Membership Categorization Research Articles

Ill persons and capable workers: Constructing work ability in return-to-work negotiations after sickness absence.

In return-to-work (RTW) negotiations after sickness absence, the work ability of an individual employee becomes a shared interest for the multiple stakeholders representing both the healthcare sector and working life. In practice, the employee, employer and occupational health professionals need to reach a shared understanding of the employee's work ability to enable shared decision-making concerning the plans for sustainable RTW. Drawing on 14 video-recorded RTW negotiations, we used conversation analysis-informed membership categorization analysis to examine how the participants of RTW negotiations discuss the work ability of an employee to pursue a shared understanding of the situation. Work ability was constructed in a very situational way, using illness categories to both explain the work ability of the employee and argue for or against their ability or inability to work. Our study contributes to research on RTW by introducing a new perspective to work ability. We show how work ability is realized during RTW negotiations through interaction, and how participants leverage their cultural understanding of illness and capability when negotiating work ability. We also demonstrate how membership categorization analysis can reveal the situational and consequential aspects of illness and work ability categories.

Categories in Social Interaction: Unlocking the Resources of Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorization for Psychological Science.

This article reviews two related approaches-conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA)-to sketch a systematic framework for exposing how categories and categorial phenomena are (re)produced in naturally occurring social interaction. In so doing, we argue that CA and MCA address recent concerns about psychological methods and approaches. After summarizing how categories are typically theorized and studied, we describe the main features of a CA approach to categories, including how this differs from conventional psychology. We review the core domains of research in CA and how categories can be studied systematically in relation to the basic machinery of talk and other conduct in interaction. We illustrate these domains through examples from different settings of recorded naturally occurring social interaction. After considering the applications that have arisen from CA and MCA, we conclude by drawing together the implications of this work for psychological science.

Membership categorisation, sociological description and role prompt engineering with ChatGPT

Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) have become the latest disruptive digital technologies to breach the dividing lines between scientific endeavour and public consciousness. LLMs such as ChatGPT are platformed through commercial providers such as OpenAI, which provide a conduit through which interaction is realised, via a series of exchanges in the form of written natural language text called ‘prompt engineering’. In this paper, we use Membership Categorisation Analysis to interrogate a collection of prompt engineering examples gathered from the endogenous ranking of prompting guides hosted on emerging generative AI community and practitioner-relevant social media. We show how both formal and vernacular ideas surrounding ‘natural’ sociological concepts are mobilised in order to configure LLMs for useful generative output. In addition, we identify some of the interactional limitations and affordances of using role prompt engineering for generating interactional stances with generative AI chatbots and (potentially) other formats. We conclude by reflecting the consequences of these everyday social-technical routines and the rise of ‘ethno-programming’ for generative AI that is realised through natural language and everyday sociological competencies.

Dealing with callers' racialised talk in suicide preventive helplines: Accomplishing (anti)racism in the context of unconditional support.

This article investigates how mental health counsellors on helplines in Sweden deal with racism from callers who self-categorise as non-racialised. Previous studies have identified racism as a problem in health care interactions, but there is limited knowledge about the features of racialised talk and how staff respond. In this study, we use conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis to examine racialised talk in 17 audiorecorded calls, a subset of 458 calls to suicide preventive helplines. The analysis shows that racialisation functions as a resource for callers to make sense of their mental health difficulties. This speaks to the complexity of responding to racism in a mental health setting, as counsellors must see to callers' needs, and calling out racialised talk may alienate callers. Call-takers manage this problem in three ways: (1) questioning racialised talk, (2) supporting the callers' stance in a way that makes it ambiguous if call-takers are coproducing racism or affiliating with callers' lives being difficult and (3) supporting callers' problems as mental health issues while resisting a potentially racist trajectory. The study offers direct insight into the workings of racism in health care and how practitioners can balance health care users' needs for support with an antiracist position.

The whirlpool of edu-business: student’s categorical judgements of entangled commercialism in an educational context

ABSTRACT The business of pedagogy, edu-business, has grown into a colossal global industry. As the phenomenon of marketisation is also intertwined with academic communities and actively contributes to the formulation of institutional culture, it is essential to examine the perceptions and understandings of future teachers and education experts regarding the intricate interplay between commerce and the educational sphere. Our research scrutinised the discursive practices employed by students pursuing degrees in education and teacher education. By using membership categorisation analysis, this study explores the articulations offered by students when describing the commercialisation of education and the strategies they employ to navigate the commodified social landscape within the field of education. This study shows how the categorisations reveal the impact of marketisation on teacher education and education in general within the broader academic context. In the results, the opportunities available to students for challenging the perception of neoliberalism as something natural, normal, and desirable within the academic community, are also pondered.

