάλυσης Λόγου, της Ανάλυσης Συνομιλίας και της Εθνομεθοδολογικής Ανάλυσης.
Τα αποτελέσματα της ανάλυσης έδειξαν ότι και οι δύο ταινίες αναπαράγουν και τα παραδοσιακά και τα σύγχρονα έμφυλα πρότυπα μέσω των κοινωνιογλωσσικών αναπαραστάσεων της έμφυλης ταυτότητας των αρσενικών και των θηλυκών μυθοπλαστικών χαρακτήρων τους, με μια τάση προς αναπαραγωγή περισσότερων σύγχρονων έμφυλων προτύπων από τον θηλυκό μυθοπλαστικό χαρακτήρα της νεότερης ταινίας και περισσότερων παραδοσιακών έμφυλων προτύπων από τους αρσενικούς μυθοπλαστικούς χαρακτήρες της παλαιότερης, αλλά και της νεότερης ταινίας. Επιπλέον, παρατηρήθηκε μια πολύ πιο σύγχρονη κοινωνιογλωσσική απεικόνιση της έμφυλης ταυτότητας του συνόλου των μυθοπλαστικών χαρακτήρων στη νεότερη ταινία παρά την ύπαρξη των παραδοσιακών έμφυλων στερεοτύπων. Ένα ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρον εύρημα της ανάλυσης υπήρξε η διαφοροποίηση των κοινωνιογλωσσικών αναπαραστάσεων της έμφυλης ταυτότητας των μυθοπλαστικών χαρακτήρων μεταξύ της πρωτότυπης αγγλικής εκδοχής και της ελληνικής μεταγλώττισης των δύο ταινιών, με μια τάση προς την πιο στερεοτυπική απεικόνιση της έμφυλης ταυτότητας των αρσενικών μυθοπλαστικών χαρακτήρων της ελληνικής μεταγλώττισης και στις δύο ταινίες, αλλά και μια τάση προς την πιο σύγχρονη απεικόνιση της έμφυλης ταυτότητας του θηλυκού μυθοπλαστικού χαρακτήρα της ελληνικής μεταγλώττισης και στις δύο ταινίες. Τα αποτελέσματα μιας τέτοιας διερεύνησης θα μπορούσαν να εφαρμοστούν μελλοντικά σε εκπαιδευτικά προγράμματα κριτικού γραμματισμού.

Membership categorisation analysis (MCA) is a qualitative sociological approach which studies membership categorisation practices—how social members achieve, use, and orient to membership categories in the process of performing some social action. Using a range of data including texts, talk-in-interaction, and video recordings, the approach focuses on unpacking members’ routine categorisation practices in everyday and institutional contexts. The approach provides qualitative researchers with a rigorous and data-led perspective to examine the way membership categorisation practices are used to achieve social actions in the contexts of their use. Through its commitment to naturalistic data, grounded observations, and flexibility in scope, MCA is able to also contribute to other disciplines, such as linguistics, sociology, psychology, management studies, communication, cultural studies, politics and political media, gender studies, and social ...

- by Au-Yeung S . H . Terry and +1
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- Language and Social Interaction, Conversation Analysis, Qualitative methodology, Qualitative Methods

The traditional conceptualization of identity as an inherent ‘essence’ has been challenged by contemporary theoretical paradigms that view it as an interactional achievement. Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis as combined with Membership Categorization Analysis provide the quintessential emic framework to the exploration of the in situ production, attribution and perception of identity as instanced in community members’ exploitation of the sequential structure of talk and employment of membership categories and category-bound predicates. The analysis of authentic data will foreground the relevant processes, which are accountably displayed by the participants themselves in their daily interactions, as constitutive of social order as a moral order. In this sense, they will also, inevitably, offer a view of Greek ‘culture’ in terms of the current categorial predication/construction of gender, sexuality, age, public life, politics, ideology, etc.

