Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) 24622474

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Journal of Pragmatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Membership-in-action: Operative identities in a family meal

Carly W. Butler a,*, Richard Fitzgerald b
a b

Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK School of Journalism and Communication, Joyce Ackroyd Building, The University of Queensland, QLD 4072, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 6 November 2009 Received in revised form 3 March 2010 Accepted 15 March 2010 Keywords: Family Identity Membership categorization Conversation analysis

One challenge for conversation analytic research on identity is to demonstrate that and how identities are made relevant and consequential for the participants of an interaction. Drawing on Harvey Sackss work on membership categorization and conversation analytic methods, the aim of this paper is to explore the reexive codetermination (Schegloff, 2007a) of membership and social actionhow participants make sense of particular actions through an orientation to locally relevant membership categories, and how category membership is invoked in the enactment of particular social actions. Using videorecordings of a meal shared by a young child, his parents, and his grandparents, the paper examines how identities are made operative in and through the moment-by-moment organization of specic sequences of action. The analysis examines how participants oriented to membership within stage-of-life and family categories, and as guests and hosts, and shows how the relevance of these memberships was enacted through, and consequential for, phenomena such as turn design, turn-taking organization and embodied action. In demonstrating how the relevance and consequentiality of a particular identity can shift over the course of a sequence the paper engages with analytic problems involved in research on identityparticularly with respect to the operation of social structural identities (such as child) when contextually bound identities (such as guest) are also potentially relevant and consequential. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction This paper addresses the issue of identities and relationships as they are made operative in a sequence of interaction involving a family group. Drawing on ethnomethodological conversation analytic methods, the paper describes how family members display and use identities as child, parent and grandparent during a shared meal. Our analytic focus is not on families per se, but, on the practical organization of social actions that constitute family interactions, and when and how identities are invoked in and through the organization of particular instances of social action.1 Furthermore we engage with methodological issues involved in research invoking the relevance of identities in relation to social action, by treating identities as a topic rather than a resource for analysis. The analysis combines Harvey Sackss (1972a,b, 1979, 1995) work on membership categories with a conversation analytic interest in the sequential organization of talk-in-interaction (e.g. Schegloff, 2007c). The paper begins with a brief summary of Sackss account of membership categories and devices as a descriptive apparatus before then examining work on unspecied, or tacit, orientations to membership and identity. This

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1509 223355. E-mail addresses: c.w.butler@lboro.ac.uk, carlywbutler@gmail.com (C.W. Butler), r.tzgerald@uq.edu.au (R. Fitzgerald). 1 For examples of conversation analytic research on interactional practices within families, and between parents and children more generally, see, Forrester (2008), C. Goodwin (2007), M.H. Goodwin (2006, 2007), Wootton (1997, 2007). 0378-2166/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.03.006

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background provides the conceptual and methodological frame through which the data examples are then examined, in light of current methodological issues around the study of identity in interaction. 1.1. Sacks and membership categorization Sackss (1972a,b, 1979, 1995) work on membership categories addresses the sense-making and reasoning practices people use in producing social action and social order in everyday life. It deals with descriptive and inferential aspects of talk and text and looks at how people do and recognize descriptions and activities. One aspect of this relates to the use and recognizability of membership categories classications of types of people, such as woman, Buddhist, child, dentist, soccer player, and so on. Sacks suggested that certain categories can be heard to go together using membership categorization devices (MCDs) composed of the collections of categories and rules for their application. So, for instance, the membership categories mother, father, child can be heard to go together using the membership category device family. The application of Sackss discussions of the use of categories and devices in describing people and actions has been a focus of subsequent research in the area that has been termed membership categorization analysis (MCA, see Hester and Eglin, 1997a; Housley and Fitzgerald, 2002), and has been drawn on widely in ethnomethodologically inspired research on identity (see for example Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998). Work in this domain has examined how categories are deployed in the descriptions people make, including not only descriptions of people, but of peoples actions through consideration of category bound activities (actions that are tied to a particular category membership such as crying is to baby in Sackss (1972b) classic example), and the associated hearers and viewers maxims. Whereas the hearers maxim refers to the ways in which formulated descriptions of members are heard as being consistent and recognizable, the viewers maxims relate to how membership and action are observed and understood: If a Member sees a category-bound activity being done, then, if one can see it being done by a member of a category to which the activity is bound, then: see it that way. The viewers maxim is another relevance rule in that it proposes that for a viewer of a category-bound activity the category to which the activity is bound has a special relevance for formulating an identication of its doer. (Sacks, 1972b:338). The maxims thus provide for the recognizability of category membership in situated contexts. Categories, and the categoryboundedness of certain activities, therefore serve as a sense-making device to account for, interpret, and produce understandings and action. 1.2. Tacitly invoked membership A much less explored domain of Sackss work on membership categories relates to the ways in which MCDs are invoked without the use of any category terms, i.e. the relevance of category membership and devices beyond instances of description. One aspect of this involves examination of the reexive co-determination (Schegloff, 2007a:473) of action and membershipthat is, how sense is made of particular actions by virtue of the locally relevant identity of the speaker, and similarly how the speakers identity is implicated in the characterization of social action. For example, Sacks (1995) discussed how an utterance was analysed by members as initiating a closing in a group therapy session by virtue of the speakers membership as therapist. It was argued that a therapy device, with the categories of therapists and patients, had an omnirelevance for the interaction in the sense that it served as a locus for social action within the bounds of the encounter. Thus, actions and memberships were understood and generated through the operation of the device, and when invoked the device had a priority for the local social action. In this respect, the device served as both an inferential and organizational framework (see also Butler, 2008; Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Fitzgerald et al., 2009; McHoul and Rapley, 2002 for further discussions of omnirelevant devices). In one of the earliest ethnomethodological examinations of the sequential resources through which identity is made relevant in interaction, Schenkein (1978a) examined how a salesman and client juggle(d) their ofcial and abstract identities with informal and personal identities (p. 58) within the opening moments of their interaction. Schenkeins focus was on identity-rich aspects of the turns at talk, and the sequences in which identity puzzles and solutions were accomplished. Through the demonstration of how identities were exhibited, negotiated, engaged and disengaged with in and through the sequential organisation of talk, the analysis convincingly reveals the integral relationship between sequence and category membership, and how identity can be examined without being explicitly referred to. Unlike most contemporary research, Schenkeins work is unfettered by the analytic boundaries that now regularly divide conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. An interest in the tacit aspects of membership categorization, as opposed to the use of formulations of categories and activities, has the potential to lead to what Schegloff (1995a) described as a promiscuous analytic application of interpretations to members conduct that is not grounded in the details of talk in the way that is generally regarded to be essential in conversation analytic research. Within conversation analysis, the onus has been on analysts to demonstrate that and how identities, or categories, are made relevant and consequential to the members themselves in the moment-by-moment organization of their interactions (Schegloff, 1987, 1991, 1992, 2007a). In many respects, however, the relevance of

