`This is a very fine introduction to the tradition and practice of categorisation analysis, a method for analysing language derived from the work of Harvey Sacks. Georgia Lepper conveys with great effectiveness and simplicity the basic principles of this method, and enables the reader to apply it in practice. Through a series of practical exercises and worked examples, the reader is taken through the necessary steps to achieve full independence in practice of this important analytic method. A great deal of practical wisdom and experience has gone into this book, and it will undoubtedly be of great assistance to students and researchers seeking to apply this still innovative approach to qualitative data analysis′ - Clive Seale, Goldsmiths College, University of London `A stunning introduction to categorization analysis! Georgia Lepper is a master teacher and her book a major achievement. Sensibly organized, amply illustrated, and deftly instructive, this remarkably clear text is a pedagogical milestone in the area′ - Jaber F Gubrium, University of Florida This is the first practical book on how to apply Harvey Sacks′ `membership categorization analysis′ technique, an increasingly influential method for conversation analysis. Categorization analysis is a method for the study of situated social action and offers a complementary method to the traditional sequential analysis used in the study of naturally occurring talk and text. The author provides an understanding of the concepts through an analysis of data samples and a series of exercises. Later chapters discuss the application to a variety of disciplines. Examples used to illustrate the approach include, talk, text and images, narratives, stories and organizational settings. The practice of research is further elucidated in the use of an extended case study and the topics of reliability, validity and ethics are also covered. Additional features include suggested further readings at the end of each chapter and a glossary of terms. The book will be invaluable to students and beginning researchers in the disciplines of linguistics, sociology and anthropology, and other main users of conversational and narrative analysis methods, in cultural studies, ethnography, organization studies, discursive psychology and psychotherapy, who are seeking empirical methods for the study of the phenomena of everyday interaction. This book can be used as a companion volume to Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide also published in the Introducing Qualitative Methods series.

This is the first practical book on how to apply Harvey Sacks' membership categorization analysis technique, an increasingly influential method for conversation analysis. Categorization analysis is a method for the study of situated social action and offers a complementary method to the traditional sequential analysis used in the study of naturally occurring talk and text.

This practical yet cutting-edge Handbook includes both established and innovative methods for studying identity in management, organisations, and cognate fields. Incorporating a breadth of narrative, visual, ethnographic and embodied methods, as well as ways for analysing naturally occurring data, this Handbook offers exciting new interdisciplinary perspectives on the study of identity in and around organisations.

Citizenship talk refers to various types of discourse initiated to make citizens take part in politically and socially contested decision-making processes (‘citizen participation’). ‘Citizenship’ has, accordingly, become one of the dazzling key words whenever the democratic deficit of modern societies is moaned about. Asking for citizenship to be conceived of as a communicative achievement, the present book shows that sociolinguistics and pragmatics can essentially contribute to this interdisciplinary up-to-date issue of research: the volume offers a theoretically innovative concept of communicated citizenship and it presents a set of methodological approaches suited to deal with this concept at an empirical level (including contributions from Conversation Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Positioning Theory, Speech Act Theory and Ethnography). Furthermore, concrete data and empirical analyses are provided which take up the case of decision-making processes around the application of modern ‘green’ biotechnology (‘GMO field trials’). The volume thus illustrates the kind of findings and results that can be expected from this new and promising approach towards citizenship talk.

Large collections of data and information necessitate adequate methods for their analysis. The book presents such methods, proposes and discusses recent approaches and implementations and describes a series of practical applications.

From the contents: Guy ASTON: The learner as corpus designer. - Antoinette RENOUF: The time dimension in modern English corpus linguistics. - Mike SCOTT: Picturing the key words of a very large corpus and their lexical upshots or getting at the guardian's view of the world. - Lou BURNARD: The BNC: where did we go wrong? Corpus-based teaching material. - Averil COXHEAD: The academic word list: a corpus-based word list for academic purposes.

This volume examines how oral and written language function in school learning , and how oral texts can be successfully inter-connected to the written texts that are used on a daily basis in schools. Rather than argue for the prominence of one over the other, the goal is to help the reader gain a rich understanding of how both might work together to create a new discourse that ultimately creates new knowledge. Talking Texts: Provides historical background for the study of talk and text Presents examples of children’s and adolescents’ natural conversations as analyzed by linguists Addresses talk as it interfaces with domains of knowledge taught in schools to show how talk is related to and may be influenced by the structure, language, and activities of a specific discipline. Bringing together seminal lines of research to create a cohesive picture of discourse issues germane to classrooms and other learning settings, this volume is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, classroom teachers, and curriculum specialists across the fields of discourse studies, literacy and English education, composition studies, language development, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics.