On the Promise of Using Membership Categorization Analysis to Investigate Interactional Competence

Interactional Competence (IC) involves speakers’ ability to make social actions recognizable to one another while taking into account individual identities and social role relationships (Hall and Pekarek Doehler 2011). Existing IC research, however, has foregrounded the sequential features of interaction while paying less attention to the categorial resources speakers draw on. This study uses Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) to explicate the categorial resources speakers employ in interaction. The dataset comes from 22 participants with a mixture of first-language and second-language Chinese speakers. They were audio-recorded while undertaking a roleplay task in Chinese—assuming the role of an employee and complaining to their manager about unfair practices at work. After analysing the transcribed data using the MCA procedure (Stokoe 2012), we present analyses that address three foundational questions about how speakers use categorial resources to (i) make their social actions recognizable, (ii) respond to interlocutors’ social actions, and (iii) orient to the moral order of interaction. We argue MCA can provide important insight into the categorial nature of interaction in IC research.