Abstract for A Tutorial on Membership Categorization
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). A Tutorial on Membership
Categorization. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 462-482
After setting Sacks’ work on membership
categorization in its historical and analytical
context, and suggesting some ways of reading the
original texts, I sketch the major components of
membership categorization devices (MCDs) –
collections of categories and rules of
application, and then the categories themselves
and their features. These discussions lead to some
consequences for research practice – both for
social science generally and for conversation-
analytic practice in particular, and to an initial
treatment of some problems that arise in advancing
this line of conversation-analytic research.
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