‘Positioning’ in the conversation analytic approach

Dennis Day | Southern Denmark University and Roskilde University

Susanne Kjaerbeck

From the perspective of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EM/CA), the concept of positioning may offer a compellingly rich metaphor for understanding identity and relations. There appears, however, to be no such analytical concept in EM/CA. Instead, the EM/CA approach offers concepts such as alignment-affiliation, identities and membership categories — all of them based on actional resources on the micro-level of talk. The aim of this article is to inquire if EM/CA tools for the analysis of identities and relations in talk might be considered interesting from the perspective of positioning theory. To do so, we offer EM/CA analyses of narrative and non-narrative data in which the in situ negotiation of identities and relations plays a major role.

Keywords: conversation analysis, positioning, identities in talk, membership categorization, affiliation, narrative

Published online: 12 December 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.23.1.02day

Cited by

Cited by 11 other publications

Arduser, Lora

2014. Agency in illness narratives. Narrative Inquiry 24:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Belland, Brian R., Jiangyue Gu, Nam Ju Kim & David J. Turner

2016. An ethnomethodological perspective on how middle school students addressed a water quality problem. Educational Technology Research and Development 64:6 ► pp. 1135 ff.

Burdelski, Matthew

2016. We-focused and I-focused stories of World War II in guided tours at a Japanese American museum. Discourse & Society 27:2 ► pp. 156 ff.

Deppermann, Arnulf

2015. In The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, ► pp. 369 ff.

Hatoss, Anikó

2022. That word “abuse” is a big problem for us: South Sudanese parents’ positioning and agency vis-à-vis parenting conflicts in Australia. Linguistics and Education 67 ► pp. 101002 ff.

Kjaerbeck, Susanne

2017. Positioning and change in a hospital ward. Journal of Organizational Change Management 30:1 ► pp. 43 ff.

König, Katharina, Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain & Grit Liebscher

2015. A comparison of heritage language ideologies in interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics 19:4 ► pp. 484 ff.

Matthews, Victor H.

2014. Choreographing Embedded Dialogue in Biblical Narratives. Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture 44:4 ► pp. 179 ff.

Mendy, John

2020. Staff preferences in four SMEs experiencing organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management 33:2 ► pp. 331 ff.

Rautajoki, Hanna

2018. A story more real than reality. Narrative Inquiry 28:1 ► pp. 181 ff.

TAKASE, Ryo, Atsuko ISHIKAWA, Daisuke KAMIKAWA, Hiroshi MATSUNAGA & Toshiro HARADA

2020. Influence of moisture absorption on the degradation of fire-retardant-treated and surface-coated wood. MOKUZAI HOZON (Wood Protection) 46:2 ► pp. 80 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 january 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.