This paper puts forward an argument for a systematic, technical approach to formulation in verbal interaction. I see this as a kind of expansion of Sacks’ membership categorization analysis, and as something that is not offered (at least not in a fully developed form) by sequential analysis, the currently dominant form of conversation analysis. In particular, I suggest a technique for the study of “occasioned semantics,” that is, the study of structures of meaningful expressions in actual occasions of conversation. I (...) propose that meaning and rhetoric be approached through consideration of various dimensions or operations or properties, including, but not limited to, contrast and co-categorization, generalization and specification, scaling, and marking. As illustration, I consider a variety of cases, focused on generalization and specification. The paper can be seen as a return to some classical concerns with meaning, as illuminated by more recent insights into indexicality, social action, and interaction in recorded talk. (shrink)

Courtroom talk in child custody interrogations recurrently features contrasting event descriptions about ‘what happened’, as well as contrasting person descriptions. This case study – from a large set of audio-recorded courtroom examinations – documents how social workers’ contrasting narrative versions about alleged domestic violence are related to divergent problem formulations. Blame-account sequences feature descriptions of a particular event as violent or nonviolent and descriptions of a new partner as ‘non-adult’ or merely as ‘impulsive’ but ‘concerned’. Other contrasting person descriptions feature (...) a target child either as ‘normal’ or as someone who ‘has a diagnosis’. This involves categorizations of the particular child either as a victim or as someone ‘with a diagnosis’, two contrasting accounts that provide divergent explanatory formulations of what the overall problem is. Ultimately, divergent testimonies also reflect how social accounts in court reflect both mitigated/aggravated descriptions of violence and divergent accounts of parents’ and children’s agency and accountability. (shrink)

In this article, I address some of the issues for the analysis of categorial features of talk and texts raised by Stokoe’s ‘Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis’. I begin by discussing a number of points raised by Stokoe, relating to previous conversation analytic work that has addressed categorial matters; the implicit distinction in her article between ‘natural’ and ‘contrived’ data; and ambiguity with respect to the relevance of categories, in particular practices or utterances. I then (...) discuss how my own previous work could be located in light of Stokoe’s discussion of debates and divergences between conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, and argue that being bound by the integrity of the data on which an analysis is based should take precedence over attempting to characterize the analysis as exemplifying either a CA- or MCA-based approach. I conclude by calling for a commitment to doing analysis, and pointing to the value of the resources Stokoe offers in this regard. (shrink)

This article proposes an analytical framework that combines Conversation Analysis, Positioning Theory, and Stance Analysis to study communalization and distinction as basic interactive mechanisms within group interactions. The framework is based on the premise that participants in multi-party interactions constantly manage the local demands of the ongoing conversation and turn-by-turn talk as well as implicitly or explicitly evoked references to global discourses, which in turn are closely related to the topic currently discussed. By considering both micro- and macro-contextual features in (...) the analysis of group interactions, it is possible to reach a deeper understanding of dynamic group activities. The framework has been empirically developed based on data from a study on epistemic positioning practices in adolescents’ group interactions about popular TV series in Germany. The data comprises ten videotaped focus group discussions that have been elicited in a school context. By applying the framework to the analysis of a single case from the corpus, insights can be gained, both on how group members’ finely adjust their epistemic and evaluative stances as well as on how the participants themselves interactively link their stances to broader discourses. (shrink)

Drawing on Membership Categorization Analysis, we aim to tease out how narrators talk into being the social group constellations in their storyworlds and how these – potentially shifting – constellations can be related to the narrator’s identity constructions. We investigate two World War II-testimonies narrated by Belgian concentration camp survivors and scrutinize whether the expected Standardized Relational Pair of victim-perpetrator – viz. the camp prisoners versus the Nazis – is in operation, how these two categories are talked into being, whether (...) other social groups are mentioned and how all these processes affect the narrators’ identity work. It proved to be the case that, even though the victim-perpetrator Standardized Relational Pair is indeed present in both testimonies, it functions very differently in both stories, resulting in almost opposing identity work by the two narrators. (shrink)

This article examines a productive use of communicating gender stereotypes in interpersonal conversation: to resist activities traditionally prescribed according to gender. The analyses video-taped naturally occurring US household interactions and present three techniques participants may deploy to contest gender expectations: mobilizing categories, motivating alignment and reframing action. We show how gender is an accountable category in relation to household labor, and how gender categories provide a resource by which participants can non-seriously solicit and resist participation in domestic gender-prescribed activities. Our (...) analysis provides some insight into how participants use gender stereotypes in everyday talk and what functions such talk serves. (shrink)