Membership Categorization Analysis Research Articles

The Interactional Organisation of Co-Teaching in Language Educational Settings: The Case of Mandarin Language Teaching in Scotland

ABSTRACT Co-teaching is a common feature of language education in schools. It usually involves two adults holding different sets of expertise and working jointly with the same group of learners. Despite the prevalence of co-teaching in language educational settings, little is known as to how co-teaching is organised and negotiated in classroom talk. Drawing on Membership Categorisation Analysis, this paper aims to shed light on the interactional organisation of co-teaching in language educational settings. To do so, we differentiate the institutional label of “classroom teacher” from the practical social identity of “teacher-hood” and investigate who, in a co-teaching setting, performs “teacher-hood” (or in other words, who is “doing being” the teacher). We take the case of a Chinese student volunteer who teaches Mandarin alongside a classroom teacher in a Scottish primary school and present a series of ethnographic vignettes where the teacher and the student volunteer find multiple and creative ways of negotiating “teacher-hood.”

Ethnomethodological conversation analysis and the study of assemblages.

The material turn has challenged traditional social scientific and humanistic research approaches. Both individual and community are rejected as a starting point for theorizing what is going on in societies and cultures. In fact, all dichotomies are deemed suspect, and the research focus draws heavily on actual practices. The concept heterogeneous assemblage is used in at least two strands of the material turn with slightly different takes on the entangled nature of practices. These are actor-network theory, ANT (cf. STS, e.g., Callon, Latour, Law) and new materialism(s) (cf. process philosophy, e.g., Deleuze, Guattari). Both can be placed under the umbrella term sociomaterialism. In their analysis of concrete phenomena, Deleuzian assemblages tend to focus on embodied sensations (affect) that have rhizomatic threads of connection, whereas ANT's assemblages include how heterogeneous entities (actants) stabilize certain practices. With a revised understanding of how the world works (ontology), the usefulness of traditional research methods (epistemology) to study concrete phenomena has also been questioned. Margaret Wetherell has suggested that affect assemblages can be analyzed as observable social practices, giving an EMCA-based study as an illustrative example. The question is whether both new materialist intensities (cf. certain approaches in psychology) and ANT's connections to other people, places, and practices (e.g., in organization studies) could be analyzed with an EMCA approach. This paper acknowledges the existing possibilities EMCA offers to analyze heterogeneous assemblages as situated interactional and material entanglements and enlarges the repertoire by focusing on 1) how the material specifics can make the EMCA "why that now" analysis connect to larger assemblages than the local accomplishment of action, and 2) how observable orientations to phenomena outside of the situation can be treated as an assemblic activity. It will do this with 1) Goodwin's concept lamination that enlarges the strictly situation-bound contextual configuration analysis to the cultural-historical formations through the use of material tools, and with 2) mentionings that combine Membership Categorization Analysis and Cooren's interest in non-human (material) actors. In other words, the well-known sociomaterial concept material-discursive is translated into two analytical possibilities to study sociomaterial heterogeneous assemblages. An empirical study illustrates the tools in practice.

‘They speak Arabic to make teachers angry’: High-school teachers’ (de)legitimization of heritage languages in Catalonia

This study explores high-school teachers’ discourse on heritage language use regarding their students of immigrant background in Catalonia, Spain, where both Catalan and Spanish are official languages. For this purpose, 10 high-school teachers from 5 schools with a high ratio of foreign students were interviewed. These interviews were analysed using membership categorization analysis. The results show that the perceived appropriateness of heritage language use depends on whether the students are integrated enough in the eyes of locals. Additionally, heritage language use in public is judged from the perspective of a Catalan listener and is deemed disrespectful. This is particularly salient in students of Moroccan background, where language maintenance is associated with overly strict adherence to Islam. The need for training teachers on how to properly address the linguistic and cultural diversity of their classrooms is discussed.

