This article is concerned with how social categories (e.g., wife, mother, sister, tenant, guest) become visible through the actions that individuals perform in social interaction. Using audio and video recordings of social interaction as data and conversation analysis as a method, we examine how individuals display their rights or constraints to perform certain actions by virtue of occupying a certain social category. We refer to actions whose performance is sensitive to membership in a certain social category as category-sensitive actions. Most of the time, the social boundaries surrounding these actions remain invisible because participants in interaction typically act in ways that are consistent with their social status and roles. In this study, however, we specifically examine instances where category boundaries become visible as participants approach, expose, or transgress them. Our focus is on actions with relatively stringent category sensitivity such as requests, offers, invitations, or handling one’s possessions. Ultimately, we believe these are the tip of an iceberg that potentially includes most, if not all, actions.

本文关注的是如何通过个人在社交互动中执行的动作来显示社交类别（例如，妻子，母亲，姐妹，房客，来宾）。通过使用社交互动的音频和视频记录作为数据和对话分析作为一种方法，我们研究了个人如何通过占据特定的社交类别来表现出执行某些动作的权利或约束。我们将对特定社会类别的成员表现敏感的行为称为类别敏感行为。在大多数情况下，围绕这些行为的社会边界仍然不可见，因为互动参与者通常以与其社会地位和角色相一致的方式行事。但是，在这项研究中 我们专门研究了当参与者接近，暴露或越过类别边界时可见类别边界的情况。我们的重点是对类别敏感度相对严格的操作，例如请求，要约，邀请或处理个人财产。归根结底，我们认为这些只是冰山一角，其中可能包括大多数（如果不是全部）行动。