Whitehead2024

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Whitehead2024
BibType INCOLLECTION
Key Whitehead2024
Author(s) Kevin A. Whitehead, Geoffrey Raymond, Elizabeth Stokoe
Title Analyzing Categorial Phenomena in Talk-in-Interaction
Editor(s) Jeffrey D. Robinson, Rebecca Clift, Kobin H. Kendrick, Chase Wesley Raymond
Tag(s) EMCA, Membership categorization, Omni-relevance, Openings
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Year 2024
Language English
City Cambridge
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 541-576
URL Link
DOI 10.1017/9781108936583.020
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title The Cambridge Handbook of Methods in Conversation Analysis
Chapter 20

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Abstract

This chapter describes and empirically illustrates an approach to analyzing categorial phenomena in talk-in-interaction, grounded in the distinctive conversation analytic practice of building and analyzing collections. We begin by outlining a core set of observations made by Harvey Sacks in implementing a shift from conventional social scientific treatments of categories (e.g., gender, race, sexuality, age) as analysts’ resources, to instead examining them as members’ resources. That is, instead of using categories to study the social world, Sacks’ approach introduced resources for seeing how participants in social interactions use and self-administer categories. We then present an analysis of a collection of openings of interactions from ordinary conversational and institutional settings, considering some ways in which participants explicitly and tacitly use and manage categories in the initial moments of these interactions. Using this analysis as an exemplar, we address a set of challenges and critiques associated with conversation analytic research on categories. We thereby describe how CA can provide an empirically rigorous means of examining the ‘mutually constitutive’ relationship between categories and other ‘generic’ interactional structures and practices – and thus for analyzing the situated (re)production of categories, from the most mundane to those most strongly associated with distributions of power and privilege.

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