Article published in:
Categorization in multilingual storytelling
Edited by Matthew T. Prior and Steven Talmy
[Pragmatics and Society 10:3] 2019
► pp. 337–358
Special issue section

Multimodal membership categorization and storytelling in a guided tour

| Osaka University
| University of Hawai‘i at Manoa

This study examines multimodal membership categorization and storytelling in Japanese at an Okinawan culture center in Hawai‘i. Based on audiovisual recordings of a guided tour (112 minutes), it examines ways the guide and visitors use explicit and implicit means in constructing the membership category “immigrants of Okinawan descent in Hawai‘i” and terms of this category, such as “women of the first generation” and “children of the second generation.” The analysis focuses on visitors’ contributions to membership categorization and storytelling through posing questions, relating personal experience, and displaying stance in touching and handling objects. The findings show how practices of membership categorization and storytelling are co-constructed, and how participants draw upon multimodal resources including talk, the body, and objects in practices of membership categorization in situated interaction.

Keywords: conversation analysis, immigration history, Japanese, membership categorization, Okinawa, storytelling, guided tour
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Setting, history, and data
  • 3.Explicit and implicit membership categorization through talk, the body, and objects
    • 3.1Visitor questions and guide responses
      • 3.1.1Visitor questions that work in category terms
    • 3.2Visitors recognizing objects and relating them to prior experience
    • 3.3Displaying stance upon holding and touching objects
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 October 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18013.bur
References

References

Bilmes, Jack
2009 “Kinship categories in a Northern Thai narrative.” In Talk-in-Interaction: Multilingual Perspectives, ed. by Hahn Nguyen and Gabriele Kasper, 29–56. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i, National Foreign Language Resource Center.Google Scholar
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): 156–171. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burdelski, Matthew, Michie Kawashima, and Keiichi Yamazaki
2014 “Storytelling in Guided Tours: Practices, Engagement, and Identity at a Japanese American Museum.” Narrative Inquiry 24(2): 328–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Day, Dennis
2012 “Conversation analysis and membership categories.” In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Carol A. Chapelle, 1050–1055. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Day, Dennis, and Johannes Wagner
2014 “Objects as Tools for Talk.” In Interacting with Objects: Language, materiality, and social activity, ed. by Maurice Nevile, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann, and Mirka Rauniomaa, 101–124.Google Scholar
Eglin, Peter
2002 “Members’ Gendering Work: ‘Women,’ ‘Feminists’ and Membership Categorization Analysis.” Discourse & Society 131: 819–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freed, Alice F., and Susan Ehrlich
(eds) 2010 “Why Do You Ask?”: The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E.
2010 “Questioning in Meetings: Participation and Positioning.” In “Why Do You Ask?”: The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice F. Freed and Susan Ehrlich, 211–234. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fukuda, Chie
2017 “Gaijin performing gaijin (‘A foreigner performing a foreigner’): Co-construction of foreigner stereotypes in a Japanese talk show as a multimodal phenomenon.” Journal of Pragmatics 1091: 12–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Identities and Linguistic Varieties in Japanese: An Analysis of Language Ideologies as Participants’ Accomplishment.” Pragmatics 24(1): 35–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fukuda, Chie, and Matthew Burdelski
2019. “Multimodal demonstrations of understanding of visible, imagined, and tactile objects in guided tours.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 52(1): 20–40. DOI logo
Goffman, Erving
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles
2018 Co-operative action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2007 “Environmentally coupled gestures.” In Gesture and the Dynamic Dimensions of Language, S. D. Duncan, Justine Cassell, and Elena T. Levy, 195–212. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1981 Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H., Asta Cekaite, and Charles Goodwin
2012 “Emotion as stance.” In Emotion in Interaction, ed. by Anssi Peräkylä and Marja-Leena Sorjonen, 16–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John
2012 “Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45(1): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 “Conversation Analysis and Institutional Talk.” In Handbook of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Kristine Fitch and Robert Sanders, 103–47. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
1984 “A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential Placement.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by Maxwell J. Atkinson and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hester, Stephen, and Peter Eglin
(eds) 1997 Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Hosoda, Yuri, and David Aline
2018 “Embodied departure from focal objects in a Lingua Franca campus tour.” Pragmatics and Society 9(3): 454–484. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele
2009 “Categories, Context, and Comparison in Conversation Analysis.” In Talk-in-Interaction: Multilingual Perspectives, ed. by Hahn Nguyen and Gabriele Kasper, 1–28. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i, National Foreign Language Resource Center.Google Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele, and Matthew T. Prior
2014 “Analyzing storytelling in TESOL interview research.” TESOL Quarterly. Published online 26 May 2014. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, and Joshua Waletzky
1967 “Narrative Analysis: Oral Version of Personal Experience.” In Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts, ed. by June Helm, 12–44. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, Jenny
2012 “Storytelling in Conversation” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 492–508. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David
1992 Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza
2013 “Displaying, Contesting and Negotiating Epistemic Authority in Social Interaction: Descriptions and Questions in Guided Visits.” Discourse Studies 15 (5): 597–626. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “Understanding as an embodied, situated and sequential achievement in interaction” Journal of Pragmatics 43(2): 542–552. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 “Multimodal resources for turn-taking: pointing and the emergence of possible next speakers. Discourse Studies, 91, 194–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morimoto, Toyotomi
2012 “Okinawa to ‘kenkeijin’ to no chuutai [Bonds between Okinawa and its immigrants overseas].” In Toransunashonaruna ‘nikkeijin’ no kyooiku, gengo, bunka [Transnational ‘nikkei’ and their education, language, and culture], ed. by Toyotomi Morimoto and Sachio Negawa, 188–202. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten.Google Scholar
Nevile, Maurice, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann, and Mirka Rauniomaa
(eds) 2014 Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, Neal R.
2013 “Stories of Vicarious Experience in Speeches by Barack Obama.” Narrative Inquiry 23(2): 283–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1992 Lectures on Conversation, ed. by Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.” Language 50(4): 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
2007 “Categories in Action: Person-Reference and Membership Categorization.” Discourse Studies 91: 433–461. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seo, Mi Suk, and Irene A. Koshik
2010 “A conversation analytic study of gestures and engender repair in ESL conversational tutoring.” Journal of Pragmatics 42(8): 2219–2239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya
2008 “Stance, Alignment and Affiliation during Story Telling: When Nodding is a Token of Preliminary Affiliation.” Research on Language in Social Interaction 41(1): 29–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, Nick J. Enfield, and Stephen C. Levinson
(eds) 2010 “Question-Response Sequences in Conversation across Ten Languages: An Introduction.” Journal of Pragmatics 42(10): 2615–2619. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth H.
2003 “Doing gender, doing categorization: Recent developments in language and gender research.” International Sociolinguistics 2(1): 1–12.Google Scholar
Yaguchi, Yujin
2002 Hawai no rekishi to bunka [History and culture in Hawai‘i]. Tokyo: Chuuookooronsha.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Burdelski, Matthew & Noriko Takei
2022.  In Storytelling Practices in Home and Educational Contexts, ► pp. 375 ff. Crossref logo
Martikainen, Jari
2022. Membership categorization analysis as means of studying person perception. Qualitative Research in Psychology 19:3 ► pp. 703 ff. Crossref logo
Okazawa, Ryo & Ken Kawamura
2022. The Visual and Conversational Order of Membership Categories in Fictional Films. Human Studies 45:3 ► pp. 551 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 january 2023. 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.