- by Marianthi Makri-Tsilipakou
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- Conversation Analysis, Ideology, Gender, Predication

This book is devoted to the re-introduction of the remarkably original approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. We intend the volume as an incitement to experts to return to the original lectures of Sacks with fresh eyes, and a provocation for those unfamiliar to read Sacks for the first time. Sacks’ remarkable analyses offer a means of doing sociology that provides for highly technical, detailed, and yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language, culture, meaning, knowledge, action, and social organisation. The influence of Sacks’ work has not been widespread: something we aim to address with this collection. Yet certain areas of sociology, human geography, communication and media studies, psychology, and linguistics have been re-oriented to the sorts of analyses that are possible by starting with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction; details that are discoverable, rather than contrived or modelled in and through social scientific theory, as they are actually produced, used, and accomplished by members engaged in actual activities. In this collection, scholars working in a range of different fields and with ranging interests, outline the ways in which their work has been inspired and influenced shaped by Sacks’ approach, and how their current research is taking those insights forward in new directions. As such, it provides both an introduction to, and an exploration of, the work and influence of Harvey Sacks.

Despite Harvey Sacks' death over 40 years ago, his work continues to be a major influence gaining ever more attention across the social sciences. Although he published relatively few papers during his lifetime, Sacks' work was central to the establishment and continued development of a number of major research approaches. While his published work continues to provide a rich resource for contemporary research there remains much within his published lectures which has not received attention, even less attention has been given to his archive. However, Sacks' published lectures and archive provide, not only a fascinating window into the early development of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, they also provide a valuable point of reflection for contemporary research and disciplinary debates. While the lectures and archive remain of historical interest the focus of this paper is not so much on these as historical artifacts but in how these resources provide a timely contribution to contemporary methodological challenges in the face of new forms of data and phenomena across the social sciences. In drawing on his lectures and archive the discussion focuses on Sacks as an imaginative, innovative and wide-ranging methodologist-inaction interested in the study of social life, wherever that could be captured.

"This paper focuses on how self-presentation practices in a round table are treated by participants as a context within which they orient their actions. In this framework, identity is inseparable from speech practices, patterns of self-presentation constitute the speech event “round table”, a reflexive link
is possible between identity, context and social practices. Data are drawn from a fieldwork conducted in an association of futur and actual gay and
lesbian parents. "

- by luca greco
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- Self and Identity, Conversation Analysis, Gender and Sexuality, Social Categorization

(Unpublished doctoral thesis) The importance of the topic of linguistic diversity is more patent than ever when considering within the framework of the increasing numbers of newly arrived students to the Catalonian schools. Considering teachers' perspectives about linguistic diversity is especially relevant if taken into account within a theoretical framework which considers linguistic diversity an important tool for the acquisition of further languages. This doctoral thesis, "Linguistic Diversity: A Qualitative Analysis of Foreign Language Teachers' Category Assembly" presented by Melinda Dooly Owenby on the 25 April and directed by Dr. Luci Nussbaum, studies foreign language teachers' perspectives towards students whose language is different from the school's vehicular language.
The research was carried out through a qualitative analysis of the way in which both inservice and preservice teachers constructed categories during conversations about linguistic diversity. The principal questions of the research were the following:
- Question: Are there any predominant categorizations of linguistic and cultural diversity in the interactions between groups of preservice and inservice teachers and if so, which ones?
- Question: Are there any significant differences in their categorizations of linguistic and cultural diversity between preservice and inservice teachers and if so, which ones?
- Question: With preservice teachers, does it make a difference if they have participated in international and intercultural projects, exchanges or experiences, compared to the attitudes of preservice teachers who have not?
- Question: Is there indication of evolution in the category assemblies over the course of the research?
The theoretical part of the research discusses some previous studies on cognitive schemes and how they affect teacher behaviour and subsequent expectations in the classroom. It also introduces the rationale for the Baktinian, dialogic approach taken in the research and explains how it fits with the ethnomethodological understanding of categorizations, stemming from a common "stock of social knowledge". The chapter also discusses the reasons behind taking a qualitative approach rather than a quantitative one and provides a literature review of teacher expectations because categorization concerning teacher expectations is a key issue in the research. The text then goes into further detail about how I adapted Sacks' Membership Categorization Analysis as a principal part of the research approach. It explains what MCA is and how it can be applied to the research, as well as providing some definitions and examples of the more technical aspects of MCA.
Next, the text looks at the topic of diversity, which is the principal focus of the analysis and how conversation participants often categorize the "other" according to features of diversity. Reflective teaching and language awareness is considered since it provides the main focus of the proposals made in this research, based on the results of the category analysis. I also provide a theoretical background of the approach taken as well as a practical outline of its application to the research.
The analysis itself consists of a qualitative conversation analysis of over 100 extracts taken from approximately 25 hours of recordings of three groups, one inservice and two preservice groups, all of whom are discussing linguistic and cultural diversity. The extracts were selected according to the frequency of the category mentioned (e.g. linguistic diversity categorized as a problem) and how the actual category was constructed (the negotiation of the category, attenuating features, common background knowledge which was visibly accessed, etc.). This is followed by a closer examination of some of the categories, particularly looking at differences in the way in the positive and negative category were assembled by the preservice groups and the inservice teachers.

