Article published In: Categorization in multilingual storytelling
Edited by Matthew T. Prior and Steven Talmy
[Pragmatics and Society 10:3] 2019
► pp. 359–374
Special issue section
Membership categorization and storytelling
The cake story
Published online: 22 October 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18010.day
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18010.day
Abstract
In this paper, we demonstrate how the collaborative and sequential unfolding of a story ties into
the constitution of a membership categorization device which we have glossed as ‘us and them’. The data come
from a focus group activity where first and second generation immigrants to Denmark have been asked to discuss
their situation in Denmark. Using Ethnomethodological Conversation and Membership Categorization Analysis, we
present one story which involves a story-teller and his family and an elderly Danish couple living in the same
block of flats. In the telling of the story, co-participants align and affiliate, and disalign and
disaffiliate, at sequentially relevant junctions. We will argue that not only do such phenomena indicate
listenership and possible agreement to the moral of the story in its telling, but also to the morally
implicative categorical work involved in the story’s telling.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Data
- Analysis: The cake story
- Conclusion
Bibliography
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Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Burdelski, Matthew & Noriko Takei
Lee, Yo-An
2022. Conversational storytelling. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 101 ff.
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