Whitehead, Kevin A., Stokoe, Elizabeth 
ORCID: 0000-0002-7353-4121 and Raymond, Geoffrey
(2024)
An introduction to categories in social interaction.
In:
Categories in Social Interaction.
Routledge, pp. 16-49.
ISBN 9781003120599
Abstract
In this chapter, we describe the approach we develop in this book. We locate it both in its broader social science context, where categories have been theorized and studied, and in its origins in both Harvey Sacks’s lectures on conversation and Harold Garfinkel’s challenge to mainstream sociology: ethnomethodology. We explain a basic distinction between the way categories are deployed, on the one hand, by academics in the course of their research (analysts’ categories) and, on the other, by (lay) people (members’ categories) – the latter as exemplified in the extracts presented earlier. We chart the origins and trajectory of this fundamental distinction from Sacks’s and Garfinkel’s early work through to the development of membership categorization analysis and discursive psychology, where most of the research on categories (and category-adjacent topics, like identity) has been conducted. We draw on empirical examples throughout the chapter, before setting out the book’s key themes and contributions, which centre on examining the reciprocal relationships between categorial phenomena and the “generic” organizations of practice for talk-in-interaction described by Schegloff (2006a, 2007a).
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | © 2025 Informa UK Limited |
| Divisions: | Psychological and Behavioural Science |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Jan 2025 16:18 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Feb 2025 04:14 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127013 |
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