On the Promise of Using Membership Categorization Analysis to Investigate Interactional Competence

Abstract Interactional Competence (IC) involves speakers’ ability to make social actions recognizable to one another while taking into account individual identities and social role relationships (Hall and Pekarek Doehler 2011). Existing IC research, however, has foregrounded the sequential features of interaction while paying less attention to the categorial resources speakers draw on. This study uses Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) to explicate the categorial resources speakers employ in interaction. The dataset comes from 22 participants with a mixture of first-language and second-language Chinese speakers. They were audio-recorded while undertaking a roleplay task in Chinese—assuming the role of an employee and complaining to their manager about unfair practices at work. After analysing the transcribed data using the MCA procedure (Stokoe 2012), we present analyses that address three foundational questions about how speakers use categorial resources to (i) make their social actions recognizable, (ii) respond to interlocutors’ social actions, and (iii) orient to the moral order of interaction. We argue MCA can provide important insight into the categorial nature of interaction in IC research.

Membership categorization analysis, race, and racism

ABSTRACT Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) has the potential to highlight the dynamic ways that people make race relevant to everyday life. However, existing MCA research conducts analyses that are disconnected from the broader sociopolitical contexts within which race categories are developed and used. This article proposes an extension MCA that foregrounds ways that racial category use mobilizes racial inferences and is consequential for the constitution of knowledge about race and racism. Scholars conducting an MCA of race categories should (a) engage with social science research on race and racism (b) meet unique adequacy requirements for research. We apply these extensions to three key tenets of MCA: knowledge, the membership categorization device, and morality. We then present two illustrative analyses: from Asian Americans discussing business in the United States and from Indians discussing anti-Black racism in India. We close by discussing the implications of our framework for MCA and qualitative psychological research.

“Tú sabes lo que le pasa a él?”: the Role of (Relational) Epistemics in Indirect Complaint Sequences in Spanish and English Family Talk

Abstract Drawing on interactional pragmatics and membership categorisation analysis, this paper explores indirect (third-party-oriented and situation-oriented) complaints in Spanish and English interactions between family members where expectations of affiliation are contingent on (relational) epistemic (im)balances. We analyse how (1) disaffiliation is constructed through the recipient’s more knowledgeable position in relation to the matter at hand, (2) complainability is legitimised when the recipient lacks epistemic access to the issue and (3) complaints are partially disattended by the recipient due to their inferior epistemic status regarding the situation. Throughout, we argue that (relational) epistemics is a necessary feature to incorporate in analysis, when it concerns the recipient’s responses and, therefore, interpersonal achievement of social actions. We show how complainants treat the prior turns as relevant to the rights, obligations and expectations related to their relational categories and how extended sequences of complaints are co-constructed and negotiated in interaction.

“You’re a woman now”

Abstract This paper analyses menarche episodes from TV series using the discourse-historical approach to compare how menarche has been depicted on TV during different decades and takes a closer look into inter-generational experience of menarche. The analysis focuses on membership categorization analysis of the scenes and dialogues involving menarche. After analyzing several decades of menstrual discourse, it is possible to conclude that TV discourse has changed from depicting menarche as a shameful taboo to a powerful visual storyline statement. However, the menarche scenarios did not change dramatically and continue to rely heavily on a mother-daughter bonding plot and highlight childbearing as the main and sometimes the only positive aspect of menstruation. The continuous use of menstruational euphemisms is still predominating the TV discourse.