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members identities for making sense of the social actions observed by the analyst is an underlying and regularly unexplicated component of conversation analyses. For instance, Schegloff (1972) discusses the notion of recipient design as involving a members analysispeople take into account who they are talking to in the design and organization of their turns at talk.2 With few exceptions, an explicit concern with how people analyse the memberships of their co-interactants has rarely been the focus of much conversation analytic research.3 Moreover, while recipient design is assumed and core to the analytic approach, it has seldom been topicalised as a domain of interactional practice in its own accord. One exception is the body of research on talk in institutional settings, which has sought to demonstrate how the identities of the parties involved are demonstrably oriented to within the interactions on a moment-by-moment basis (e.g. Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Schenkein, 1978a; Wilson, 1991; Zimmerman, 1984). There has been less research on tacit invocations of identities in everyday conversational settings, although recent work has begun to demonstrate that and how the identities and relationships of members are made relevant in talk without the use of explicit category terms (Benwell and Stokoe, 2006; Butler, 2008; Raymond and Heritage, 2006; Pomerantz and Mandelbaum, 2005; Stokoe, 2009, under review). For example, Raymond and Heritage (2006) discuss how the identity of a speaker as a grandparent is made demonstrably relevant and consequential in the production of assessments about her grandchildren in a telephone conversation with her friend. The analysis begins not with a characterization of the participants of the interaction (i.e. as two friends, or as grandparents), but with the practices for doing assessments and how epistemic rights are managed within this social action (Heritage and Raymond, 2005). The paper continues with a single case analysis which demonstrates how the primary epistemic rights of the grandparent are oriented to throughout an extended sequence. In this sense, the identity of one member of the interaction as the grandparent, without being explicitly named as such, was consequential for aspects of turn design, turn content, and the trajectory of the sequence. Raymond and Heritage (2006) began with the identication of a generic and recurring practice for asserting and orienting to epistemic rights within assessments and then used this analysis to identify orientations to particular memberships in a particular piece of data. To this end, they did not begin with the question of who the members were and then seek to show this, but used a particular piece of data to illustrate how structural practices are employed to make identities relevant and consequential. As such, the work is closely aligned with the aims and procedures of conversation analytic research, and offers a promising way forward in integrating sequential conversation analysis with its rarely explicated interest in who speakers are in relation to one another and the local interaction. Some of Sackss work on identity, presented after he appeared to have stopped using the terminology of his earlier membership categorization work, offers a variant of this sort of analysis. Unlike Raymond and Heritage (2006), this work does not focus on a particular interactional practice, but traces how certain identities are made operative over the course of a single interaction. In a section of a lecture titled The old man as an evolved natural object (Vol. 2, Winter 1971, March 11), Sacks examined an extended sequence of mealtime talk between a middle-aged couple, their son, and their (widowed) stepfather. The focus of the discussion was on the recognizability of identity through the actions being done by the participants, and how the sequential organization of the interaction, and specic instances within it, involved the generation of the relevance of the members identities. Sacks described how some identities became operative identities (p. 327)that is, identities that were produced and made relevant over the course of an interaction. This is not to suggest that the identities were created in the midst of an interaction, but that identities that were not being used at the beginning of the interaction came to be employed. In this work, the operative identity of the old man as an old man, and as a burden was accomplished through the repeated attempts of the mans son and daughter-in-law to get him to eat some herring. After an offer was rejected, a request was delivered, followed by a threat (along the lines of the man becoming sick if he didnt eat). Schegloff (1995b) describes Sackss analysis of this data as a presenting both ends of a range of types of analysis which often appeal differentially to readers of conversation-analytic work (p. xxvii). The different appeals of the analysis relate to the interest in the sequential organization of talk (how an offer is followed by a request and then a threat, and so on) on the one hand, and the categorial organization (in the sense of the tacit relationships between the parties that emerge into relevance over the course of the sequence and come eventually to drive it (p. xxvii)) on the other. Sackss analysis while absent of any references to categories and MCDs is a compelling demonstration of how the sequential and inferential orders of interaction can be examined in parallel in a way which contributes to both endeavours. While recent work has emphasized the value of such integration (e.g. Butler, 2008; Housley and Fitzgerald, 2002; Hester and Eglin, 1997b; Stokoe, 2006; Stokoe and Smithson, 2001; Watson, 1997), the methodological and analytic form that such integration may take remains underdeveloped and somewhat contentious (see for example Carlins (2010) discussion of Schegloffs (2007a) tutorial on membership categorization).

