| This contribution is based on a Ph.D. thesis analyzing recorded interactions between native Czech speakers and Czech-speaking American missionaries. I argue in favor of three norms or rules to be managed in strategic interaction: (1) Not everyone may speak to everyone, (2) Not everyone may speak to everyone about everything, (3) Not everyone may speak to everyone about everything at any given time. Religious missionaries engaging in public proselyting are one group of people who enter into interactions with the aim of engaging their interlocutors in highly intimate topics. In initiating and maintaining conversation, they must transition from the situation in rule (1), overcome it, and subsequently repeat the same for rules (2) and (3) until their aim has been achieved or until the conversation is ended. They accomplish this methodically through topical and categorical transitions in the course of the talk. Using the CA concept of topical order (Jefferson 1984, Maynard & Zimmerman 1984) and Membership Categorization Analysis (Sacks 1992), I show how the interlocutors begin as the pair of categories “stranger-stranger”, with the missionaries invoking other pairs such as “local-non-local”, “native speaker-non-native speaker”, “teacher-student”, and finally, “missionary-investigator” using a pre-determined hierarchical list of topics. The analysis also reveals how the missionaries’ interlocutors self-categorize and transition topics in order to end the conversation or to rule themselves out as potential converts. |
