Interactional Categorization and Gatekeeping

Reviews / Votes

Taking as a point of departure the seminal work of Sarangi and Roberts, and more generally of linguistic anthropology, the author manages to take us through the thick intricacies of tense gatekeeping encounters like those of internship interviews, often the first way into the (unpaid) working world for many immigrant minority youngsters. Surely, the author has got the job done right. -- Massimiliano Spotti, Tilburg University, The Netherlands This study builds upon and advances earlier research on gatekeeping encounters, showing the importance of the presence of co-membership or its opposite - the establishment of a we-relation or a you-relation among interlocutors. Combining approaches from interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, and cultural studies, the book presents compelling transcribed examples and provides fresh insights into the performance of social identity in face-to-face interaction. -- Frederick Erickson, University of California, Los Angeles, USA All in all, the book provides some very interesting insights into the field of intercultural communication which may be applied to the analysis of institutional encounters in other domains, such as migration and asylum-seeking contexts, in which people belonging to different linguacultural backgrounds interact and negotiate meaning; in such cases, the power asymmetries between migrants and welfare officers, combined with a number of other factors, may easily lead to misunderstandings and to negative outcomes for the less powerful participants. -- Laura Centonze, Universita del Salento, Italy * Discourse & Society 28 (5) *