Identities in talk

`Identity' attracts some of social science's liveliest and most passionate debates. Theory abounds on matters as disparate as nationhood, ethnicity, gender politics and culture. However, there is considerably less investigation into how such identity issues appear in the fine grain of everyday life. This book gathers together, in a collection of chapters drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, arguments which show that identities are constructed `live' in the actual exchange of talk. By closely examining tapes and transcripts of real social interactions from a wide.

Identity as an Achievement and as a Tool -- Charles Antaki and Sue Widdicombe; PART ONE: SALIENCE AND THE BUSINESS OF IDENTITY; The Relevant Thing about Her -- Derek Edwards; Social Identity Categories in Use; How Gun Owners Accomplish Being Deadly Average -- Andy McKinlay and Anne Dunnett; `But You Don't Class Yourself' -- Sue Widdicombe; The Interactional Management of Category Membership and Non-Membership; Identity Ascriptions in Their Time and Place -- Charles Antaki; `Fagin' and `The Terminally Dim'; PART TWO: DISCOURSE IDENTITIES AND SOCIAL IDENTITIES; Identity, Context and Interaction -- Don Zimmerman; Mobilizing Discourse and Social Identities in Knowledge Talk -- Robin Wooffitt and Colin Clark; Talk and Identity in Divorce Mediation -- David Greatbatch and Robert Dingwall; PART THREE: MEMBERSHIP CATEGORIES AND THEIR PRACTICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL RELEVANCE; Describing `Deviance' in School -- Stephen Hester; Recognizably Educational Psychological Problems; Being Ascribed, and Resisting, Membership of an Ethnic Group -- Dennis Day; Handling `Incoherence' According to the Speaker's On-Sight Categorization -- Isabella Paoletti; PART FOUR: EPILOGUE; Identity as an Analysts' and …