Researchers in ethnomethodology have found that accounts of action are not identical to actions themselves. This investigation uses video technology to examine the enactment of membership, distinct from the description of membership. This paper takes up this line of inquiry by examining the way in which in situations of team training, in the sport of powerlifting coming together for seeing-the-lift, gazing on a lifter for an extended period, is an affiliative act. Using video data from several different team training settings, in conjunction with Instagram posts, and drawing on the authors' ethnography and experience in strength training settings, this paper demonstrates that the differing organization of accountabilities in seeing-the-lift highlight that in team settings watching exercise is a collective matter of membership in the team. Thereby this article highlights a practice of embodied action which enacts membership roles in a powerlifting setting.

- by Edward Reynolds
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- Ethnomethodology, Membership Categorisation Analysis, Powerlifting

Introduction
This book is about an ethnomethodological approach to the study of talk-in-interaction that is gaining wider popularity and interest from across the social sciences. Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) refers to the study of the range of prac- tices that members of a given speech community deploy alongside complementary and aligned ethnomethods in the routine accomplishment of everyday social interaction. A core principle here is the anthropological notion of membership and its relationship to the categories of culture and society that form the stock in trade for the routine accom- plishment and co-ordination of social life. Categories are central to social life and experience and an empirical understanding of their actual use in real-time at the situ- ated and granular level can generate insights into a wide spectrum of social behaviours and problems. This book draws from the pioneering work of Harvey Sacks and his concern with membership categorisation (in addition to other aligned forms of conver- sational practice) and the wide range of rich and fecund studies that have followed. Many of these studies have explored the relationship between membership categorisa- tion practices, language and identity in a variety of settings and through the study of a diverse set of activities. Of course membership categorisation practices are more than the study of identities and identity work-in-action but this is a convenient place to begin our journey. Identity matters have been and continue to be an important site for sociological and related inquiry; not least because they represent a field through which individual and collective life intersect.

"ABSTRACT: Within conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis, the warrant for any instance of analytic interest is always the demonstrable relevance and consequentiality of the phenomena to the interactants. Demonstrating participants’ orientations to social structural contexts poses methodological difficulties, as such orientations are often fragmentary, which weakens the possibility of exploring social structural features as omnipresent and influencing the
understandings and actions of participants. In this paper, we revisit Sacks’s (1995) discussion of omnirelevance, in order to explore the possibility of approaching context within a multilayering of categorical relevances. We argue that, within the layering of membership devices in an episode of interaction, there is an analytically observable orientation to an omnirelevant device. This omnirelevant device operates as background to the occasioned topic devices as a kind of ‘default’ orientation that organises the participation context. The analysis draws upon a transcript of an (ordinary) conversation in which various touched-off topics generate interactional and membership devices. While these devices are seen to organise the topic at hand, there are occasions where topic talk is suspended and a different membership device is oriented to. The omnirelevant device reveals itself through the cracks, joints, and articulation of touched off-topic devices, suggesting a layering and hierarchy of membership devices. By exploring the notion of omnirelevant devices within interaction as part of a layering of topical membership devices, this paper argues for the possibility of exploring a wider participant orientation within interaction and the warrant to analytically invoke a backgrounded organisational device."

