A commentary chapter on Edwards' 1991 paper, Categories are for talking, in a book of classic studies in discursive psychology. Discursive psychology studies psychological topics through how people talk.
A classic paperEdwards' 1991 paper and later work, which brought Sacks' ideas about social categories into psychology.
A parallel lineThe sociologists Hester and Eglin's 1997 introduction to Culture in action, which treated Sacks' work as a method.
Later studiesLater discursive psychology studies that combine membership categorisation analysis with other approaches.
ArgumentA conceptual and historical reading of where discursive psychology and membership categorisation analysis meet.
BWhat the paper argues
Edwards' shiftcategories as actions in talk
•The paper argues Edwards moved categorisation from mental schemas to everyday conversation.Edwards treated talk, previously a window into the head, as the topic of analysis in its own right.
•The paper argues ideal mental categories cannot explain why descriptions of one thing vary.Teenagers in Sacks' data weighed how a station wagon looked to them and to a passing police officer.
Two uses of Sacksa tool for critique in psychology, a method in sociology
•The paper argues Edwards used Sacks' work mainly to critique cognitive psychology.Problems in Sacks' own ideas, such as picturing sense making as machinery built from standard parts, were raised only in passing.
•The paper argues Hester and Eglin turned Sacks' work into a method.Hester and Eglin set out its steps, gathered studies using it and critiqued weak points, laying groundwork for membership categorisation analysis.
•The paper notes a risk in building analysis from analysts' own categories.Hester and Eglin warned that such accounts can drift from the local context and from what participants themselves were doing.
The legacyhow the two fields now feed each other
•The paper argues discursive psychology's openness now feeds back into membership categorisation analysis.The authors trace this openness to Edwards' interest in Sacks. Examples include studies that combine the method with other approaches.
CKey takeaway
Membership categorisation can be understood as culture in action, done by members as they talk. This view opens the way to methods that study categorising in real conversation, beyond the machinery metaphor.
Made for this site with AI assistance from the verified research brief. It is not the paper's own figure.
Abstract
Edwards’ paper, ‘Categories are for talking’ (1991), is a critical dissection of the static role of categories as conceived in traditional Cognitive Psychology and the then-recent work of Lakoff’sWomen, Fire and Dangerous Things(1987) through the use of Harvey Sacks’ (1974; 1992) work on membership categorisation. Edwards uses Sacks to take aim at the prominent theoretical and methodological trends at the time, seeking to liberate members’ category work from ironically external conceptions of a shrouded realm located inside the head. However, while the focus for Edwards was on psychology, his detailed under – standing of Sacks’ work served to open a conceptual space for those working in discursive psychology to engage with members categorisation work as fundamental to the epistemological and methodological repertoires of Discursive Psychology (DP) in ways that ally with the emergence of Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA: Eglin and Hester, 1992; Watson,1994; Hester and Francis, 1994). In the discussion below we focus on how the paper shows three areas of intersection in the emergence of DP and MCA. First, we outline how the initial use of Sacks’ category work in the paper was directed towards psychological topics at a time when his ideas were largely confined to the sociological fields of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Second, we trace Edwards’ work to embed Sacks’ categorial work as an analytic method for DP while running parallel to the emergence and development of MCA. Finally, we situate the contemporary influence of Edwards’ paper and use of Sacks’ work in the creation of a rich confluence and openness to ideas that have become a hallmark of the contemporary DP approach – an approach that not only incorporates a deep understanding of Sacks’ categorisation work but, in turn, contributes significantly to the further development of MCA.
Research brief
By Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel.
Takeaway: Categories are social actions in talk, not schemas in the head. People describe the same thing differently for different purposes, as teenagers and police might a station wagon, so categorisation must be studied in real talk. Edwards' reading of Sacks brought this into discursive psychology, which feeds membership categorisation analysis.
Why this matters
What was known
Cognitive Psychology treated categories as mental schemas expressed in language, while Sacks' category work was largely confined to ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Edwards argues that the then-current models of Cognitive Psychology treat the person speaking as simply a conduit for their (somehow) held in common semantic schema(§Social categories are social actions, p. 2)
What this paper adds
A commentary tracing three intersections between Discursive Psychology (DP) and Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) in and after Edwards' paper. (p. 1)
Who it matters to
Researchers in discursive psychology, membership categorisation analysis, conversation analysis and related approaches to language in use.
Research questions
How was Sacks' category work first directed towards psychological topics in 'Categories are for talking', at a time when his ideas were largely confined to ethnomethodology and conversation analysis?
How did Edwards embed Sacks' categorial work as an analytic method for DP while MCA was emerging in parallel?
What is the contemporary influence of Edwards' paper and use of Sacks' work on DP and on the further development of MCA?
Method and data
Design
Commentary chapter on a classic paper: a critical reading of Edwards (1991), 'Categories are for talking', and its legacy.
Setting
A book of classic and contemporary studies in discursive psychology.
Participants / data
Edwards (1991) and his later work on Sacks (1995, 1997). Hester and Eglin's introduction to Culture in action (1997). Later DP studies combining MCA with other approaches, including Butler, Stokoe and Edwards, Stokoe, and Reynolds.
Analysis
Conceptual and historical discussion of the intersections between Discursive Psychology and Membership Categorisation Analysis.
