Institutional Roles as Interactional Achievements

Abstract

Drawing on the theory and methods of conversation analysis, this study examines the role of participant knowledge in the collaborative construction of institutional roles and identities. Data are taken from the coverage of Mexico’s three matches in the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer tournament, as televised on the US-based, Spanish-language network Galavisión. The chapter focuses on the practices through which the play-by-play or main commentator, and the analyst or color commentator, interactionally negotiate their respective domains of expertise, and thus their respective roles as distinct sorts of commentators. The analysis begins by considering cases in which comparatively more overt categorization devices are used to explicitly ascribe or claim institutionally relevant roles, which is done in the service of accounting for rights to knowledge. We then use research on epistemics and response design to illustrate some of the more subtle practices through which territories of knowledge and experience can be claimed, contested, and defended in and through the details of talk. The analysis therefore links epistemic domains (including the rights and responsibilities associated with those domains) with institutional roles and identities, and it underscores that these all must be interactionally managed in the immediacy of moment-by-moment conduct.