Overview
The transcript shown below and accompanying recording for this assignment are the same as those used for Assignment 1. This assignment is based on the materials covered in Weeks 2-5, especially Lectures 4-5 and 7-10. Using these materials (and, if relevant, the accompanying required readings) to guide you:
1. Provide a brief analysis of what C does at line 3. You can use the following sub-questions to guide your analysis, but note that they may overlap and therefore I recommend that you write up an overall analysis of this main question rather than attempting to separate it into answers to the sub-questions:
a. What action(s) does C produce here, and what are some of the key features of how she does so?
C produces actions in line 3. The main action she produces is calling the police.
b. How do the person references (both first and third person) C uses contribute to her action(s)?
c. What categories does C treats as relevant (explicitly or otherwise) in producing her action(s), and what common-sense knowledge in relation to these categories does she mobilize in the process?
2. Provide a brief analysis of C’s use of Pn-adequate categories in lines 37-38. You can use the following sub-questions to guide your analysis, but note that they may overlap and therefore (as with Question 1) I recommend that you write up an overall analysis of this main question rather than attempting to separate it into answers to the sub-questions:
a. What is the common-sense knowledge associated with the Pn-adequate categories that C mobilizes (whether she explicitly articulates it or not) in mentioning them?
b. How does C use this common-sense knowledge, particularly in light of her membership in and orientations to setting-based omni-relevant categories (as identified in Assignment 1), and to what C has done at line 3 (as addressed in Question 1 above)?
c. Discuss C’s uses of these Pn-adequate categories in light of the rules of application (“relevance rules”) Sacks describes, particularly the economy rule and the consistency rule. (For the latter of these, you may see fit to consider the context of what has happened just before line 37, especially lines 31-35, but you need not provide detailed analysis of those preceding moments as we will examine them in more depth in Assignment 3.)
Please also note the following: •
In writing up your analyses, please keep in mind that (as you were asked to do in Assignment 1) you should, wherever possible, a) use evidence to support your claims (e.g., line numbers or brief quotes from the transcript), and b) specify how it is that the evidence (line numbers/quotes) you are pointing to serves as evidence in support of your claims. •
Your analyses need not be exhaustive in order to earn full credit. That is, you do not need to say everything that could possibly be said in relation to the above questions, as long as what you do say addresses the questions and is well-supported by the evidence you point to.
The word limit for this assignment is 500 words. Please check the word count on your answers before submitting, as penalties will be applied for submissions that exceed this limit. (Also note that is entirely possible to earn full credit for the assignment without writing as much as 500 words, so you need not feel obligated to use this full allowance.) The assignment is due by 11:59pm on Monday, November 3, and should be submitted using the link provided on Canvas. Early submissions are welcomed.
Transcript:
SOC 136C, Data Transcript for Assignments 1-4
[Hill; Soda Thieves Call] 1 CT: >Tallahassee police department Emily speaking, how may 2 I help you< 3 C: H:i I need three teenagers removed from my store right away, 4 (1.8) 5 CT: Where: is your sto:re. 6 C: The Burger King on (Tennessee) Street, it’s (.) ten sixty 7 West Tennessee? 8 (1.0) 9 CT: And you’re the employee there? 10 (0.2) 11 C: >I am the stor-< w=I’m: thu::h assistant manager. 12 (0.7) 13 CT: And what’s the name of the sto:re? 14 (0.5) 15 C: Burger King, 16 CT: Burger King. And what are they doin’. 17 (0.8) 18 C: (Alright.) Well, (1.0) for one they’re not listening they’re 19 causing a big scene out front becaus:e I: (.) caught one of 20 ‘em stealing soda:? 21 (0.2) 22 C: And refused to dump out the cu::p. 23 (0.2) 24 C: And I told him >over and over again no matter< what it 25 is the:ft. 26 (0.4) 27 C: And he said he didn’t ca:re. 28 (0.2) 29 C: .h=So now he’s fighting with me and refuses to leave. 30 (2.8) 31 CT: #O:ka:y#=h U:h: males, females, black=whi:te, 32 (0.2) 33 C: Male black about six foot. 34 CT: All o[f em?] 35 C: [All ]three of em. Yep! 36 (0.8) 37 C: An’ I’m like a five foot little white girl, so it’s li:ke 38 .h hh .h they’re not gonna listen to me no matter what I say. 39 (4.8) 40 CT: .h (.) All:: right.=We’ll get somebody out there as soon 41 as we can.=They’re inside right now? 42 C: Yep! 43 CT: Ao:kay we’ll get somebody out there. 44 C: >Thank you.< 45 CT: >Uh huh buhbye.< 46 ((click) )
This was the first assignment I got a 93%:
Part 1: Setting-based Membership Categorization Device (MCD)
The setting-based MCD which the participants consider to be omni-relevant in this call is Store Incident Reporting. The groups that comprise this collection are Employee who are the reporting party, Offending Customers the subjects of complaint and Dispatcher the authority contact.
The category of employee can be observed when the caller refers to herself as the “assistant manager” (line 11). This indicates her institutional capacity and duty of ensuring that there is order in the store. The Offending Customers category is shown through the caller’s description of “three teenagers” (line 3) who are “causing a big scene” (line 19) and “stealing soda” (line 20). These actions are customer-related, but they are classified as problematic, which sets the necessary official intervention. The category of Dispatcher is presented at the very start where the call taker says, “Tallahassee police department Emily speaking” (line 1). This proves her as the person in charge of receiving reports and organizing a response.
The usage of these categories can be seen in the context of the way the dialogue develops. The employee takes up her role narrating the incident and seeking assistance and the dispatcher in her professional obligation by verifying information like “Where: is your store” (line 5) and confirmation action “kay we’ll get somebody out there” (line 43). The employee also makes herself one who cannot solve the situation on her own, “they’re not gonna listen to me” (line 37), which shows the necessity of escalation also. This action forms a Store Incident Reporting system where people are oriented towards different but integrating responsibilities in a common environment.
Part 2: Pn-adequate MCD
One of the possible Pn-adequate MCDs that is relevant is gender, the MCD Female. This is shown through the statement of the caller, who claims “I’m like a five foot little white girl” (line 37). In this comment she appeals to her gender to justify her lack of authority and the emergency of the help of the police.
The reference to gender indicates that the caller is expanding her classification past that of an employee, indicating what she is doing by combining another attribute she is positioning herself as vulnerable in comparison to the “Male black about six foot”(line 33) customers. This helps with her ask for assistance, and corresponds with the rule of economy, where extra categories are used to address a specific aspect of interaction (Martikainen, 2020). Gender, in this case, serves as a Pn-adequate category that defines the interpretation of seriousness and legitimacy of her report by the two parties.
References
Martikainen, J. (2020). Membership categorization analysis as means of studying person perception. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 19(3), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2020.1794089