Activity types as members’ categories: On how members produce a suitable context for institutional talk

• In Event: 1442 - Conflict in Social Interaction

Abstract

In this paper, I propose making use of Schneiders (2004) idea of structural maintenance to reinvestigate Levinson‘s (1992) concept of activity types, which has been used in conversation analysis to untangle the relationship of situated talk and its immediate (often institutional) context. Drawing on a single case from a so-called care conference in German youth welfare, I discuss how the participants orient towards the interaction’s institutionally and legally framed function. I demonstrate how an issue that seems to threaten the advancement of the conference by causing potential conflict is carefully redefined in a number of co-operative turns until it can be treated as irrelevant for the ongoing interaction. Departing from this observation, I argue that activity types analytically ought to be treated as members’ concepts which for them serve as benchmarks for coherent action and may be exploited to fit individual goals, rather than understanding them as near-objective functionally defined models for the analyst.

Author

• Sarah Hitzler, Bielefeld University