Multimodal joint fantasising as a category‑implicative and category‑relations‑implicative action in online multi‑party interaction

Abstract Drawing on interactional pragmatics and membership categorisation analysis, with a focus on (un)accomplished intersubjectivity, categories and social action, this paper explores some new aspects of multimodal joint fantasising in online interaction. The data for this study comes from the public Facebook event page regarding the ‘ski field opening’ in Brisbane, a sub-tropical city in Australia. The first part of the analysis examines how intersubjectivity is accomplished through joint fantasising co-constructed among the posters, serving entertainment purposes. Invoking their membership in the category ‘fantasisers’, this is done in two ways: (1) flat co-construction gradient; and (2) upgraded co-construction gradient. The second part focusses on the instances wherein intersubjectivity in relation to the fantasy world is unaccomplished. It is indexed through (1) metapragmatic labels of humour types; (2) treating the event as real; and (3) doubting the authenticity of the event and challenging the joint fantasising posts. As a result, additional categories emerge, thereby constructing category relations, namely, oppositional categories such as ‘fantasisers’-‘the gullible’ and ‘fantasisers’-‘sceptics’. This in situ change, I argue, creates a shift in the pragmatic function of joint fantasising, moving from a category-implicative action (serving entertainment) to a category-relations-implicative action (serving jocular criticism). This paper adds to the research on joint fantasising, categorial work and social action, and broadly contributes to our understanding of how members of the society orient to contexts and categories in and through talk-in-interaction.

Robots as addressable non-persons: an analysis of categorial work at the boundaries of the social world.

Prompted by the material turn in the social sciences and the development of novel interaction technologies, lively debates in social theory have arisen regarding the agency of non-human entities. While these debates primarily involve exchanging theoretical arguments against the background of different theoretical positions, ethnomethodological membership categorization analysis (MCA) provides an empirical approach to questions of non-human agency. The article discusses the debate on non-human agency, demonstrates how MCA can be used to investigate categorial work at the boundaries of the social, and presents the example of an encounter between two museum visitors and a humanoid robot to show how the robot is categorized in a specific way as an 'addressable non-person.' In this way, it becomes clear that social-theoretical debates and empirically oriented MCA can mutually inspire each other and how the 'basic categorization apparatus' addresses new alterities.

Interactional Competence for professional communication in intercultural contexts: Epistemology, analytic framework and pedagogy

ABSTRACT In the twenty-first-century working professionals need to possess strong Interactional Competence to handle professional communication in intercultural contexts (PCIC). However, the relationship among the three PCIC constituents – culture, workplace and interaction – is undertheorized in current research. This leaves PCIC practitioners oftentimes uncertain of how to better define and develop their communication skills. This article seeks to address the gap by first analysing the two dominant PCIC epistemologies: the inference-based, psychological-positivist approach and the practice-based, interactional-constructivist approach. I then propose an analytical PCIC framework to differentiate the inference we make about one another and the practice we observe in each other. Using authentic PCIC training materials analysed through Sequential-Categorial Analysis (combining Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorization Analysis), I argue the concept of Interactional Competence can bridge inference and practice, offering a route to assisting researchers in analysing PCIC, educators in developing PCIC training materials, and practitioners in refining their PCIC skills. Pedagogical applications of the PCIC framework are also presented. I conclude the paper with theoretical, methodological and practical implications for PCIC, where we constantly see grounds for inclusion and exclusion articulated around notions of culture and professional identities.

Female-to-male (FtM) transgender individuals’ multimodal and interactional practices in Japanese

Abstract This study explores the multimodal and interactional practices of female-to-male (FtM) transgender individuals in Japanese, focusing on their identity construction. Most previous studies on transgender identity in Japanese contexts examine male-to-female (MtF) transgender individuals’ linguistic practices, particularly the use of so-called Japanese women’s language. In contrast, this study explores how FtM individuals use not only linguistic but also other semiotic resources to construct and negotiate their gender and sexual identities. The study utilizes empirical data such as YouTube videos and draws on multimodal conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA) to analyze the participants’ accomplishment of social actions. The findings demonstrate the use of various resources for identity construction and how the participants challenge and/or conform to hegemonic gender ideologies. The study also unveils both the diversity among FtM transgender people (inter-individual variation) and the fluidity and complexity of identities that can exist within one person (intra-individual variation).

International doctoral students’ identity formulations through their orientations to their children’s languages as both stressors and assets

This study contributes to research on the doctoral experience of international students who are parents, and for whom the temporary experience of living elsewhere is both a challenge and a resource for all members of the family. The study investigated how a group of these students positioned themselves to their children’s English and home language during their study abroad. A group of 12 international doctoral students from one Australian university and one primary school teacher took part in the study. The doctoral students were from a number of non-anglophone countries. Membership Categorisation Analysis was used to examine the identity categories invoked during focus group discussions. The categories bilingual, student, parent, tutor and spouse, the category devices family, study, nationality/language, time and location, and the attributes responsibility and inadequacy that emerged in the analysis, suggest that language issues are important considerations for international students with families, and need focused attention.