2 As Watson (1981, p. 99) writes, . . . the procedures of membershipping and of recipient design are reexively related phenomena. A membership analysis is established, in part, through the vehicle of recipient design, while the course of the recipient design is itself conducted through consultation of the emergent membership analysis. 3 Using both institutional and conversational data, Stokoe (under review) describes how shared membership can be made relevant through a systematic categorial practice with three co-occurring turn design features: a description, a categorization and a common knowledge component. Stokoe shows how these aspects of turn design can be used to invite the recipient to recognize their shared membership with the speaker. Through an integrated analysis of membership and sequential work, the paper demonstrates clearly how recipient design is actively and systematically accomplished within talk for interactional purposes. See also Stokoe (2009) for a discussion of how category membership is invoked and used in self-disclosures by police ofcers.

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1.3. The viewers maxim as analytic resource In making claims about the relevance and consequentiality of identities where such identities are not explicitly formulated, such as arguing that some aspect of the talk is bound to a particular category, the analyst risks relying on cultural knowledge in a way which has the potential to overlook and override the sense-making practices of the participants themselves. While conversation analytic researchers seek as much as possible to avoid transposing their own common-sense understandings onto a piece of data (indeed, the interest in ethnomethods requires this), it is in some respects inevitable that researchers will themselves employ the viewers maxim (Sacks, 1972b) when they aim to make sense of a scene (Wilson, 1991). It is only by virtue of the analysts membership within a culture shared by the people they study that they can see identities such as old man as a burden and friend (e.g. Benwell and Stokoe, 2006; Pomerantz and Mandelbaum, 2005) being made relevant and consequential within an interaction. As such, claims about identities that are seen to be invoked or alluded to in talk can be seen as provisional and deniable (Benwell and Stokoe, 2006:84). The following discussion explores membership categorization and the operation of membership categorization devices within a family meal in a way that is unashamedly provisional and deniable. The analysis is grounded by its interest in the sequential organization of talk-in-interaction using conversation analysis, but it extends this by exploring the inferential order that the participants appear to draw on and produce in the organization of social action. In this way the analysis draws on common-sense understandings about children and parents, for example, but the aim is to unpack when and how the members orient to membership in these categories (and to other category memberships) in the moment-by-moment unfolding of a sequence of action. To this end, the paper aims to show how various memberships are made operative (Sacks, 1995) in particular instances of interaction, and to reveal aspects of the reexive codetermination (Schegloff, 2007a) of membership and action, by looking at sequences of action on a turn-by-turn basis, and showing how membership and identity are organized in this way. That is, it is not that participants enter an interaction with a particular identity, and subsequently conduct themselves and are treated as a person with that identity for the entirety of that interaction; but, rather, that the multiple memberships that a person may have are variously made relevant and consequential (or not) in the course of particular episodes of interaction. As such, the analysis considers not just the relevance of social structural identities (such as child and parent), but of locally and contextually bound memberships (such as guest and host) as they are made relevant in and through sequences of action. 2. Data and analysis The data used in this study is a video-recording of a breakfast between family membersone child (age unknown, but estimated to be around two to three years old), his parents, and his grandparents. The data was collected as part of a Masters dissertation (Sheriff, 2007) and made available to the rst author.4 Very little is known about the details of the participants, so (tentative) claims about the relationships of the participants and other ethnographic information are deduced from the data itself. It would appear that the child (Jason) and parents (Eric and Sara) are visiting Erics parents (Kate and Bob).5 In Fig. 1, Sara and Eric are seen sitting at the left hand side of the table, Kate is at the head of the table facing the camera, with Bob to the right, and Jason with his back to the camera. The paper is based on just three short excerpts of talk from one interaction that is not much more than an hour long. As such the paper is not intended to offer a broad picture of family interaction, or how specic types of identities are invoked in interaction. The aim is both narrower and broader than this. It is narrower in the sense that the analysis looks at small segments of talk between a particular group of people in a particular time and place in order to see what is happening here. The breadth of the analysis, and its intended key contribution, is that in these small segments we see some practices which may be more generalizablenot in terms of looking at family talk, but in a methodological sense. In seeking to integrate Sackss work on membership categories and devices with a detailed sequential analysis, the focus of the analysis becomes how the identities and memberships of people are implicated in the production and organization of social action. It does this by exploring the idea of MCDs as not simply an analysts resource, but as something enacted and made operational (and relevant and consequential) by members themselves in the course of interacting with one another. This aim is undertaken without relying on instances where category terms are explicitly used, but through analysis of the sense-making practices that could be seen to be invoked through the organization of social action. As such, the analysis embraces and explores the equivocality inherent in claims about social structural membership in categories such as child. 2.1. Invoking membership through speaker selection The rst extract is from the very start of the recording, and begins as Jason and his parents Sara and Eric are taking their seats at the table. Kate remains standing and is placing things on the table, and looking at the table settings, while Bob is
Participants gave consent for the data to be used by other researchers. The fact that the matter of whose house it is is observable in the data without any explicit reference to this actually being the case throughout the whole recording offers an illustration of the viewers maxim in action. This interpretation of the context is driven entirely by the organization of the actions of the various participants of the meal and it is with a strong sense of certainty that this claim is made. The actions of all participants can be used to categorize them as guests and hosts, so, in Sackss (1972b) terms if you see it that way then see it that way (p.338). The analysis itself offers further discussion of how memberships as guest and host are displayed, and made relevant and consequential in and for the interaction.
5 4

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Fig. 1. The family.

returning to his seat after switching on the video camera. There are plates of food at the settings for the adults, but nothing in front of the seat that Jason sits in. The interest is in the identities and relationships invoked through the offer of a plate for Jason (lines 78), and across the subsequent talk.

