Following Sacks's model membership categorization analysis (MCA) of a suicidal person's conclusion 'I have no one to turn to,' the paper examines in MCA terms a political actor's twin conclusions that murder-suicide is a rational course of action. The case in question is the killer's reasoning in the Montreal Massacre as revealed in his reported announcement at the scene (notably 'You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists') and recovered suicide letter (for example, 'For why persevere to exist if (...) it is only to please the government'). (shrink)

This paper explores how scientific knowledge is used in a criminal case. I examine materials from an admissibility hearing in a murder trial and discuss the dynamics of contesting expert scientific opinion and evidence. The research finds that a purported form of “science” in the relevant scientific community is filtered through, tested by, and subjected to legal standards, conceptions, and procedures for determining admissibility. The paper details how the opposing lawyers, the expert witness, and the judge vie to contingently work (...) out what will count in court as appropriate scientific authority, methods and evidence, and as a scientifically valid and legally admissible account of “reasonable fear.” When science becomes enmeshed in legal controversies, science does not trump law. Rather, it is the court’s canons of proper procedure and measures of substantive adequacy that take precedence. (shrink)

Although the members’ categories associated with institutional settings may seem obvious, more can be said about the actions that make them noticeable and persistent across contexts. This study investigates how epistemic stance displays make the standardized relational pair ‘teacher–student’ relevant during writing conferences in a US university. Analysis of the interaction between teachers and their students shows that teachers tended to display more knowledgeable stances concerning writing and institutional practices, whereas students displayed knowledgeable stances with respect to their own papers, (...) indexing the immediate relevance of the ‘teacher–student’ relational pair and a tension between authority and autonomy. Further analysis reveals that participants also mentioned past and future writing activities, thus indexing the persistence of the ‘teacher–student’ pair as well as the emergence of the category ‘autonomous writer’. Additionally, participants’ orientation to the more general ‘writer–reader’ pair also functioned to index the persistent and emergent aspects of these categories. (shrink)

During the course of this article, we examine the use of membership categorisation practices by a high-profile celebrity public social media account that has been understood to generate interest, attention and controversy across the UK media ecology. We utilise a data set of harvested tweets gathered from a high-profile public ‘celebrity antagonist’ in order to systematically identify types of antagonistic formulation that have generated different levels of interest within the social media community and beyond. Drawing from classic ethnomethodological studies of (...) banner headlines and other means of generating public interest and ‘making sense’, we respecify high-profile antagonistic tweets as category formulations that exhibit particular and regular membership category features that are reflexively bound to potential antagonistic readings, interest and controversy. In conclusion, we consider how such formulations may be understood to represent resources that constitute ignition points within antagonistic flows of communication and information that can be metaphorically understood as ‘digital wildfires’. (shrink)

This paper attempts to uncover the interpretive models underlying the construction of social representations about the identity of young people associated with crime by El Salvador's written press. To achieve this goal, I explore the ways in which these young people are categorized and characterized and the metaphors used to represent them and their actions as well as the consequences of the latter. My research has been carried out from the interdisciplinary perspective I call ‘sociological and linguistic discourse analysis’. This (...) examines the resources and strategies used in oral and written texts to impose, maintain, justify, or propose certain interpretive models seeking to make sense of social reality. (shrink)

This paper provides a provisional examination of Rod Watson ''s work and contributions to EM/CA/MCA, in part through a critique of misrepresentations of his arguments in secondary accounts of his work. The form of these misrepresentations includes adumbration and traducement of his arguments. Focusing on the reflexivity of category and sequence and turn-generated categories, we suggest that his analytic position within ethnomethodological fields is unique and remarkable, yet largely unacknowledged. We argue that a re-examination of the body of Watson ''s (...) work makes relevant explicit and appropriate acknowledgement of his contributions through his unconventional approach and his extension of prior works in novel and stimulating directions. (shrink)

This article examines the common-sense and methodical ways in which “the citizen” is produced and enrolled as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning. Using Membership Categorization Analysis, we explicate how the categorization procedures in the Foreword of a draft regional planning policy interactionally produce the identity of “the citizen” and “civic values and obligations” in relation to geographic place and institutional categories. Furthermore, we show how positioning practices establish a relationship between authors (government) and readers (citizens) where both are (...) ascribed with the same moral values and obligations toward the region. Hence, “the citizen” as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning is viewed as a practical accomplishment that is underpinned by a normative morality associated with the task of producing orderliness in “text-in-interaction.”. (shrink)

Previous writers have examined how topic and disagreement in assessments are managed within everyday conversation. This work, however, has focused on two-party interaction and little research has examined these issues in the context of multi-party discussion. In this article we examine these issues in the context of discussion by the admissions group of an arts and crafts guild. Analysis of the group’s discussions shows that on occasion group members find themselves in outright disagreement in assessment which leads to what is (...) here described as ‘gainsaying’. However, a number of other instances reveal that the group is able to avoid problematic conversational structures of this sort by deploying a variety of topic control devices: insertion of collusive laughter, conversation restart and topic flow manoeuvres. The article concludes by drawing out some analytic distinctions between two-party and multi-party interactions. (shrink)

During the course of this article the themes of public accountability, government policy, and interaction in media settings are examined. In particular, we examine empirical instances of media discourse as a means of exploring the use of identity categories, predicates, and configurations as a means of accomplishing policy debate in participatory frameworks such as radio phone-ins and the accountable frames of political interviews. This paper respecifies and explores the situated character of media settings as a means of documenting, describing, and (...) illustrating the interactional methods associated with policy debate, public participation/representation, and democracy-in-action. (shrink)

Our focus in this article is on some uses of categorial transformations. The discussion is divided into two main parts. In the first part, we begin by outlining our approach, namely membership categorization analysis (MCA), indicating the origins of the term and elaborating the conception of MCA as an ‘occasioned’ members’ apparatus. We then explain what we mean by the concept of categorial transformation, review some of the very few previous studies which have investigated this phenomenon and which are pertinent (...) to its further study, and indicate how categorial transformation serves to embody and illustrate the occasionality of MCA. In the second part of the article, we present an analysis of two extracts from a transcript of the naturally occurring talk-in-interaction which occurred in a particular family meal, involving two children and their parents. A variety of categorial transformation practices in this data are identified and their particular local usages described. In the concluding discussion we consider our argument and our analysis in light of previous discussions of the trajectory of Sacks’ work. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of conversational actions and category relations exhibited in an episode of argument between a brother and sister during a family meal. The paper is based on two sets of auspices: on a conversation analytic concern with the interconnection between the sequential and categorical ‘layers’ of organization to which parties to talk-in-interaction are demonstrably oriented, and on ‘Sacks’ Conjecture’ regarding children’s culture and adult—child ‘culture contact’. In terms of these auspices, the analysis shows that the children (...) use both sequential and categorical cultural resources to produce their argument. To adapt a concept of Garfinkel’s — the documentary method of interpretation — the category relationship between the children is the underlying matter that the sequential particulars are used to reflexively document and constitute. Specifically, through the sequentially organized particulars of degradation and resistance the children recognizably and reflexively constitute their category relationship. (shrink)