“Speaking as a mother”: A membership categorisation analysis of child-centric talk in a UK daytime television talk show

In this study, we explore motherhood as an interactionally emergent identity category that speakers construct and lay claim to in talk, and as a category that is imbued with moral expectations of how incumbents should behave. We analyse 18 child-focussed debates from British daytime television talk show, This Morning. Engaging a postfeminist framework, we use membership categorisation analysis to explore how, and to what effect, women deploy claims to motherhood. We report three main findings: (a) Speakers routinely quantify their motherhood credentials in the development of a “mother-cum-expert” identity; (b) speakers who construct motherhood in accordance with neoliberal norms of “good motherhood” habitually trump the arguments offered by other speakers, including those with professional expertise; (c) any challenge to essentialist norms of womanhood and/or motherhood become accountable matters. We conclude that whilst there is power in motherhood insomuch as it vests some women with expertise and elevates their rights to be heard on child-focussed matters, the speakers in our study nevertheless construct motherhood in a manner that (re)produces and elevates essentialised notions of gender and narrow versions of motherhood.

Interactional and categorial analyses of identity construction in the talk of female-to-male (FtM) transgender individuals in Japan

Abstract This study explores the identity construction of female-to-male (FtM) transgender individuals, utilizing membership categorization analysis and multimodal conversation analysis. ‘Identity’ in this study indicates a person’s display of category membership or ascription to category membership, which emerges in social actions. The study illustrates how participants make categories and associated features visible in their social actions through the use of multimodal resources. In particular, the study focuses on the participants’ orientation to Pn-adequate devices, particularly gender as a binary. The analysis shows that the participants’ orientation to gender ideologies, such as gender’s Pn-adequacy, plays a significant role in how they construct their FtM transgender identities.

Expecting the unpredictable: Categorisation of children and youth during driver training

This paper presents an analysis of how the particular categories of children and youth are used within the instructional work of learning to drive. Using Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) and multimodal Conversation Analysis (CA) of a collection of cases drawn from 85 video-recorded driving lessons, we demonstrate how the participants treat children and youth as a category of traffic users whose main category predicate appears to be their expected unpredictability and carelessness, placing particularly high demands on drivers’ awareness and caution. This is evident in in-event and post-event interactions about traffic encounters with children and youth, as well as in traffic contexts where they have not (yet) been spotted but their sudden appearance is anticipated. The results suggest that the institutional constructions of children and youth as a potential source of trouble prepare trainee drivers for unforeseen events and contingencies and shape their social stock of knowledge as future motorists.

Ethnomethodology's Legacies and Prospects

This article considers the large range of empirical research that has emerged under the broad aegis of ethnomethodology, in the period between the publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967) and the present day. Starting with a brief overview of Garfinkel's intellectual career, we discuss the relation of ethnomethodology to Schütz's phenomenology, Parsons's systems theory, and Weber's concern with meaning construction. A central concern was with the problem of contextuality, which Garfinkel initially addressed by drawing on, while fashioning in his own way, Mannheim's concern with the documentary method of interpretation. Ethnomethodologically-related studies have proliferated in a variety of domains, including conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, and (related to Garfinkel's own early work) empirical initiatives in the study of everyday life involving racial, gender and other minoritized groups. Further ethnomethodological studies emerged from legal environments, from social problems and deviance, and in relation to ability differences. Still other investigations concerned instructed action and its ramifications for the sciences, technology and organizations, including the workplace. A longstanding concern for ethnomethodology has been with the conduct of social sciences—how coding is done, how surveys are conducted, and how standardization is achieved. Many of these areas have given rise to thriving subfields, have dedicated journals, and resulted in applications. Few initiatives in sociological theory have resulted in a wider range of innovative research than Garfinkel's and successor studies showing, explicating, and demonstrating the organization of details in social life and their consequences for social order.

The Formation of the Beginning of Dialogue in Anonymous Online Communication

The main purpose of the article is to track and analyze the correlation of technical and semantic aspects of anonymous interaction on the web. The initial phase of communication between two interlocutors in the “Anonymous VKontakte chat” is empirically investigated. Combining the conceptual and methodological resources of conversational analysis and membership categorization analysis, as well as the theory of affordances adapted to technical objects (in this case, anonymous chat), the author defends the concept of the order of statements of anonymous interlocutors for successful interaction. Most visitors use the chat to search for short-term romantic and/or sexual communication, therefore, at the beginning of the correspondence, the interlocutors often seek to identify each other's gender identity using typical statements. The importance of having the first row is noted, since it is he who, with a high degree of probability, gives the priority right to ask a question about the gender identity of the interlocutor. However, this right does not negate the fact that sooner or later (rather sooner) the owner of the first turn will have to answer the questions of the interlocutor, so the anonymous interaction under consideration, through the communicative efforts of actors organized in the next order, tends to information symmetry.