Kates interrogatively produced offer, do you want a separate plate for him follows Erics offer to Jason of a (big) breakfast with Daddy (lines 1 and 3). Curl (2006) suggests that do you want prefaced offers are regularly used when a problem has been educed from prior talk, and Kates offer appears to treat the absence of plate for Jason as problematic following Erics offer of a big breakfast for him. In making the offer, Kate displays an orientation to the practicalities of the meal and by assuming responsibility for providing plates, her membership as a host could be heard to be in operation here. As Sacks (1995) says in relation to Ethels management of the herring being brought to the table by asking her husband to bring it out for Max (the old man) to try: . . .these sorts of statements occur with serious restrictions on them, having to do with whose place this is, who it is thats being referred to. . . not anybody in a room with persons gathered around on some social occasion says something like bring out the drinks or bring out the herring . . . that Ethel does it, she does by virtue of a series of positions she has, relative to this place . . . (p. 328). Thus, we can see Kates offer as predicated to her role as hostas part of ensuring that the guests have the provisions that they need.6 However, the design of the offer, and whom it selects as next speaker, also sets into play the relevancies of Jasons membership as a child and Kate and Erics memberships as parents. Kates gaze is on the table before, during and after her utterance, which means that making sense of who is being selected to answer is accomplished tacitly (Lerner, 2003). The
6 Kates quietly spoken and cut off now (line 7) possibly serves as a sequential locator (Sacks, 1995, vol. 2:22), in that it positions the utterance in relation to the talk and action around it. It demonstrates Kates ongoing concern with preparing the table and marks the offer of a plate as just one activity within a broader sequence of activity. The situation established by Erics offer of a big breakfast for Jason may trigger the organization of this particular task (establishing whether Jason needs a plate) at this particular moment. That said, Kate cuts off the now and rushes through (Schegloff, 2007c) to the offer which appears to break the contiguity between the sequential locator and the offer, which may be explained by the delegation of the responsibility for managing this task to Eric and/or Sara. This delegation is then ratied by Saras collective reference form lets at line 10.

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third person reference to Jason excludes him as a recipient, and Eric and Sara as Jasons parents are implicitly selected to accept or reject the offer on his behalf. Kates offer, then, operates on the common-sense understanding that parents make decisions relating to their child (in this case, whether they have a separate plate). As such, we could understand Kate to be invoking a family device through an orientation to the rights and responsibilities predicated to the memberships parent child. So, while memberships are not explicated in the talk itself, the practices of speaker selection and turn design position the various members in terms of their identities and relationships with one another.7 In the 1.2 second silence at line 3 following Kates question, Eric briey holds his posture (he has just sat down in his chair) and, leaning forward, looks directly at Jason (Fig. 2). In this way he selects Jason to accept or reject Kates offer. Jason nods as an acceptance which demonstrates his understanding of himself as the person referred to by Kate, and of Erics gaze as selecting him to respond to Kates offer. When Jason nods, Eric nods in responseperhaps an embodied version of a repeat for conrmation. Through these non-verbal actions (Erics gaze and Jasons nod), the identity-relevant aspects of the way Kate delivered the offer are somewhat deected. Eric and/or Sara have been asked to answer on behalf of Jason, through invocation of their membership as parents and Jasons stage-of-life membership as a childbut by selecting Jason and treating him as the proper person to determine whether he has a plate, Eric dissipates the interactional relevance of these memberships. Importantly for what happens next, none of the other members appear to see Eric select Jason, although Bob observes Jason nodding. Sara begins to respond to Kate with Oh lets:, then turns towards Jasons empty setting at the table and restarts her turn with yeah lets give him a plate (line 4) which accepts Kates offer.8 As Heritage (1998) suggests, oh-prefaced responses to enquiries are used to display that a question is problematic in terms of its relevance, appropriateness or presuppositions (p. 295). Saras oh treats the question, and the underlying preposition of this (that Jason does not have his own plate) as inappositeJason clearly needs a plate unless he is spoon-fed or his food is given to him on the table. The use of the collective reference lets does further work that points to the reexive relationship between membership and action. While Eric and/or Sara (as parents) had been invited to respond to the offer, Saras response collapses the memberships made relevant in this offer and instead distributes responsibility for the decision about whether Jason gets a plate to a larger group that is heard to include Kate. This could be understood as a form of partitioning that makes Kate a co-member with Sara and Eric (Sacks, 1995). In so doing, Kates response is designed as an agreement rather than an acceptance, which skillfully manages the inapposite nature of Kates offer and the presuppositions it embodied. As Sara is answering Kate, Bob announces Jasons nod. Bob, and then Sara, laugh. The laughter and that Jasons nod is treated as an observable orients to Jasons apparent self-selection as inapposite in the sense that Jason indicated his want of a plate when he was not personally offered one (given that neither Bob or Sara saw that Jason had effectively been invited to respond). While, the apparent inappositeness of Jasons response could be understood in terms of sequential organization (i.e. Jason self-selects when someone else has been asked to respond), arguably it is Jasons membership that is made relevant in treating his apparent self-selection as humorous. By answering for himself rather than having Sara or Eric decide for him, Jasons response can be understood as (and is treated as) a category-predicate disjuncture, in that Jason is displaying responsibilities for an activity that his parents have been accorded rights to and responsibilities for. In addition, Jasons apparent self-selection displays an independence that challenges the category-boundedness of rights and competencies that were invoked in Kates question through the invocation of the stage-of-life device. The relevance and consequentiality of the family device and stage-of-life are thus inseparable within this extract. While directing the offer of a plate for Jason to his parents invokes the rights and responsibilities of the parents, it is based on presuppositions about the predicated activities of Jason as a young child. The relevance of membership and family identities and stage-of-life membership is produced and oriented to in the minutiae of the moment-by-moment interaction. The relevance of category memberships and their predicated rights and responsibilities are not simply invoked and displayed (i.e. Kates selection of Eric and/or Sara and use of him to refer to Jason), but are transformed, challenged and perhaps even undermined in the ne detail of talk-in-interactionthrough a gaze (Erics selection of Jason), a reference form (Saras lets), and a nod (Jasons response). Category memberships are thus not merely tied to the actions being done in this sequence and the understandings that people display in relation to these actions, but are integral to the accomplishment of action and intersubjectivity across the sequence. While Jasons membership as a child of Sara and Eric is a stable and structural reality, the ways in which this is invoked and oriented to within this short segment of action demonstrates how this identity is made operative as part and parcel of social action (Sacks, 1995). 2.2. Layering membership relevance within an expansion sequence The next example also involves an offer of something for Jason, but this time the offer is made directly to Jason. After Jason accepts the offer, the sequence is expanded in a way that both reveals and generates operational identities of the
7 See Lerner (1993, 2003, unpublished) for further discussions of how membership (including aspects of entitlement and authority) can be implicated in practices of speaker selection. 8 It should be noted that Kate turns towards the kitchen to get a plate at lets in Saras turn. The visual data, however, does not appear to show her observing Jasons nod as her gaze is held throughout towards the table. It may be the case that she sees Erics nodding conrmation of Jasons response.

