Cover not available
Part of
Handbook of Pragmatics: Manual
Edited by Jef Verschueren and Jan-Ola Östman
[Handbook of Pragmatics M2] 2022
► pp. 933–945

Membership categorisation analysis

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical note
  • 3.Analytical tools
  • 4.Analysing categorisation work
    • 4.1Categorisation and identity
    • 4.2Categorisation and the media
    • 4.3Categorisation as a moral matter
  • 5.Suggestions for future research
  • References
Published online: 3 October 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.m2.mem1
References
Clifton, Jonathan
2009 “A membership categorisation analysis of the Waco Siege: Perpetrator-victim identity as a moral discrepancy device for ‘doing’ subversion.” Sociological Research Online 14 (5): 1–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collet, Tanja
2009 “Civilization and civilized in post-9/11 US presidential speeches.” Discourse & Society 20 (4): 455–475. [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eglin, Peter
2002 “Members’ gendering work: ‘Women’, ‘feminists’ and membership categorisation analysis.” Discourse & Society 13 (6): 819–825. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eglin, Peter and Stephen Hester
2006 The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorisation Analysis. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, Bryn and Richard Fitzgerald
2016 “ ‘It’s training man!’ Membership categorisation and the institutional moral order of basketball training.” Australian Journal of Linguistics 36 (2): 205–223. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, Richard
2012 “Membership categorisation analysis: Wild and promiscuous or simply the joy of Sacks?” Discourse Studies 14 (3): 305–311. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, Richard and William Housley
(eds) 2015 Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold
1964 “Studies of the routine grounds of everyday activities”. Social Problems 11 (3): 225–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John
2005 “Conversation analysis and institutional talk.” In Handbook of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Kristine L. Fitch and Robert E. Sanders, 103–147. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hester, Stephen and Peter Eglin
(eds) 1997 Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorisation Analysis. Washington D.C.: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Higgins, Christina
2009 “ ‘Are you Hindu?’ Resisting membership categorisation through language alternation” In Talk-in-Interaction: Multilingual Perspectives, ed. by Hanh thi Nguyen and Gabriele Kasper, 111–136. Mānoa: National Foreign Language Resource Center.Google Scholar
Housley, William
2002 “Moral discrepancy and ‘fudging the issue’ in a radio news interview.” Sociology 36 (1): 5–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Housley, William and Richard Fitzgerald
2003 “Moral discrepancy and political discourse: Accountability and the allocation of blame in a political news interview.” Sociological Research Online 8 (2): 1–9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 “Membership categorisation, culture and norms in action.” Discourse & Society 20: 345–362. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Housley, William and Robin J. Smith
2011 “Mundane reason, membership categorisation practices and the everyday ontology of space and place in interview talk.” Qualitative Research 11 (6): 698–715. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Housley, William, Helena Webb, Adam Edwards, Rob Procter and Marina Jirotka
2017 “Membership categorisation and antagonistic Twitter formulations.” Discourse & Communication 11 (6): 567–590. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Mark and Andrew King
2018 “Representations of LGBT ageing and older people in Australia and the UK.” Journal of Sociology 54 (1): 125–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Idevall Hagren, Karin
2019 “ ‘She has promised never to use the N-word again’: Discourses of racism in a Swedish media debate.” Discourse, Context & Media 31: 100322–100329. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Idevall Hagren, Karin and Theres Bellander
2014. “Membership Categorisation Analysis – för analyser av kategoriseringar i tal och skrift [Membership Categorisation Analysis – for analysing categorisation in speech and written text].” In Analysing text AND talk/Att analysera texter OCH samtal: Arbetsrapporter om modern svenska (FUMS Rapport nr. 233), ed. by Anna-Malin Karlsson and Henna Makkonen-Craig, 46–70. Uppsala University: The department of Scandinavian Languages.Google Scholar
Jayyusi, Lena
1984 Categorization and the moral order. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
1991 “Values and moral judgements: Communicative praxis as moral order.” In Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences, ed. by Graham Button, 227–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Law, John
2009 “Actor network theory and material semiotics.” In The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, ed. by Bryan Turner, 141–158. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leudar, Ivan and Jiří Nekvapil
