Special issue section
Constructing desirable brides
Membership categorization, medium of education, and arranged marriages
This paper utilizes Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) and Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine the
entwined relationships among interaction, storytelling, and membership categorization. While demonstrating how a storytelling
event in a qualitative research interview and the categories constructed within it are skillfully wielded by the teller to meet
interactional exigencies, this single case analysis shows how members do
culture-in-action (
Hester and Eglin 1997) related to arranged marriage negotiations in the Indian context. A close
examination of the emic categories produced in the interview reveals how the interactants collaboratively co-construct the social
structures surrounding arranged marriages and the notion of ‘desirable’ brides. Illustrating the salience of medium-of-education
(MoE) in these emic constructions of desirable brides, the analysis reveals the marginalization of Hindi-medium-educated (HME)
women in the arranged marriage sphere.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Arranged marriages in India
- 1.2Conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis
- 2.The study
- 2.1The story
- 2.1.1The pre-story
- 2.1.2Setting the stage
- 2.1.3The perfect match
- 2.1.4The dogged pursuit
- 3.Conclusion
-
References