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Fig. 2. [Line 9].

participants. At the beginning of the extract shown, Bob is talking about attending his daughters graduation with the attention of Sara and Eric (and initially Kate). Jason is drinking milk from his cup.

Beginning at line 8 Kate looks at Jason, who has tipped the cup up horizontally while drinking. She does so with a smile and tilts her head slightly while watching him (Fig. 3)9 which Bob appears to notice and follows her gaze to Jason. As Jason reaches the end of his drink he makes a loud slurping noise before placing his cup on the table. At this point all of the adults turn to Jason, with laughter by Kate and smiles by the others. Kates observation I think youre nished? (line 12) is triggered by Jasons embodied displays of having emptied his cup. The noticing also effectively brings a halt to the ongoing conversation, with Bob not bringing his turn to completion. It seems tempting to argue that Jasons slurping is done by virtue of his membership as a child, and perhaps as some sort of attention-getting device, but there is no orientation to this
9

The double lines indicate the point in the transcript at which the still was taken.

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Fig. 3. [line 8 theyre//all as excited].

action as being category-bound by the other participants. To invoke a stage-of-life device at this point would therefore fail to provide anything analytically interesting other than a demonstration of the analysts own, speculative, common-sense reading of this action. Over subsequent turns, however, there appears to be a stronger analytic warrant for bringing in the relevance and consequentiality of the stage-of-life device. Kate follows her noticing with an offer, you want some more? (line 13), a questioning assertion that appears to be triggered by the slurping and invites conrmation. Jason nods very slightly as an acceptance which, pragmatically, completes the sequence and raties Jasons membership as offer-recipient. There do not appear to be any categories invoked through Kates offer other than offer-maker and offer-recipient, although Kates membership as host is potentially made resonant by virtue of the action of offering food and drink being seen as predicated to this category. However, the offer sequence is then expanded and in the course of this expansion other memberships are made relevant and consequential. First, Kate repeats the offer with a modied repeat of her initial offer, more? which serves as a (re-)conrmation request, and/or a treatment of Jasons response as not adequate. In overlap, Eric self-selects to essentially repeat Kates initial offer at line 13 with want some more? (line 24). Jason nods very slightly to accept the offer (again), or conrm his acceptance following the repeats. This is immediately followed by a prompt from Ericwhat do you say then? Jasons response, some more grandma is not a tted response (such as yes please) in that it is not clearly an acceptance of an offer, but is instead more suggestive of a request for more milk. This response is met with laughter from his parents and a positive assessment from both grandparents. Kate then grants Jason more milk as contingent on his response, and Sara begins to pick up the milk to pour it. After the action of pouring is already underway, Kate announces that Mummy will pour it for him. Over the course of the expansion, then, it is clear that identities other than offer-maker and offer-recipient are made operative. Erics offer at line 16 is in many respects redundant in that he is repeating something that has already been said, and does so in overlap with a pursuit already set in place through Kates repeat. Through this intervening action (Lerner, unpublished), Eric clearly accomplishes more than mere repetition. One very gross and formalistic interpretation of what transpires is that Eric, as Jasons father, is undertaking a kind of relaying of the question. The grossness of this description of the action comes from its grounding within a common-sense understanding of the sorts of things parents do, and rests on the analysts deployment of the viewers maxim (Sacks, 1972b). When parents repeat what other adults say to children, they may be invoking their greater rights to speak to their children and their greater familiarity with the language competencies of their child. They may also be seen to invite their child to correct or otherwise alter what they have said as a predicate of being a parent. Erics repetition of the offer (which, remember has already been accepted) thus appears to make relevant category memberships that are lessstraightforwardly offer-maker and offer-recipient. Kate has made an offer, Eric is doing something additional to this and initiates the deployment of the categorization device that becomes more evident in the subsequent turns.10 The prompting what do you say then (line 18) is idiomatic in its recognizability as a request for a child to say please or thank you, with the then indicating the contingency of some display of good manners after this acceptance of an offer. It is
10 As Jasons nod was very slight and there was not a verbalized response, Kate and Erics repeats might serve as redo invitationswhich invites the last speaker to repeat some last operation and come up with a different response (Schegloff, 1984:40). It seems plausible to treat this as an example of an adult encouraging a child to communicate in a certain way, although there is little in the data itself to suggest that is Jasons membership as a child that is oriented to through the repeated offer. Similar repetitions occur in adult talk (e.g. Schegloff, 1984)the local issue here is whether Jasons response was adequate and this in itself does not reveal the operation of specically child membership. Given what happens in the subsequent turns, however, there is evidence that these repeats are dealing with the adequacy of Jasons response and in these latter turns do orient to Jasons membership as a child in prompting for a revised acceptance. As Lerner (unpublished) suggests, the question of the ability of very young children to respond has an ongoing relevance for their coparticipantsthat is, their competence as interactants can be brought into question at each point at which a contribution might be called for and it is brought into view in terms of each specic moment-to-moment opportunity to participate . . . moments of heightened normativity are taken as teachable moments as opportunities to instruct and model. . . (pp. 5051, fn 14, italics in original).