Findings
From the head to the conversation. In 'Categories are for talking', Edwards used Sacks' work on membership categories to shift the study of categorisation away from mental schemas and towards how people actually categorise in everyday conversation. #
“Through this shift Edwards positions talk, hitherto treated largely as a resource for seeing into the head, as the topic of analysis”
Ideal categories cannot explain flexible description. Cognitive models built on ideal categories assume there is a correct description. So they cannot account for people describing the same thing differently, as the teenagers in Sacks' data did when weighing how a station wagon looked to them and to a passing police officer. #
“Of course the point is that categories are inherently flexible and so trying to preconceive mental idealisation prior to any particular use is of little analytic value.”
Sacks as a tool for critique. Over the following years Edwards made Sacks' category work an essential part of discursive psychology, but mainly as a tool for critiquing cognitive psychology, raising problems in Sacks' own ideas only in passing. #
“For example, the problems with the machinery metaphor are raised but are not given systematic critical examination.”
Sacks as a method in its own right. In parallel, the sociologists Hester and Eglin treated Sacks' work as a method in itself. They set out its steps, gathered the studies already using it and critiqued weak points such as the machinery metaphor. In doing so they laid the groundwork for membership categorisation analysis. #
“MCA begins to emerge as a workable method capable of building cumulative findings and observations as well as a stable methodological framework from which to further mine Sacks' lectures.”
The risk of analysts' categories. Hester and Eglin's central critique is that analysts who rebuild category work from a stock of pre-existing parts risk accounts detached from the local context and from what the participants themselves were doing. #
“Or, as Schegloff argues, there is the potential to be analytically promiscuous where such analysis relies upon the analyst's understanding rather than the participants'”
Openness now flows back. Discursive psychology's openness across disciplinary boundaries, which we trace to Edwards' interest in Sacks, now feeds back into membership categorisation analysis, for example in studies combining it with other approaches. #
“MCA is used in combination with other approaches to great effect is found in Butler's (2008) work on children's play, in Stokoe and Edwards' (2007) on race, and Stokoe's (2003; 2010) work around gender”
Questions this paper answers
Why study categories in conversation rather than in the mind?
Because categorising is flexible and done for local purposes. The same person or object can be described differently by different people, or by one person at different times. Models of ideal mental categories cannot explain this variation. Analysing what people actually say shows it directly. (See §Social categories are social actions, p. 4; §Social categories are social actions, p. 4.)
How do discursive psychology and membership categorisation analysis differ?
Edwards' paper develops DP's position that categorisation should be studied through naturally occurring talk, not imagined or invented cases. the semantics of categories cannot be analysed from imagined artificial cases but only through the collection and study of naturally-occurring situated cases(§Social categories are social actions, p. 2)
Combining approaches such as CA, MCA, multimodal analysis and discourse analysis has enriched the study of language in use, in contrast to trends where these approaches have become separate and even hostile. this has provided an increasingly rich and detailed approach to the study of language in use, which has contributed back to these approaches, including MCA(§Contemporary influences on MCA, p. 10)
›
Concepts
Membership categorisation
Sacks' account of how people use social categories, which Edwards introduces through the child's story 'The baby cried. The mommy picked it up': Treating references to 'baby' and 'mommy' as normative categories, he goes on to shows how these categories involve assumptions of attributes and behaviour, and expected behaviour between the categories.(§Social categories are social actions, p. 4)
Categorisation as social action
Edwards' alternative to categories as items drawn from a mental store: categorisations are not simply labels attached to objects but motivated interactional work invested in by the participant at any particular time and where stake and outcome shape the selection and interactional engagement of participants(§Social categories are social actions, p. 4)
Member and membership
Not, as often in psychology, analysts' groupings of populations. For Sacks, 'member' and 'membership' are seen as routine actions used to accomplish social organisation in such a way as to display local sense-making to each other(§Members, intersubjectivity and machinery, pp. 6–7)
Machinery metaphor
Sacks' image of standardised gadgets picked from a warehouse to build sense-making, which can be read as a cognitive schema model and which both Edwards and Hester and Eglin treat as problematic. the machine metaphor is belied by the overall thrust of Sacks' emphasis on talk as overwhelmingly produced for and contingent upon the local orientations of participants(§Members, intersubjectivity and machinery, p. 7)
Culture in action
Hester and Eglin's alternative to a static stock of knowledge: social knowledge assembled in the occasion of its use. it would be better to conceive of social knowledge as 'knowledge in action', or indeed as 'culture in action'(§Discursive Psychology and Membership Categorisation Analysis, p. 9)
How to cite
Richard Fitzgerald and Sean Rintel. 2016. Reorienting categories as a members' phenomena. Discursive psychology: Classic and contemporary studies, 181-193. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315863054-13
This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text. Page numbers refer to this PDF.
BibTeX
@inbook{fitzgerald2016reorienting,
author = {Fitzgerald, Richard and Rintel, Sean},
title = {Reorienting categories as a members' phenomena},
booktitle = {Discursive psychology: Classic and contemporary studies},
year = {2016},
month = {January},
publisher = {Routledge},
url = {https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315863054-13},
pages = {181-193},
isbn = {978-0-415-72160-8},
doi = {10.4324/9781315863054-13},
}