2004 “Media dialogical networks and political argumentation.” Journal of Language and Politics 3 (2): 247–266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McHoul, Alec W. and Rod Watson
1973 “Two axes for the analysis of ‘commonsense’ and ‘formal’ geographical in classroom talk”. British Journal of Sociology and Education 5 (3): 281–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myers, Greg and Sofia Lampropoulou
2013 “What place references can do in social research interviews.” Discourse Studies 15 (3): 333–351. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nekvapil, Jiří and Ivan Leudar
2006 “Sequencing in media dialogical networks.” Ethnographic Studies 8: 30–43.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Katherine and Amanda LeCouteur
2014 “Naming the problem: A membership categorisation analysis study of family therapy.” Journal of Family Therapy 36: 268–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rapley, Mark, David McCarthy and Alec McHoul
2003 “Mentality or morality: Membership categorisation, multiple meanings and mass murder.” British Journal of Social Psychology 42 (3): 427–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rautajoki, Hanna
2012 “Membership categorisation as a tool for moral casting in TV discussion: The dramaturgical consequentiality of guest introductions.” Discourse Studies 14 (2): 243–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1972 “On the analysability of stories by children.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, ed. by John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes, 325–345. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
1974 “On the analysability of stories by children.” In Ethnomethodology: Selected Readings, ed. by Roy Turner, 216–232. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
1979 “A revolutionary category: Hotrodder.” In Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, ed. by George Psathas, 7–14. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
1992 Lectures on Conversation, vol. I & II. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel
2007 “Categories in action: Person-reference and membership categorisation.” Discourse Studies 9 (4): 433–466. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shrikant, Natasha
2018 “The discursive construction of race as a professional identity category in two Texas Chambers of Commerce.” International Journal of Business Communication 55 (1): 94–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverman, David
1998 Harvey Sacks: Social Science and Conversation Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sowińska, Agnieszka and Tatiana Dubrovskaja
2012 “Discursive construction and transformation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ categories in the newspaper coverage on the US anti-ballistic missile system: Polish versus Russian version.” Discourse & Communication 6 (4): 449–468. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth
2003 “Mothers, single women and sluts: Gender, morality and membership categorisations in neighbour disputes.” Feminism and Psychology 13 (3): 317–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 “ ‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’: Conversation analysis, membership categorisation and men’s denials of violence towards women.” Discourse & Society 21 (1): 59–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Moving forward with membership categorisation analysis: Methods for systematic analysis”. Discourse Studies 14: 277–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth and Frederick Attenborough
2015 “Prospective and retrospective categorisation: Category proffers and inferences in social interaction and rolling news media.” In Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis, ed. by Richard Fitzgerald and William Housley, 51–70. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Turner, Roy
1974 Ethnomethodology: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Watson, Rod
1978 “Categorization, authorization and blame-negotiation in conversation.” Sociology 12 (1): 105–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997 “Some general reflections on ‘categorisation’ and ‘sequence’ in the analysis of conversation.” In Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorisation Analysis, ed. by Stephen Hester and Peter Eglin, 49–76. Washington D.C.: University Press of America.Google Scholar
(ed.) 2009 Analysing Practical and Professional Texts: A Naturalistic Approach. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Whitehead, Kevin A.
2012 “Racial categories as resources and constraints in everyday interactions: Implications for racialism and non-racialism in post-apartheid South Africa.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 (7): 1248–1265. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, Kevin A. and Kim Baldry
2018 “Omni-relevant and contingent membership categories in research interview and focus group openings.” Qualitative Research 18 (2): 135–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, Don H.
1978 “Ethnomethodology.” The American Sociologist 13: 6–15.Google Scholar