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a known answer question not only in the sense that the parent knows what will be said, but in that it is assumed that the child knows what to say but has not yet said it. That is, some expected and appropriate utterance has not been produced, and the absence of this is treated as accountable. When Jason delivers his request, some more grandma in response to this prompt, the positive assessments of the grandparents demonstrate an orientation to the way Jason has delivered his response and the action he has done. The positive assessment is in third positionwhich gives the sequence a pedagogical frame with a classic Initiation-Response-Evaluation sequence (IRE, e.g. Mehan, 1979): the father prompts for a particular response (inviting a known answer), the child gives the response, and the grandparents evaluate this. Kates orientation to the contingency of more milk on a polite request, by saying you can have some more now does further pedagogical work. So, at the point of Erics interjection in the sequence (and potentially in Kates repeat at line 15), memberships other than offer-maker and offer-recipient are clearly and unequivocally brought into play, with a stage-of-life or family device implicated in the way the sequence plays out. Jasons response has been monitored not only for whether it completes the adjacency pair offer-accept (which it does), but for the way in which this action is carried out. In this case, his acceptance is clearly being treated as inadequate, and the prompt for a particular type of acceptance demonstrates the relevance and consequences of these expectations. We can view this sort of sanctioning of the adequacy of a childs response as predicated to parents, thereby implicating the operation of a parentchild relational pair using the family device. Parents have a particular entitlement with respect to actions such as this that other adults do not have (without being seen to be overstepping the mark or in some way undermining or criticising the parent). However, it is not possible to separate the family device from the stage-of-life device in this instance. If Bob, Erics fatherhad prompted Eric with what do you say then (adult parent to adult child) an entirely different action would be accorded it. Most likely, it would be treated as a joke. So, while Eric as the parent displays some sort of responsibility with regard to monitoring and correcting Jasons response, it is through the operation of the stage-of-life device in concert with, and inextricably linked with, the operation of the family device that this prompt seems normal and given a routine avour. As such, this demonstrates how the dual membership of categories such as child within various devices is made relevant in the moment-by-moment organisation of turns and social actions. A common-sense gloss of what is going on in this extract is the deployment of the stage-of-life device in the sense that Jasons membership as a child seems highly relevant to the way the sequence pans out. However, the sequence begins and ends with an orientation to membership as offer-maker and offer-recipient. If we were to take out the expansion sequence (Schegloff, 2007c), what would be left is: 13 14 27 Kate: You want some more? Jason: (nods) Kate: Mummy will pour it for you

By granting her permission for Jason to have some morealbeit contingent on the proper response by Jason, Kate also reorients to her membership as offerer and host. After Sara has already begun to pour Jason the milk, Kate adds Mummy will pour it for you. This is a sequentially irrelevant turn (given that the action has already commenced and is obvious), but it further establishes Kates role as the person who offered Jason the milk, and raties her membership as host that was made resonant through her initial offer.11 Thus at the head and tail of this sequence, we see the operation of a more contextually situated device, rather than a device based on social structural membership. This local device is one which can be used to categorize Jason, Eric and Sara as guests at a breakfast hosted by Kate and Bob. Jasons membership as a child (stage-of-life), and a child of Eric (family) is made operative within this sequence and layered over the underlying operation of the guest host device which could be said to have an omnirelevance for this interaction (see Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002). The differential relevance and consequentiality of the various memberships of the participants thus changes over the course of turns at talkidentities potentially relevant at the beginning and end of the sequence are less relevant in the intervening talk. The apparent deployment of a contextually bounded device for organising action in extract 2 at least in its beginning and end raises the question of whether ostensible displays of social structural identities and relationships (i.e. age and parent/child) might instead be viewed in terms of these locally relevant identities, namely of guest and host. The following example presents a brief interaction in which there is considerable ambiguity in terms of which device is operational for the accomplishment of social action. 2.3. Operative relevance of contextually bound memberships Extract 3 occurs just over thirty seconds after extract 2. After Jason has his milk, the adults begin talking amongst themselves. While Kate is relaying a cartoon in the newspaper to Eric and Bob (untranscribed), Sara turns to Jason and sees
11 It could also be suggested that the announcement that Mummy will pour it for you and the fact that Sara immediately begins to pour the milk once an adequate response had been given is a display of the relevance of stage-of-life membership in that Jasons age means he cannot pour the milk for himself. While the viewers maxim allows us to make sense of the scene in this way, arguably it is the operation of the guest-host device that is more immediately and locally relevant and consequential. Further to this, while one might want to claim that the family device is deployed by virtue of the selection of Mummy to pour the milk, this would appear to be more of a practical issue than a categorical one given that Kate is at the other end of the table.

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Fig. 4. [Line 4, //drink it up nicely].

him with his hand in his cup of freshly poured milk. She reprimands him with hey and physically removes his hand from the milk.

