{
 "@context": "https://schema.org",
 "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",
 "@id": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#paper",
 "aboutThisFile": {
  "whatThisIs": "A research brief: a structured summary of one paper, prepared for seanrintel.com from the paper's full text.",
  "howItWasMade": "This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text.",
  "whatIsVerbatim": "Only 'quote' fields, figure captions and 'abstract' are the authors' own words. Research questions follow the paper's wording where it states them. Takeaway, summaries, answers, definitions and method are the site's plain-language paraphrase.",
  "howItIsChecked": "Before publication every quote is matched against the paper and every number in the brief is found in it. 'verified' is the date of the last check.",
  "howToUse": [
   "For a quick answer, use 'takeaway' and 'questions'. For evidence, use 'findings' (each has a verbatim quote, its location in the paper and a 'url' anchored to that finding on the paper's page).",
   "Locations such as '§5.2, p. 9' refer to the version at 'pageNumbersReferTo'.",
   "For anything not covered here, read the paper itself: 'fullTextSources' lists free versions first.",
   "If 'researchOverview' is present, the paper is part of one of Sean Rintel's research overviews: it gives the overview's thesis, the claims this paper is evidence for and its role in each, and the other papers in the overview.",
   "To find other papers by Sean Rintel, use the catalogue at https://seanrintel.com/publications/index.json."
  ],
  "authorship": "Sean Rintel's role on each paper: lead author when he is first author, sole author when he is the only author, and otherwise senior author. Senior author here means the senior researcher on the team, whatever his position in the author list.",
  "howToCite": "Cite the paper, not this file: use 'citation' or the ready-made 'bibtex' (DOI where given) and name every author. Attribute paraphrase to the paper's findings, and use quotation marks only for 'quote' text."
 },
 "name": "From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call",
 "author": [
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Richard Fitzgerald"
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "@id": "https://seanrintel.com/#sean-rintel",
   "name": "Sean Rintel",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/",
   "sameAs": [
    "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0840-0546",
    "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xc25GRgAAAAJ",
    "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q102369654",
    "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/serintel/",
    "https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrintel"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "datePublished": "2013-10",
 "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html",
 "citation": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118.",
 "bibtex": "@article{fitzgerald2013from,\nauthor = {Fitzgerald, Richard and Rintel, Sean},\ntitle = {From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call},\nyear = {2013},\nmonth = {October},\nurl = {https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html},\njournal = {Australian Journal of Communication},\nvolume = {40},\nedition = {Australian Journal of Communication, 40 (2)},\nnumber = {2},\npages = {101--118},\nnote = {Fitzgerald, R. & Rintel, S. (2013). From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication, 40 (2), 101-118. \n\n\n\nOnline version is free and includes video (use Publisher URL)},\n}",
 "abstract": "This paper examines a single case of story telling between a couple in a long-distance relationship conducted via video calling. Drawing on Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) we examine the way the teller incrementally reveals information about a character in order to build a story of coincidences. In doing this, however, the recipient begins to treat the evolving character as relevant to a different device, that of their relationship. Our discussion develops on the analysis of omnirelevance devices (Sacks, 1995) by examining how categories can be shifted between devices. In so doing, we highlight the way categories introduced for one task may be put to other uses; that is, how categories may become 'promiscuous'.",
 "fullTextSources": [
  {
   "kind": "freeAccess",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.pdf",
   "label": "Author's Copy"
  }
 ],
 "dataNotes": [
  "Published title (Australian Journal of Communication 40(2), 2013, pp. 101-118): 'From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call'. Earlier listings, including this site before October 2026, used a pre-publication subtitle: 'The problem of promiscuous categories in story telling via video chat by a long-distance couple'. The hosted PDF is the published version; this page keeps its original web address."