De‐gendering parents: Gender inclusion and standardised language in screen‐level bureaucracy

AbstractSwedish welfare organisations have a long history of promoting gender equality and inclusivity, involving implementation of more gender‐inclusive language (e.g., non‐gendered terminology). This study analysed the use of non/gendered expressions at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, as state policy is realised in conjunction with personalised service in textual interaction in screen‐level bureaucracy. We drew on conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis to analyse 378 email interactions between clients and social insurance officers, focusing on gendered institutional terminology and gendered person references. The findings suggest that social insurance officers avoided a heteronormative language, in line with Swedish official public language policy, but that a gender‐neutral language may come at the cost of formality, standardisation, and de‐personalisation. The study brings new knowledge on the ways in which street‐level bureaucrats manage responsiveness and standardisation in digital text‐based interaction with clients.

Category relations and norms of feelings in children’s performances of a boyfriend-girlfriend culture

This study explores how preteen children in everyday interaction mobilize relationship categories to negotiate what counts as appropriate romantic feelings among peers. The analysis draws on ethnomethodological work on membership categorization and conversation analysis, integrated with ethnographic knowledge of children’s social life. Particular attention is on how children make claims of and resist membership in a particular relationship category (that of boyfriend-girlfriend). The sequential analysis shows how category-based claims of ‘liking someone’ and ‘being together,’ indexing a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, are responded to with resistance and denials. Categorical claims are also turned into public performances of relational pairing invoking the normative character of romantic matchmaking. The findings suggest that norms of feelings play a central role in preteen children’s emotional behavior, and serve as important cultural resources for children to address their emergent concerns regarding peer group relationships.

Membership categorization devices in courtroom opening and closing speeches

ABSTRACT Through the lens of Membership Categorization Analysis, this study explicates the process of discursive categorization in courtroom opening and closing statements, focusing on the use of mundane categories as well as associated activities to negotiate the legal facticity of a criminal offense. Based on the official transcripts of a high-profile Anglo-American trial, the study reveals that much of what constitutes the opening and closing is the dispute over the categorization of the main characters in legal narratives, which at times provides conflicting information to fact-finders. The two sides are found to deploy explicit and implicit categorizations. However, instead of using oppositional categories, the two sides commonly make use of different membership categorization devices. This alternation of devices supplants and replaces each other, so that two versions of realities are discursively constructed. Such strategic categorization enables lawyers to go beyond offering a road map of the case in the opening and emphasizing key evidence in the closing: everyday categories smuggle in moral evaluation and make an emotional appeal to the jurors, which in principle are legally prohibited.

Preference organization and possible -isms in institutional interaction: The case of adult second language classrooms

AbstractThis study examines preference organization in adult second language classrooms in relation to possible -isms—utterances which are hearably racist, classist, (hetero)sexist, or otherwise exclusionary, although their exclusionary nature may be (re)negotiated in situ. A collection of sixty-one possible -isms from a corpus of fifty-five hours of video-recorded English second language classes was examined using conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. The analysis shows that participants orient to solidarity by supporting -isms, progressivity by deleting -isms, and moral accountability by challenging -isms; however, participants prioritize solidarity, enacting it early, even in cases of deletion and challenges. I argue that this preference organization is rooted in the institutional roles and objectives of adult second language classrooms, where presumably competent members of diverse cultures aim to foster an environment for active participation. Findings underscore the importance of conducting microanalyses of talk-in-interaction to uncover structural constraints which facilitate the reproduction of systemic exclusion. (-isms, preference, conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, classroom interaction, exclusion in interaction)*