Language ideologies and speaker categorization: a case study from the U.S. legal system

Abstract This study examines a judicial opinion from an appellate court in the District of Columbia, in the United States, using membership categorization analysis. The appeal concerned the absence of an interpreter during the police interrogation of a person suspected of having committed a crime, and whether this absence violated a local law about the provision of interpreters. Deciding this appeal required the court to determine whether the defendant had met a statutory definition of “communication-impaired” persons who are entitled to interpretation services. I argue that, in determining whether the defendant fit into this legal category, the court discursively constructed two linguistic categories that helped support its ultimate disposition of the appeal. These linguistic categories were hierarchically positioned, with English speakers as a default and non-English speakers as somehow deficient or unable to fully function in society. The court’s opinion also contemplated a binary choice of a person being able to communicate in English fully, or not at all, with the possibility that a person might be proficient in English for some purposes, but not others, often presented as a concession or ancillary point. Taken as a whole, the category construction in the opinion suggests an ideology of English monolingualism, which belies a reality of multilingualism, code-shifting, and mixed linguistic identities.

Occasioned Semantics and Membership Categorisation Analysis: Fields of meaning, categorial consistency and omni-relevance

Bilmes's work in the last decade of his career was primarily concerned with the approach he developed and called Occasioned Semantics. Bilmes based OS on Sacks' (1995) membership categorisation work together with components of taxonomical analysis derived from ethno-semantics. While the approach was primarily aimed at the field of Semantics, Bilmes also argued that OS offered a way to develop upon Sacks' work by situating categorial inferencing within ‘occasioned fields of meaning’ within which categorial definitions and descriptions evolve through a taxonomic branching texture. In this paper we explore the potential analytic intersection between aspects of Bilmes' OS and Sacks' category analysis together with later developments in Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA). In particular we revisit the ‘consistency rule’ together with ‘omni-relevance’, which provides a way of understanding shifts in fields of meaning as hierarchical and multi-layered. The combined approach allows to bring into view multi-layered sequential and categorial flow with taxonomic branching that takes place within an ongoing, unfolding and contingent interactional context of ‘who-we-are-and-what-we-are-doing’.

Fictional characterization through repair, membership categorization, and attribute ascription

Abstract Linguistics and discourse studies have recently started treating fictional interactions as data worth analyzing in their own right, rather than incomplete representations of naturally occurring conversations. Aligning with advances in research on the use of language in fiction, this study addresses the functions of characters’ conversational practices in fictional works from an interactional perspective. By applying conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to a sitcom series, this study explores how characters’ repair operation, membership categorization, and attribute ascription contribute to the construction and revelation of those characters (i.e., fictional characterization). Three patterns are illustrated: (1) a character engages in implicit categorization to account for trouble after operating repair; (2) a character’s changes of turn design in multiple repair operations show the character’s orientation toward an attribute of the other character; and (3) a character gives up repair operation and shows an orientation toward other characters’ attributes through implying negative assessment of them. The findings suggest that conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis are beneficial for research on fictional characterization. This study also discusses the reflexive and mutually constitutive relationship between the interactional participants’ characters and their conversational practices.

‘All about the NHS and what about the rest of us?’: Exploring how low‐paid health and social care workers construct key stakeholders and account for the UK's response to the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractGood practice on disaster response emphasises the importance of leadership and cohesive group identities. The COVID‐19 pandemic provided an opportunity to explore how low‐paid health and social care workers (HSCWs) accounted for the UK government's response, given worker's limited resources and disproportionate impact on their lives. Thirteen semi‐structured interviews took place with low‐paid HSCWs in England. Interviews were analysed using critical reflexive thematic analysis that is influenced by discursive psychology and membership categorisation analysis to explore the construction of identities and how they are used to account for the pandemic response. Three themes were generated from the data: (1) ‘They kind of knew what was coming’: UK government slow to react to pandemic developments; (2) ‘the right thing kept changing every five minutes: Frustrations with changing guidelines and (3) ‘all about the NHS and what about the rest of us?’: Private sector HSCWs presented as inferior. This research highlights the importance of addressing the minimisation of low‐paid HSCWs through communications and access to material resources. There is a need to address economic disparities within the social care sector and for the UK government to plan future crisis management with all frontline staff at the forefront to form a collective identity.

