| This paper investigates how generalizations about people are made in talk and the relationship between generalization and membership categorization. The data are drawn from two quite different sources: 1) American English telephone conversations and 2) discussions among Japanese university students using English as part of an assignment in an English language class. All data were transcribed by the researcher. That comparable examples of generalization can be found in these different sets of data is one indication of the widespread nature of this phenomenon. While it is important to investigate the work which generalizations accomplish within particular sequential contexts, the analyses for this paper focus on how generalizations are constructed as turns at talk and how this construction may vary. Basically, a trait, act, or experience is attributed to one or more incumbents of a category, which is then used as the basis for saying something which applies to other members of the category. Analyses reveal that one way generalizations can vary is the extent to which the generalization itself is necessary for the identification of the relevant membership category. In some cases, it is extremely ambiguous what membership category the person to whom a trait, act, or experience is attributed to is relevantly an incumbent of. The generalization helps disambiguate this. Also, while by default generalizations apply to all members of a category, participants sometimes limit the scope of their generalization to a subset of members. In addition to building on work in Membership Categorization Analysis, this paper builds on recent work on generalization by Bilmes (2008). |