During the course of this article the themes of public accountability, government policy, and interaction in media settings are examined. In particular, we examine empirical instances of media discourse as a means of exploring the use of identity categories, pre- dicates, and configurations as a means of accomplishing policy debate in participatory frameworks such as radio phone-ins and the accountable frames of political interviews. This paper respecifies and explores the situated character of media settings as a means of documenting, describing, and illustrating the interactional methods associated with policy debate, public participation/representation, and democracy-in-action.

This paper examines the way the host of a UK day time television talk show, The JeremyKyleShow, generates entertainment through framing guests’ stories using membership categories and category-based moral evaluations. The analysis draws upon Membership Categorisation Analysis, and in particular Sacks’s(1995) discussion of categorial inferencing and category norms,to examine the way the host overlays individuals with membership categories and category-based actions. Moreover, this category work then provides for subsequent normative reasoning and moral judgements to be made for the overhearing audience. In summary the analysis demonstrates the way the show operates through making individuals and their actions morally accountable for the overhearing audience through routine categorisation work and related norms of behaviour.

Over the past 30 years, studies of culture have become increasingly prominent - some would say dominant (see, e.g., Alexander, Jacobs & Smith 2015) - within and across social science and arts and humanities disciplines in Europe and North America. Although largely unacknowledged, work in EMCA prefigured, acted as a driver for and continues to offer unique insights into culture-in-action , part of this resurgent field's central concerns. If one of the foundational insights guiding contemporary studies of culture is Clifford Geertz's dictum that humans are animals suspended in webs of meaning they themselves have spun (ibid.), EMCA could be viewed as an attempt to look in detail at how the work of spinning is actually accomplished - a domain of methodic practices, "practices that display culture-in-action" (Housley & Fitzgerald 2009: 346), the new studies of culture continue to overlook. Making that domain of practices a topic of inquiry represents one of the enduring contributions of EMCA to understandings of culture "from within" (Garfinkel 1967: 76-77; Sacks 1992: I 21, 26). Nonetheless, while EMCA is interested in "culture as method" (Eglin 1980), that interest is not monolithic. Culture as method and practice was a focus in the work of Garfinkel, Sacks and their collaborators but in importantly different ways. Subsequent waves of researchers have taken up, pursued and built on but also modified the insights of Garfinkel, Sacks and others in light of their studies, taking the study of culture in EMCA in new directions as a result. Studies of culture-inaction in EMCA have thus developed distinctive strands and this panel reflects on the diversity of that work, the contributions made across it and what it might offer to researchers beyond EMCA. Bringing together researchers from different areas, it explores culture as method and practice as variously taken up in EMCA, what we learn from this family of studies and how the study of culture-inaction might develop in EMCA from here. The first session provides an overview of culture-in-action/culture-as-action in EMCA, examining culture in the work of Garfinkel and Sacks, the everyday logic of cultural practices and the relevance of contemporary EMCA work on culture to studies of language, practice and organisation today, (re)opening dialogues with, inter alia, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and cultural studies in the process. The second session examines specific cultures-of-action and what we learn from them, demonstrating the richness of contemporary EMCA studies through analyses of cultures of gameplay, air travel and practical political work as well as what might be termed procedural cultures.

- by Michael Mair
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- Cultural Sociology, Conversation Analysis, Culture, Ethnomethodology

The aim of this research is to examine the lived work of a radio broadcast. Within this two main aims are undertaken: the first methodological the second analytic. The methodological discussion takes the form of a critical examination of conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis as separate methods for analysing members interaction. It is argued that, rather than any one method being applied to the exclusion of others, the analysis of members' methods should be able to demonstrate a sensitivity to ...

In this article, we examine the extent to which membership categorization analysis (MCA) can inform an understanding of reasoning within the public domain where morality, policy and cultural politics are visible (Smith and Tatalovich, 2003). Through the examination of three examples, we demonstrate how specific types of category device(s) are a ubiquitous feature of accountable practice in the public domain where morality matters and public policy intersect. Furthermore, we argue that MCA provides a method for analysing the mundane mechanics associated with everyday cultural politics and democratic accountability assembled and presented within news media and broadcast settings

