2013/06/01 by Greg Myers, Sofia Lampropoulou · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Categorization, perception, and language #Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
paper · doi:10.1177/1461445613480589
openalex publication_date 2013/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Place is central to many research projects in the social sciences, but it is often taken by researchers as a given. Recently, discourse analysts have devoted more attention to the construction of place in interaction. We focus on one aspect of this construction, the process of drawing inferences from place categories and place names, in transcripts of oral history interviews. We apply membership categorization analysis (MCA) to descriptions of house types and houses, showing how some categories are presented as being shared and recognizable, and how inferences are projected. Then we apply a similar approach to the ways inferences are drawn from place names, focusing especially on proximity. Participants’ categories can be investigated by examining the ways they are used in question–answer pairs, and in the construction of turns using elaborations, contrasting pairs, negatives and qualifications. This analysis shows the work these place references do for the participants, for instance, in categorizing themselves and others and giving accounts for behaviour.