Invoking the Specter of Racism: Category Membership as Speaker Topic and Resource

Kevin McKenzie

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.12.3.03

Authors

Kevin McKenzie Independent Researcher, U.S.A.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.12.3.03

Keywords:

Category Entitlement, Category Membership, Ethnomethodology, Identity, Membership Categorization Device, Racism, Reflexivity

Abstract

This paper explores how category membership features in talk where speakers address the issue of racial discrimination. In particular, it examines how category membership gets invoked to furnish speaker entitlement in the course of destabilizing and reworking the category-bound inferences that inform membership attribution. I begin with the analysis of two relatively short extracts of talk in which speakers invoke ethnic and racial group identity as a preliminary to an examination of the paradoxical uses for which category membership is made relevant, moving on to consider an extended episode of The 700 Club. In contrast to analytic approaches which seek to reveal the denial of racism in speaker claims that mitigate the pernicious implications of category attribution, I consider how category attribution serves as a speaker resource in efforts to identify and critique racism. This participant work is then considered in relation to ethnomethodology’s efforts to re-specify the foundational postulates that inform the investigation of social order production and the place that the examination of participant meaning-making has in the pursuit of that endeavor.

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Author Biography

Kevin McKenzie, Independent Researcher, U.S.A.

Kevin McKenzie is an independent researcher. He holds both a B.A. and an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Texas system, and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (with a focus on Language and Social Interaction) from Loughborough University in the U.K. He has worked at various universities in countries throughout the Middle East, including Cyprus, Turkey, the UAE, and Qatar. His research interests include exploring the potential of conversation analysis and ethnomethodology for an analysis of cross-cultural contact, broadly conceived to include transnational relations, military intervention, and issues traditionally formulated within the remit of Foreign Policy and International Relations. Currently, he is carrying out research on the discursive construction of professional identity within humanitarian aid organizations, as well as exploring how the analysis of talk in these and other settings inform scholarly debates concerned with the everyday rhetoric of shared knowledge in institutional settings.

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