Abstract
This paper analyzes the construction and negotiation of religious identity categories in non-professional interviews using English as a lingua franca conducted by Polish students of foreign languages with foreigners staying in Poland. I use membership categorization analysis to show how the talk participants present themselves as members of a particular religious collectivity and how they ascribe membership in a religious collectivity to other speakers. I focus both on explicit and implicit categorization.
About the author
Agnieszka Nowicka is Associate Professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her research focuses on ethnomethodology, membership categorization analysis, communication in English as a lingua franca, media discourse and teaching and learning English as a foreign language.
The interactions have been transcribed in accordance with the CA convention designed by Gail Jefferson (2004) using the following transcription symbols:
A : A speaker
(.) A micropause
(1.0) A pause in seconds
[ ] The onset and end of overlapping talk
: A lengthening of a sound
h An outbreath or laughter
.hhh An inbreath
(h) Audible aspirations within
speech (e.g., laughter particles)
a Talk which is emphasized by the speaker
CAPITALS Talk which is noticeably louder than the surrounding talk
xxx Unintelligible talk
(guess) Transcriber’s guess
°silent° Talk which is noticeably quieter than that surrounding it
↑Rising intonation
↓Falling intonation
, Continuing, slightly upward intonation
>Quicker< and <Slower> utterance
- Interrupted or discontinued utterance or a sharp cut-off of a prior utterance
= Latching of successive talk
(( )) Speaker’s nonverbal or paraverbal behavior, transcriber comments on the description of a sound
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