 ],
 "fullTextAvailable": true,
 "takeaway": "Story characters can become 'promiscuous categories' in a couple's talk. When a teller leaves a character's relevance ambiguous, a partner can recast them through 'our relationship', which is always available. So a friendly lifeguard in a boyfriend's pool story became someone he had to account for as her partner.",
 "whyItMatters": {
  "stateOfTheArt": {
   "summary": "Membership Categorisation Analysis has begun to study tacit, 'always possibly relevant' devices such as therapist/patient, and Schegloff warned that analysts may read their own assumptions into unstated categories.",
   "quote": "Schegloff describes this concern as analytic 'promiscuity'",
   "location": "§Data and method, p. 4"
  },
  "contribution": {
   "summary": "Schegloff raised category promiscuity as a risk for analysts. Using one extended story from a naturally recorded video call, the authors show that participants face it too:",
   "quote": "we argue that it is also not restricted to those engaged in formal analytic procedures, but rather it is a members' phenomenon",
   "location": "§Data and method, p. 4"
  },
  "whoCares": {
   "summary": "Researchers of membership categorisation, conversation and story telling, especially work on how participants orient to who they are and what they are doing.",
   "quote": "This research seeks to begin to draw attention to the way participants invoke and orient to a locally relevant organisational device of 'who we are and what we are doing'",
   "location": "§Data and method, p. 3"
  }
 },
 "researchQuestions": [
  "How does a teller incrementally reveal information about a story character, and how does the recipient treat that evolving character?",
  "How can categories introduced for one task (telling a story) be shifted into a different device (the couple's relationship), becoming 'promiscuous'?"
 ],
 "concepts": [
  {
   "term": "Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA)",
   "definition": "The study of how people use and orient to social categories in interaction, following Sacks.",
   "quote": "The analysis draws upon the method of Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) as a way of revealing the artful interactional work of the parties as entwined and multilayered",
   "location": "§Data and method, p. 3"
  },
  {
   "term": "Omnipresent device",
   "definition": "The authors' renaming of Sacks's 'omnirelevant' devices, such as 'our relationship', chosen",
   "quote": "to indicate they are available (present), but not always relevant or made relevant within the interaction",
   "location": "§Data and method, p. 3"
  },
  {
   "term": "Promiscuous category",
   "definition": "The paper's central term, taken from Schegloff's warning to analysts and applied to participants themselves:",
   "quote": "by which we mean a category that is recast by other parties as a membership category of a different device",
   "location": "§Introduction, pp. 1–2"
  }
 ],
 "method": {
  "design": "Single-case analysis using Membership Categorisation Analysis of a conspicuous instance of story telling.",
  "setting": "Recorded video calls of couples in long-distance relationships, at least one member in Northeastern USA, using supplied cameras, headsets and video calling software, on their own schedule and with no set tasks.",
  "sample": "From a corpus of six self-selected couples (almost 57 hours of talk), one story told in the first video call of one couple, Des and Kay (pseudonyms).",
  "duration": "Couples were asked to talk for at least 20 minutes once a week for two months.",
  "analysis": "Detailed sequential and categorial analysis of how the lifeguard character is described and taken up across the telling."
 },
 "findings": [
  {
   "headline": "The lifeguard starts as a gatekeeper.",
   "summary": "Des tells his girlfriend Kay over a video call about sneaking into a pool. He first introduces the lifeguard as an unknown character who simply belongs to the setting, someone he and a friend had to get past.",
   "quote": "The two characters also belong to story-relevant indirect membership categories of gatekeepers.",
   "location": "p. 7",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-7",
   "cite": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118. (p. 7)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Described as a girl, not an official.",
   "summary": "As the story goes on, Des describes her as 'this girl' who is 'super nice', which plays down her official role and plays up her attractiveness.",
   "quote": "a \"lifeguard\" (a safety official who is presumably physical active and hence potentially physical attractive)",
   "location": "pp. 7–8",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-pp-7-8",
   "cite": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118. (pp. 7–8)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "A question hints at a different frame.",
   "summary": "When Des mentions giving the lifeguard a 'number', Kay asks him to clarify. This gives a first hint that she may be hearing the story as answerable to their relationship rather than as just a funny tale.",
   "quote": "indexes a partner giving a telephone number to a (potentially attractive) person outside of the relationship",
   "location": "p. 9",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-9",
   "cite": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118. (p. 9)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Holding back builds drama, and ambiguity.",
   "summary": "To build drama, Des withholds until late that the lifeguard is a friend of a friend, and her name. Her changing descriptions leave it unclear why she matters, which opens her to other readings.",
   "quote": "the character becomes treatable as a 'promiscuous' category through it being open to different and divergent devices",
   "location": "p. 11",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-11",
   "cite": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118. (p. 11)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "The story becomes a relationship matter.",
