Smokers' talk: using membership categorisation analysis to look at smokers' talk

Abstract

This thesis represents an exploration of smokers’ talk taking an ethnomethodologically-inspired conversation analysis approach to the data, with a specific focus on Membership Categorisation Analysis. Recent MCA research has revealed the unique insight that the approach offers to analysts interested in the study of everyday interaction and how individuals produce themselves as ‘certain types of people’ in the context of their routine encounters. The analysis of categories as a product of talk offers an alternative way of viewing categories that is empirically grounded in routine talk-in-interaction, as an accomplishment of the participants. The research presented here examines the demonstrable relevance of the category ‘smoker’ for participants in their categorisation of themselves and others and reveals both the situated nature of this category work and the implicit normative assumptions relating to the activity of smoking that speakers draw on as they negotiate, accept or reject category incumbency. The research presented here thus examines smokers’ talk in order to bring to light taken-for-granted members’ knowledge of smokers and smoking as a sociological phenomenon. In doing so, it also examines how the category of smoker interacts with other categories and how speakers invoke the relevance of other categories in relation to smoking. A further insight that emerges is how speakers orient to smoking as a morally accountable behaviour, and how this ultimately has implications for their productions of themselves and others as types of smokers.

In doing this the study contributes both to our understanding of smoking as a sociological phenomenon and to the work of MCA, more specifically to the debate between MCA and CA, highlighting the argument that a reflexive approach, drawing on both categorical and sequential analysis, offers a more comprehensive approach to analysing talk in interaction.

Date of Award	Feb 2011
Original language	English
Sponsors	Department of Education and Learning
Supervisor	Catrin Rhys (Supervisor)