Layers of Oriented‐to Identities in Language Learner Peer Discussion Tasks

AbstractEmploying membership categorization analysis and conversation analysis, we uncover how students performing classroom discussion tasks for language learning locally ascribe themselves and others to various identity categories within single discussion activities. Data consist of 126 hours of video‐recorded small‐group discussions for second language learning collected in Japanese universities. Analysis unveiled the members' methods by which students themselves construct their identities in invoking various membership categories. In addition to sequential identities that are relevant at any point during the discussions, participants overwhelmingly oriented to hypothetical identities set up by the tasks. These identities were layered over the omnirelevant identities of Japanese language speakers, second language speakers, and students. Through publicly observable orientations to membership categories, these interactants manifested their collective understanding of the aims and motivations of the educational activities and institutional environment. The findings show how learners orient to their own and co‐participants' multiple identities as they accomplish language‐learning tasks and how these varied layers of identity contributed to language‐learning affordances in different and unique ways. We then suggest some implications for task‐based language learning.

Problematizing Possible -isms in Adult Second Language Classrooms

Abstract While addressing issues of prejudice and exclusion is crucial for helping adult second language (L2) learners acquire and critique socio-interactional norms of their pluralistic communities, there is still a lack of work examining how teachers can problematize prejudiced talk when it arises in the classroom. Within the detail-oriented frameworks of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, this study examines teacher practices for problematizing students’ hearably prejudiced, stereotypical, or exclusionary talk—that is, students’ possible -isms. Drawing on data from 55 hours of video-recorded English L2 classes in the United States, I explore three problematizing responses to possible -isms: (i) introducing complexities, (ii) offering counter examples, and (iii) treating -isms as absurd. While introducing complexities neutralizes students’ hearable -isms as somehow inadequate, the latter two practices treat the -isms as entirely inaccurate through illustrated and invited corrections. The analysis reveals these practices to be finely attuned to the institutional goals and features of the adult L2 classroom, allowing teachers to incorporate a critical perspective and delicately problematize possible -isms without threatening solidarity with their diverse adult learners.

A discussion of gender, ethnicity, and intersectionality, at the Serb Business Association forum.

Qualitative transdisciplinary research has contributed to the development of a dynamic scientific area that is best suited to analyze real-life data from real people. To determine how ethnicity and gender intersect to shape the social worlds of the participants in a Serb business discussion forum, I apply two theoretical orientations based on ethnomethodology: Conversation Analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA). I analyze 15 videos with predominantly female Serb discussants. My findings from this project reveal a significant presence of stigma in the perceptions of Serb ethnicity in Croatia. I argue that due to patriarchal values as a type of cultural cache, Serb women experience demeaning gender categories in various areas of their lives. To improve this situation, it is suggested that there is a need for feminist ethics of care and a coalition with men.

“Facebook’s about to know, Karen”

Abstract This paper explores the social action of sanctioning an interlocutor’s conduct in public spaces through social media. Using membership categorisation analysis (Hester and Eglin 1997), we examine how, in offline face-to-face disputes filmed by one party, interactants deploy the name ‘Karen’ to sanction someone and threaten the transposition of the recording onto social media to impose accountability to the public at large. Our findings show how sanctioning through categorising an individual as a ‘Karen’ is interactionally achieved through framing conduct as entitled or otherwise problematic, distinguishing in-situ production of ‘Karen’ from a delivery that is perceptually unavailable to an interlocutor. We explore how social media functions as a resource to shape the ongoing encounter by orienting to the camera, and thus the online audience, as an external authority.

Collaborative storytelling and hypothetical scenarios about romantic relationships among middle-school peers

This study examines how preteen children negotiate and make sense of romantic relationships and index relational norms and boundaries in collaborative storytelling. The analysis draws upon an interactional approach to storytelling and examines how participants collaboratively describe, reshape and elaborate hypothetical scenarios. The interactional approach to storytelling is combined with a sequential analysis of membership categorization work to explore how the peers organize their participation in storytelling practices, while invoking categories to negotiate appropriate and inappropriate romantic relationships. The study demonstrates how children use hypothetical scenarios to turn the storytelling into a time machine for moving across time and space, while orienting to gender, social class and age as central to making sense of romantic relationships in their peer culture.

‘We are not putschists’: Accountability and the negotiation of membership categories in political news interviews

This paper observes the emergence of membership categories and their role in the construction of accountability in news interview interactions on two Arabic networks. It adopts a Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) to analyse how these categories contribute to the design of interviewers’ questions and interviewees’ answers. The data include twenty-eight hours of recorded Arab news interviews from four shows. The findings demonstrate that there are three interactional patterns in which membership categories are invoked. In the first pattern, interviewees engage in negotiating their incumbency or their political allies in accountable categories in interviewers’ questions. In the second pattern, interviewees display membership categories to obviate the shown accountability, while in the third pattern, they show negation of their incumbency of some categories even though they have not been explicitly included in these categories in interviewers’ questions.