It should be noted in the rst instance that this interaction between Sara and Jason takes place without any attention from the other meal participants, and Saras turns are directed directly straight to Jason in a quiet voice, while leaning towards him (see Fig. 4). Therefore, what is said is not a display to the others and is exclusively for Jason. On the one hand, Sara appears to be doing straightforward parenting work in this example in the sense that she is telling Jason to drink nicely. Rules around eating and drinking are a fundamental aspect of social and cultural normswhat is interesting here is the directive for Jason to display his adherence to these norms to Grandma. In this sense, the directive to show grandma nice drinking from a cup makes relevant a device other than parentchild by orienting to the particularities of this meal and Jasons membership as a guest at grandmas house. In inviting a display of nice drinking, an extrinsic value is attached to normative drinking. Jason is oriented to as having the capacity to drink nicely, but what is made relevant in Saras directive is why he should drink nicely at this particular moment. In that grandmas potential observation of how Jason drinks is used to account for and justify the directive, there is an orientation to the specic context of the meal. Sara invokes her knowledge about how nicely Jason can drink, as someone who has access to his abilities and competencies. By telling Jason to show these competencies to grandma it seems apparent that unless they are displayed, grandma may be unaware of Jasons ability to drink nicely. In this sense it would seem that meals with the grandparents are something of a special event and not a regular occurrence. So, the category membership of Jason as both a grandchild and a guest could be seen to be made relevant here. The rules for appropriate drinking behaviour can, potentially, be produced by virtue of this locally relevant device. The meal itself is not a routine and everyday interaction, and the unique aspects of this encounter are used as a resource for organising action. It should be noted that while Sara uses grandma as person reference and does not do categorization with this reference (Schegloff, 2007b), the person reference makes the membership categories relevant. It is not by virtue of the use of the reference term but through the action itself that the memberships of grandma, and Jason in relation to grandma in the sense of him being a visitor, that a particular MCD is invoked. With this in mind, we might revisit the discussion of extract one. Kates selection of Sara and Eric to accept or reject an offer of a plate for Jason does not only invoke family and stage-of-life devices, but also reveals the operational relevance of the local context. Kate demonstrates her lack of understanding about usual practice in relation to feeding Jason. There is thus a locally specic device in play which both organizes, and is organized by, the action within this bounded encounter. One aspect of this is an understanding or lack thereof about regular behaviours (i.e. does Jason have his own plate and can Jason drink nicely). While both of these instances revolve around Jasons competencies as a child (thereby making the stageof-life device relevant) and are managed through the invocation of a family device, they also demonstrate the operational relevance of the local context.

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If context can be understood as who-we-are-and-what-we-are-doing, then it follows that this local context device with the memberships of host and guest could be understood as operating as a (omnirelevant) framework for social action (see for example Fitzgerald et al., 2009). The matter of who-we-are is innitely broad. In this data, some immediately apparent memberships and relationships of the participants are childparent, childadult, grandchildgrandparent. But, while at times these identities are operational, they are made this way through the specics of the encounter and in specic instances of the interaction. It is not just through who-we-are and what-we-are-doing that certain actions come off in the way that they do, but, rather, through the locally situated combination (and inseparability) of these that social action (and order) is organized and accomplished. While one might argue that membership within age and relational categories is omnirelevant in the sense that they are always potentially relevant, so too are any number of memberships. Use of the viewers maxim allows us to make sense of actions by invoking the relevance of these structural devices (Sacks, 1972b); however, relying too heavily on these cultural understandings can effectively obscure the operation of contextually specic memberships, whereby situated identities (such as guests and hosts) are used in organising social action. 3. Discussion The analysis has demonstrated how various memberships and relationships were made resonant, and relevant and consequential, in the course of interactions during this shared breakfast meal. These memberships and relationships were not merely invoked, but generated, in the sequential production of social actions. While memberships as child, parent, guest and the like exist beyond the bounds of the episodes of interaction examined (that is, the 23 year old boy has always been a child, and will continue to be for the next few years), the purpose of the analysis is to show not that (for example) he is a child, but that and how his membership as a child (and the other memberships discussed) were demonstrably relevant within these sequences of action, and consequential for how those sequences were carried off. A persons membership in a social structural category may be always potentially relevant, but this is not to say that they always are. To use Sackss (1995) term, identities become operative over the course of a sequence. The operative relevance of the identities was activated through and demonstrated in sequential phenomena such as turn-taking organization, which demonstrated the consequentiality of the members locally relevant identities for the production of social action. For instance, in extract one, Jasons membership as a child was made relevant and consequential through Kates selection of Jasons parents to respond to the offer of a plate. When Kate offered Jason another drink of milk in extract two, his identity as a guest (and relatedly, Kates membership as host) was invoked. But when Jasons nod was treated as inadequate and Kate and Eric prompt for a different kind of response, Jasons membership as a child was made operative. At the close of the sequence, Kate reinvoked the relevance of her membership as host and offer-maker. The analysis thus demonstrates how identities are brought in and out of play over the course of a sequence, and are layered in relation to the moment-by-moment organization of action. One can never quite eliminate the pull of common sense in dealing with matters of identity and relationships. For instance, it would be impossible to hear a turn like what do you say then? as an invitation by an adult for a child to display good manners, without accessing cultural knowledge. If the same thing was addressed to an adult we hear a joke of sorts an imitation of an adultchild relationship (see Sacks, 1995). The analyst sees this as do the participants as a categorybound activity through the operation of the viewers maxim (Sacks, 1972b). What analyses such as the one presented here offer is an account of when and how these undeniably category-bound activities are brought into play by members themselves, and in many respects rely on the fact that an inferential order is shared by members and analysts alike. The focus of the paper has been on exploring how apparently common-sense understandings of the relevancies of membership might be seen and discussed in an empirical way, and in a way that prioritizes the members own orientations to these identities. It is difcult to resist the temptation to look at interactions between children and adults and use their membership within different stage-of-life or relational categories to describe what goes on and how social action is organized. But, consistent with the conversation analytic mentality (cf. Schenkein, 1978b), there is a need to demonstrate that this membership is relevant and consequential, not simply assert it (Schegloff, 2007a). For the analyst this would seem to require, in the rst instance, recognition and explication of when and how the viewers maxim (Sacks, 1972b) is used by the analyst themselves to make sense of the members interaction. But in order to ground the analysis in terms of the participants own understandings and action, there needs to be an ongoing consideration of how such understandings may necessarily diverge from the situated orientations of the participants through detailed and thorough analysis of social action itself. To some extent, this involves bracketing off the relevance of the particular production cohorts (Garnkel and Sacks, 1970:346) on an analytic levelsomething that is particularly important when one is dealing with data in which the social structural memberships of the participants seems obviously relevant (see Butler, 2008). When dealing with practices and actions in relation to what are often treated as omnirelevant categories (such as age), applying ethnomethodological indifference (Garnkel and Sacks, 1970) is, one might argue, essential. It is only by trying to set aside the relevance of memberships such as age that are so readily invoked as part of our cultural understandings, that one can fully explicate when and how these are made relevant and consequential by members themselves. While the current paper has sought to show that and how stage of life and relational categories are activated in the course of sequences of action, primarily through the particulars of turn-taking organization and through the trajectory of the sequences examined, it has also shown how more locally specic identities were made operative in the course of activity. Specically, there would appear to be an analytic warrant for claiming the members orientations to memberships within