How teachers and students work together through discourse to construct their understanding of the context they live and work in will influence, in many different ways, the interaction within their classrooms. This book describes an indepth research that used ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to study three different groups of teachers. The study highlights
the teachers’ perspectives concerning heterogeneity
in the classroom, using recordings of discussions concerning cultural and linguistic diversity.
Moreover, this research examines the discourse participants’ choice in the use (deployment) of categorical descriptions and reveals the speaker as positioned, interested and accountable for meaning construction. Thus, “portraits” of differing preservice and inservice teachers’ orientation towards linguistic and cultural diversity are analysed. By recognising these categorizations as partially bounded by previous knowledge and partially constructed in situ, the research
sees meaning-making by teachers as a part of their lived work of teaching. It also reveals the social nature of these categorizations because they are an inseparable element of the socially constituted fabric of language in the environment of schooling and society.

One challenge for conversation analytic research on identity is to demonstrate that and how identities are made relevant and consequential for the participants of an interaction. Drawing on Harvey Sacks's work on membership categorization and conversation analytic methods, the aim of this paper is to explore the ‘reflexive codetermination’ (Schegloff, 2007a) of membership and social action—how participants make sense of particular actions through an orientation to locally relevant membership categories, and how category membership is invoked in the enactment of particular social actions. Using video-recordings of a meal shared by a young child, his parents, and his grandparents, the paper examines how identities are made operative in and through the moment-by-moment organization of specific sequences of action. The analysis examines how participants oriented to membership within stage-of-life and family categories, and as guests and hosts, and shows how the relevance of these memberships was enacted through, and consequential for, phenomena such as turn design, turn-taking organization and embodied action. In demonstrating how the relevance and consequentiality of a particular identity can shift over the course of a sequence the paper engages with analytic problems involved in research on identity—particularly with respect to the operation of social structural identities (such as child) when contextually bound identities (such as guest) are also potentially relevant and consequential.

A sociology of crime, second edition, by Stephen Hester and Peter Eglin, Abingdon, New York, Routledge, 2017

The number of adolescent children accompanying their immigrant parents to Canada has steadily increased since the 1990s. Much of the applied linguistics literature on these so called “Generation 1.5” youth (Rumbaut & Ima, 1987; Harklau, et al., 1999) has focused on their deficiencies as academic writers in US Rhetoric and Composition and ESL contexts in higher education (Harklau, Losey, & Siegal, 1999; Harklau, 1999; 2000) and the stigma of ESL in US K-12 contexts (Talmy, 2009). However, the literature on Generation 1.5 students and identity in Canadian higher education is limited (Kim & Duff, 2012; Marshall, 2010; Mossman, 2012, 2013). This qualitative study investigates the processes of identity construction of eleven Generation 1.5 students studying at a university in Metro Vancouver to find out what types of identities and representations of self and other they make relevant, the meanings they attribute to their identities, and what motivates them to construct these identities. In analyzing the accounts and experiences of the participants in interviews, focus groups, and texts and as “culture-in-action” (Hester & Eglin, 1997), I posit that they constructed identities as social categories associated with the languages and social practices of their countries of birth, in liminal spaces among a continuum between Canada and their countries of birth, and a spectrum of related cultural representations. Ideas and beliefs associated with broader “macro” social structures in Canadian society related to language, culture, legitimacy, immigration, power, distinction, and racism were shown to be transcended in and through their representations of themselves and others. Data suggest that moving to Canada caused participants to experience discontinuities between their cultures, languages, and social practices (Kim & Duff, 2012), and in some cases a conflicting sense of self. The study brings implications for finding ways to understand the complexity of immigrant students, avoid reifying and generalizing about them, and not see them as stuck-in-between or lacking.