   "summary": "Kay's summary, 'now that you've flirted with the bitch a whole day', recasts both the story and Des's telling of it as conduct he must account for as her partner. She keeps pursuing its inconsistencies despite his efforts to keep it funny.",
   "quote": "Kay's treatment of the lifeguard is quite an explicit recasting of both the story and Des's story-telling as involving a collection of accountable actions with respect to the omnipresent relationship device",
   "location": "p. 13",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-13",
   "cite": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118. (p. 13)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Categories don't stay put.",
   "summary": "Categories and their relevance are not fixed, even when someone names them outright. Within one conversation they can shift between tasks, such as telling a story and being a couple.",
   "quote": "can also shift between different levels of the interaction in relation to differing sequential and categorial tasks, and furthermore these can and do overlap and entwine as they traverse through the interaction",
   "location": "§Conclusion: Recasting promiscuous categories, p. 16",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-sconclusion-recasting-promiscuous-categories-p-16",
   "cite": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118. (§Conclusion: Recasting promiscuous categories, p. 16)"
  }
 ],
 "questions": [
  {
   "question": "Why can a harmless story told to a partner turn into a relationship issue?",
   "answer": "Because holding back details to build drama can leave a character's relevance ambiguous, so a listener may fill the gap. In a video call between a long-distance couple, the man called a lifeguard a 'super nice' girl without saying who she was. His girlfriend made her a relationship matter.",
   "source": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118.",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "pp. 7–8",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-pp-7-8"
    },
    {
     "location": "p. 11",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-11"
    },
    {
     "location": "p. 13",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-13"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "What is a 'promiscuous category' in conversation?",
   "answer": "It is a category one person introduces for one purpose, such as a character in a story, that another person recasts for a different purpose, such as 'our relationship'. It happens most easily when the speaker leaves the category's relevance unstated.",
   "source": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118.",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "p. 11",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-11"
    },
    {
     "location": "§Conclusion: Recasting promiscuous categories, p. 16",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-sconclusion-recasting-promiscuous-categories-p-16"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "Is reading unstated meanings into what people say only a problem for researchers?",
   "answer": "No. Schegloff warned that analysts may read their own assumptions into categories people leave unstated. The authors argue ordinary participants do the same. When a speaker leaves a character's relevance implicit, a listener can repurpose it for their own concerns.",
   "source": "Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2013. From lifeguard to bitch: How a story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video call. Australian Journal of Communication 40 (2), 101–118.",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "p. 11",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-11"
    },
    {
     "location": "p. 13",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.html#at-p-13"
    }
   ]
  }
 ],
 "cites": [
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/conversational-management-of-network-trouble-perturbations-in-personal-videoconferencing.html",
   "title": "Conversational management of network trouble perturbations in personal videoconferencing",
   "location": "p. 17"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/maximizing-environmental-validity-remote-recording-of-desktop-videoconferencing.html",
   "title": "Maximizing environmental validity: remote recording of desktop videoconferencing",
   "location": "p. 17"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/tech-tied-or-tongue-tied-technological-versus-social-trouble-in-relational-video-calling.html",
   "title": "Tech-tied or tongue-tied? Technological versus social trouble in relational video calling",
   "location": "p. 17"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/video-calling-in-long-distance-relationships-the-opportunistic-use-of-audiovideo-distortions-as-a-relational-resource.html",
   "title": "Video Calling in Long-Distance Relationships: The Opportunistic use of Audio/Video Distortions as a Relational Resource",
   "location": "p. 17"
  }
 ],
 "quantitative": [],
 "implications": [
  {
   "summary": "Holding back information to heighten a story's drama carries interactional risk.",
   "quote": "a story telling device that involves incrementally releasing relevant information at various times in order to heighten the drama of the story can become problematic for both the teller and the recipient",
   "location": "§Conclusion: Recasting promiscuous categories, p. 15"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Character work in news-of-the-day story telling is a negotiated process with emergent relevancies and divergent outcomes, not static information transfer.",
   "quote": "The goal of the paper is to illustrate the extent to which the development of characters in news-of-the-day story telling is far more than one part of a static information transfer.",
   "location": "§Data and method, p. 3"
  },
  {
   "summary": "The authors propose 'omnipresent' in place of Sacks's 'omnirelevant', since such devices are always available but not always relevant."
