18 June 2015

Louise Tranekjær releases new textbook: Interactional Categorization and Gatekeeping

The book is about categorization processes in native/non-native workplace interaction, within the context of internship interviews between Danish employers and second language speakers who were born abroad. In this volume, which is one of the first books on gatekeeping, Tranekjær seeks to address processes of power and ideology from a conversation analytical perspective.

Contents

Introduction
1. The Internship Interview – A Hybrid Communicative Event
2. Gatekeeping – An Interactional and Ideological Process
3. Categories and Knowledge in Interaction
4. When Background is Foregrounded – Nationality and ‘Ways of Life’
5. Do You Understand? The Issue of Language
6. Liquor, Pork and Scarfs – The Issue of Religion
7. Gatekeeping – The Power of Categories
8. Interactional Pitfalls and Pointers

Reviews

"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

Author Information

Louise Tranekjær is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Identity at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research interests include institutional interaction, membership categorization analysis, identity, processes of inclusion and exclusion and discourse analysis.