"No, We're Not Playing Families": Membership Categorization in Children's Play

Abstract

In this article, we use Sacks's (1992) work on membership categorization in children's play and games as an analytic basis for examining the organization of play sequences between 6- and 7-year-old children. We collected and examined around 33 hr of audio-recorded interactions between children in the school playground. We discuss how the children used membership categorization devices and their associated rules and applications to organize social action in a range of play activities. Membership in a game was achieved through the mapping of children to the category-sets of players. The consistency rule and the notion of programmatic relevance were central operative features in the organization of the children's games. Mapping occurred recurrently in the children's play, for example, on initiating a new play sequence or when incorporating a newplayer into an established activity. The sequential and categorical organization of play involves the situated use of cultural resources to produce nuanced and creative versions of the world. In this article, we contribute to understandings of children's communicative competencies and the situated production of their cultural and social worlds in their talk in interaction.