An adult daughter's identity construction: Membership categorization analysis of daily Chinese-Australian family talk

This paper focuses on identity construction in family discourse, with the objective to investigate how identities of an adult daughter (the older sister/adult child at home) are made salient in and through family talk. Guided by Harvey Sacks's (1995) work on membership categorization combined with sequential analysis (Stokoe, 2012), the study examines 15 h of audio-recorded conversations between a mother and her two children in a Chinese-Australian family. Two specific identities of the adult daughter – a home educator and a child – are discussed in this paper where the findings reveal that such identities are invoked and negotiated by participants via their self- and other-categorization. The adult daughter's self-positioning becomes visible in interaction through her turn design and category-implicative social actions, which orient to a set of category-packaged rights, responsibilities, and attributes that index a particular category. However, the invoked memberships are not only accepted but also challenged by other family members in following turns, which reflects how the adult daughter is positioned by them during different family activities. By exploring an adult daughter's membership categorization in family talk, this study contributes to the under-researched topic of identity construction in Chinese-Australian/Chinese family discourse.

Observing a teacher’s interactional competence in an ESOL classroom: a translanguaging perspective

Abstract Research on translanguaging practices in multilingual contexts has explored how translanguaging highlights the multilingual and multicultural nature of social interactions and its transformative nature in transgressing established norms and boundaries. This article aims to provide an alternative view of interactional competence by connecting it to the notion of translanguaging and its emphasis on the active deployment of multiple linguistic, semiotic, and sociocultural resources in a dynamic and integrated way. We argue for extending the notion of interactional competence as we suggest that translanguaging is the practice of drawing on a speaker’s interactional competence for constructing new configurations of language practices for communicative purposes. Such a conceptualization reinforces the meaning-making process as a locally emergent phenomenon and a jointly accomplished social action. It also conceptualizes the undertaking of co-constructing social interactions as a process of translanguaging whereby interactants need to seek out available multilingual and multimodal resources and make strategic choices among these resources in order to achieve their social actions on a moment-by-moment basis. This article utilizes Sequential-Categorial Analysis, which combines Multimodal Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis, in its analysis of classroom video recordings of vocabulary instruction in a beginner-level adult English-for-Speakers-of-Other-Languages classroom in order to demonstrate our argument.

Self-categorization: a resource for the management of experiential entitlement in talk about child death

Abstract In this paper, I examine self-categorization practices as resources for the interactional organization of relative experiential entitlements. Locating the study in talk about child death, an explicitly moral domain of social life, this study utilizes 18 radio-based interactions from a South African talk-radio broadcaster. Using an ethnomethodological, conversation-analytic approach, I examine affective responses to reports of child deaths, demonstrating how these practices reproduce child death as a contemporary social and moral concern. My findings demonstrate how practices of, and variations in, self-reference and self-categorization are resources for managing relative rights and obligations, thereby reproducing common-sense knowledge about parents and children in contemporary South African society. This research contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of membership categorization analysis and the social organization of experience.

Helming Malaysia:Najib Razak’s Metaphors inMalaysian Supply Bills

This paper discusses the vocational roles constructed by Najib Razak, the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia for himself, his government, and relational identities for the Malaysian people and others, through Supply Bills. I model the study on Charteris-Black’s Critical Metaphor Analysis and Sack’s Membership Categorisation Analysis, as frameworks. The findings indicate that Najib Razak and his government enacted a role as a ship captain, where the Malaysian people were positioned as passengers, sailing in a sea of world economy, and heading towards a status as a high-income developed nation. Through these metaphors, the people were reminded that without the government as helm of the ship, it is to reach the intended destination. Therefore, the use of metaphors in the Supply Bills serve predicative, empathetic, ideological, and mythical purposes, to legitimize both the government and its purposes as agents of governmentality.