Feminist psychology, conversation analysis and empirical research: an illustration using identity categories

Drawing on feminist psychology and conversation analysis, this paper argues in support of an empirical programme that pays close attention to the details of talk while avoiding assumptions of gender essentialism. A short data fragment is presented. The analysis points to the kind of interpretation relying on speakers’ identities that has been the target of much recent critique by gender and language scholars. It also illustrates a membership categorisation analysis of the data. The question posed is why the age and gender identity categories get used in the way they do. The analysis shows that the form and serial position of the identity categories within a single utterance produces a commonsense knowledge, albeit local and idiosyncratic, of age and gender.