Spoken word ≠ interviews: Listening to negotiations in a Moroccan market

Abstract

Analysing the spoken word, in some traditions, means analysing how social life is created, ordered and transformed through interaction, rather than how it is reported about in interviews. This paper examines an excerpt recorded in that spirit—towards understanding how participants continuously and demonstrably categorise each other in face-to-face conversation. Within the larger project, this excerpt was unique and memorable, but did not seem to present any conclusive direction for analysis. Here, I show how its interactional features might combine with contexts beyond the immediate situation to frame an ethnomethodological and geographical analysis.