Gardner2012a

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Gardner2012a
BibType ARTICLE
Key Gardner2012a
Author(s) Rod Gardner
Title Enriching CA through MCA? Stokoe’s MCA keys
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, MCA
Publisher
Year 2012
Language
City
Month
Journal Discourse Studies
Volume 14
Number 3
Pages 313–319
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/1461445612440772
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

In this commentary on Stokoe’s article, ‘Moving forward with membership categorization analysis’, I take up the challenge to apply her keys for MCA to an extract of conversation recorded in a restaurant. The strengths of conversation analysis have not included – and indeed have not attempted to achieve – successful engagement with beyond-the-immediate-talk aspects of culture and the commonsense workings of society. The aim of the article is to explore what MCA might add to an analysis of a stretch of talk using conversation analytic tools. It was found that a systematic application of the keys did indeed provide a richer account of what was going on. Whereas categories alone did not appear to provide more insights than commonsense can tell us, when the broader array of MCA tools and keys were applied, an enhanced analysis of the passage of talk emerged. An exploration of whether this can be extended as a method for a rigorous investigation of culture and society while still being grounded in participants’ mutual, moment-by-moment orientations to categories seems at the very least worth the serious attention of scholars interested in interaction.

Notes