Cette année, le séminaire vise à donner un aperçu assez complet des différentes méthodes d’enquête qui se sont développées au sein de l’ethnométhodologie, sous l’impulsion initiale de ses fondateurs : Harold Garfinkel et Harvey Sacks. L’orientation propre à ce courant de recherches est largement redevable à Garfinkel : sa découverte d’une voie négligée de la pensée de Durkheim, qui considère l’objectivité des faits sociaux comme le phénomène fondamental de la sociologie, a donné corps à l’ethnométhodologie en tant que telle. Sacks, quant à lui, à partir de l’analyse de la catégorisation et l’analyse conversationnelle qu’il a initiées, a introduit des dispositifs permettant l’analyse rigoureuse des phénomènes qui sont au cœur de l’analyse sociologique, à savoir l’action sociale et l’ordre social, dès lors qu’ils sont appréhendés dans leur milieu d'occurrence naturel, à partir des activités de la vie courante de ses membres et comme un produit de celles-ci.
Chaque séance de ce séminaire est conçue comme une porte d’entrée à l’approche ethnométhodologique, c’est-à-dire à l’examen des méthodes empiriques et culturelles par lesquelles les membres d’une société font précisément société. Au fil de l’année, nous aborderons en détail quelques-unes des principales procédures qui sont au cœur du programme ethnométhodologique : la respécification, l’analyse des catégorisations d’appartenance, l’analyse conversationnelle, l’analyse du raisonnement. En articulant un travail de lecture de textes fondateurs à la présentation de recherches en cours, le séminaire voudrait se constituer à la fois comme un espace de formation à l’ethnométhodologie et d’introduction à ses différents courants, et comme un espace de discussion visant à identifier la place de l’ethnométhodologie dans le paysage des sciences sociales aujourd’hui.

In this essay, I discuss one direction for developing a systematic, data-grounded analysis of categories in talk-in-interaction. This framework is developed around two main analytical foci. The first examines how the participants themselves work to publicly associate some set of normatively and morally accountable actions, rights, obligations, entitlements, attributes, etc. (i.e., category-bound predicates; see, e.g., Jayyusi 1984; Sacks 1972a, 1972b, 1979, 1992; Watson 1978) to the various turn- and sequence-generated categories built up by their actions-in-talk, and to explicit categorial formulations (i.e., labels, metonyms, descriptions, etc.) and their indexers. The second is concerned with how the participants recognizably and relevantly accomplish the sequential organization and turn by turn management of their categorization work. The notions of rhetorical (see Edwards 1991, 1997, 1998), conditional (Schegloff 1968, 1972), and retro-relevance (see Schegloff 2007a on ‘retro-sequences’), along with response priority (Bilmes 1993, 1995; see also Bilmes 1988) are introduced as sequential analytical tools for developing a systematic, data-based analysis of these practices.
Keywords: Categories in talk; Sequence; Relevance; Conversation analysis; Membership categorization analysis.

Research in Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) has illustrated a wide and varied use of activities, rights and obligations, variously related to categories and mem- bership devices (Hester and Eglin, 1992b; Jayyusi, 1984). As discussed in the Introduction to this volume, while these were initially described by Sacks (1974) as ‘category bound activities’ and later developed by Watson (1983) as ‘category bound predicates’, little recent attention has been paid to the subtle differences in the ways cat- egory features (rights, knowledge, activities, etc.) are deployed. While the term ‘category bound predicate’ has proven immensely useful it has also tended to serve as a catch-all term for all relationships between category features and categories, obscuring the action involved in the use of this category resource. In this chapter we touch off from Sacks’s initial discussion of predicates introduced in the Introduction to this volume and subsequent discussions to explore this relationship further by developing levels of sophistication to understanding the relationship between membership categories and locally invoked associated features. In this instance we examine the way in which par- ticipants engaged in a number of public arguments orient to three distinct differences in the types of relationship between categories and category features.

Drawing on linguistic ethnography, narrative analysis and membership categorization analysis, this paper investigates the media practitioners' relationship with vicarious experiences throughout the making of a television news story. From the selection of the topic in the morning editorial meetings to the joint construction of the final report by a journalist and a cutter, the paper explores how others' experiences are mediated by various semiotic means. On the one hand, it investigates how others' experiences circulate through a news-making production process, which impacts on their mediatization. On the other hand, it analyses how the media practitioners' relationship with others' experiences relates to different modes of mediation: talk and text mediations as well as footage mediation. By doing so, the paper shifts from a point of view that focuses on the narrative of vicarious experience as the retelling of other people's stories to a perspective that looks at the narrative of vicarious experience as the multimodal and embodied practice of recounting others' experiences from verbal depictions, embodiments and technological captures of what happened and what was lived.

- by Gilles Merminod and +1
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- Discourse Analysis, Languages and Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Anthropology