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guest and host categories. Treating these identities as operationally relevant relies on attending to the situated and contextual nature of the interaction, and the details of the interaction to which the participants are attending. Central to this is a consideration of what memberships might be considered omnirelevant for the participants themselves. Age and relational categories (along with gender and ethnicity) are regularly described as being omnirelevant in the sense that they can always be made relevant within any interaction. Indeed they canas can any number of other facets of identity that may not all be social structural (i.e. a persons membership as dog owner may always be potentially relevant in any number of interactions). For Sacks (1995) however, omnirelevance was something bound to specic interactional contexts, and this is a perspective that deserves further analytic treatment (but see Butler, 2008; Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Fitzgerald et al., 2009; McHoul and Rapley, 2002). Participants may invoke age and gender and the like within an interaction, but the relevant identities for members in terms of some bounded encounter are those that provide for, and are generated through, the locally relevant contextwho-we-are-and-what-we-are-doing. Exactly which identities are activated in the sequences examined in this paper need not necessarily be an either-or question. There are analytically cogent reasons for claiming that both age and guest, for example, were relevant and consequential for the organization of social action in some of these sequences. The analysis demonstrates how there is a layering of category relevancies over the course of the interaction as a whole, and various layers made interactionally relevant and consequential at specic instances of the interaction (see Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002). Ultimately the analysis remains somewhat equivocal as to which identities are in play in any one instance, but it does this without apology. As Benwell and Stokoe (2006) suggest in relation to Sackss work on operative identities, and their own analysis of operative identities among friends, the analysis presented here is both provisional and deniable. The provisional and deniable status of membership categories and their devices is something that analysts can attend to, and perhaps embrace. To do so may allow us to be more alert to the shifts and transformations of memberships within sequences of action, and enable exploration of common-sense interpretations in a way that prioritizes the details of the ways in which members organize interaction. At the same time, there is a need for acknowledgement and exploration of the analysts own deployment of the viewers maxim in making sense of the data and proffering analysis. One of the critiques levelled against work done within Membership Categorization Analysis is that there can be a degree of equivocality in the claims being made regarding the use and deployment of categories and devices (Schegloff, 2007a). Schegloffs (2007b) empirical work on categorization as action offers one way in which categories and devices can be examined in a way which is grounded in members actions and understandingsbut analysis of data without explicit category terms being used may never be able to lay claim to the sort of rigour that characterizes conversation analytic research. The question is whether there is a need to insist on such standards, and whether such an insistence is unnecessarily limiting of an understanding of social order and social action. It may be the case that the equivocality that otherwise subverts category-based inquiry can never fully be neutralized as Schegloff (2007a:475) suggests. At best we might hope to temper some of this equivocality, and accept that when it comes to matters such as identity and the inferential order of talkin-interaction, the tacit nature of such things means that they are irredeemably provisional. 3.1. Conclusion In summary, the analysis has emphasized the in situ relevance of identitieshow they are produced over turns and between participants, and how they may be resisted, transformed and negotiated. The paper demonstrates the relevance of membership categories for the organization of action sequences by showing how social actions activate the relevance of the identity of the recipient and is consequential for how that action is produced. At the same time, the analysis shows how the sequences themselves invoke the relevance of the participants identities, and activate memberships. It is at the level of action that identities are made relevant and consequentialor not. In bringing together a consideration of membership categorization with the sequential organization of talk, the paper contributes to research on the reexive codetermination (Schegloff, 1995b) of membership and action that Sackss work initiated, and demonstrates the potential of an integrated analysis of categories and sequence to ground claims about tacit features of talk-in-interaction in a detailed, empirical, yet unashamedly provisional way. References
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Talk and its occasion: the case of calling the police. In: Shiffren, D. (Ed.), Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications. Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC, pp. 210228. Carly W. Butler is a lecturer in social psychology the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, UK. Her research interests include ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, childrens interactions and play, family interactions, health and counselling helpline interactions and media interviews. She is author of Talk and Social Interaction in the Playground (Ashgate, 2008). Richard Fitzgerald is a senior lecturer in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland, Australia. His research and publications explore media interaction and language, particularly in the areas of news and radio discourse, and the development and application of the methodology of Membership Categorization Analysis and Conversation Analysis for exploring the organization of cultural knowledge and identity in interaction. His recent publications include a special issue of the Australian Journal of Communication (guest edited with Carly Butler and Rod Gardner) on Ethnomethodological Approaches to Communication and Media, Policy and Interaction (Ashgate) edited with William Housley.