  }
 ],
 "limitations": [
  {
   "summary": "Kay's first clarification may have come from mishearing, though the authors argue her response still orients to the relationship.",
   "quote": "Kay's request for clarification may be the result of mishearing \"phony\" as \"phone\".",
   "location": "p. 9"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Kay's later clarification and correction could also be ordinary clarification by an observant listener. The authors argue that, taken together, they point to the relationship.",
   "quote": "it is possible that Kay's clarification formulation and her exposed correction of the subsequent discrepancy may be just matters of non-relational clarification from a highly observant recipient",
   "location": "p. 10"
  }
 ],
 "figures": [],
 "pageNumbersReferTo": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/from-lifeguard-to-bitch-the-problem-of-promiscuous-categories-in-story-telling-via-video-chat-by-a-long-distance-couple.pdf",
 "verified": "2026-10-25",
 "studyFigure": {
  "about": "The opening figure on this paper's page, made for the site with AI assistance from this verified brief. It is not the paper's own figure. Evidence entries index this file's quantitative, findings and limitations arrays.",
  "study": {
   "kind": "single",
   "summary": "A single-case analysis of one story told in a recorded video call by a long-distance couple. It traces how the teller described one story character and how the partner took that character up.",
   "steps": [
    {
     "label": "Six couples",
     "detail": "Almost 57 hours of video calls by six self-selected long-distance couples, at least one partner in the Northeastern USA, recorded over two months."
    },
    {
     "label": "One story",
     "detail": "In the first call of one couple, Des and Kay, Des tells a story about sneaking into a pool."
    },
    {
     "label": "Categorisation analysis",
     "detail": "Membership Categorisation Analysis, the study of how people use social categories in talk, traced how the lifeguard character was described and taken up."
    }
   ]
  },
  "findings": {
   "legend": null,
   "stages": [
    {
     "title": "Telling the story",
     "sub": "how the teller built the lifeguard character",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "In this story, Des first introduced the lifeguard as a gatekeeper to get past.",
       "detail": "Des was telling his girlfriend Kay about sneaking into a pool. The lifeguard first appeared as an unknown character who belonged to the setting.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[0]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Des then described the lifeguard as 'this girl' who was 'super nice'.",
       "detail": "The authors argue this played down her official role and played up her attractiveness.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[1]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Des held back until late that the lifeguard was a friend of a friend.",
       "detail": "Her name also came late, which built drama. The paper argues her shifting descriptions left unclear why she mattered, opening her to other readings.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[3]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    },
    {
     "title": "Hearing the story",
     "sub": "how the partner recast the character",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "When Des mentioned giving the lifeguard a number, Kay asked him to clarify.",
       "detail": "The paper argues this first hints that Kay heard the story as answerable to the relationship. The authors note Kay may instead have misheard a word.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[2]",
        "limitations[0]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Kay recast the lifeguard as someone Des had to account for as her partner.",
       "detail": "Kay summed up that Des had flirted with 'the bitch' a whole day. Kay kept pursuing inconsistencies despite his efforts to keep the story funny.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[4]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "The paper argues categories can shift between tasks within one conversation.",
       "detail": "Telling a story and being a couple are two such tasks. The paper argues ordinary listeners, not only analysts, can recast a category whose relevance is left unstated.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[5]",
        "takeaway"
       ]
      }
     ]
    }
   ]
  },
  "keyTerm": "promiscuous category",
  "takeaway": "A storyteller who leaves a character's relevance unclear creates a promiscuous category that listeners can recast, for example through the couple's relationship. Holding back details for drama can be risky."
 }
}