The main purpose of the final paper is to give you experience in making, and organizing in
written form, some observations about social categories and/or categorization in some data of
your own choosing. The paper is intended to be a modest and manageable piece of work, and
therefore you should not feel a need to provide a comprehensive analysis with novel
implications. However, you should approach the task with care and rigor, and should structure
your paper in accordance with the conventions of academic writing in sociology. That is, your
paper should include (at least) the following:
- Introduction: This part of the paper should inform the reader of what they should expect to
see in the remainder of the paper. That is, it should briefly describe the data on which the
paper is based, and provide a brief summary of some of the main observations or analytic
points you will be discussing in your analysis. - Analysis: You are encouraged to base your analysis on the data you selected for the previous
exercise you submitted, but you are also free to collect alternative or additional data for the
purposes of this paper. Your analysis should consist of some observations on your data,
guided by a conversation analytic framework (as represented in the course readings and in
class during the quarter). Particularly important in this regard are:
a. Remember that whatever else people in interactions may be doing, they are always,
ubiquitously and unavoidably, engaging in sequences and courses of action. In
analyzing your data, try to establish first and foremost what the participants are up to,
and then consider how the category or categories of interest figure in that.
b. In considering whether and how categories matter in an interaction, the strongest
forms of evidence are those that demonstrably indicate participants’ orientations
toward the relevance and procedural consequentiality of the categories.
c. Each of your observations should be clearly linked to an empirical feature (or
features) of your data. You are strongly encouraged to use quotes from the data
and/or line numbers from transcripts to ensure that you are meeting this requirement
of empirically grounding your claims. - Conclusions: This part of the paper should include some discussion of the potential
implications of the analytic observations you have made. What do they tell us about the
social and/or interactional organization of whatever you have focused on?
In addition, please take note of the following in preparing your paper:
• You are encouraged to make use of the course readings to the extent that they are relevant or
informative for your paper. This means that you are not required to use all of the course
readings, but you will hopefully find that at least a few of them are useful, and you should
clearly cite any that you make use of and include them on a reference list at the end of the
paper. (Note: You should devote the majority of your paper to providing
observations/analyses of your data, rather than summarizing or reproducing what is in the
course readings in the absence of applying them to the analysis of your own data.)
• You are not required to consult or make use of any published sources outside of the required
and/or recommended course readings. However, any such sources that you do make use of
should also be clearly cited and included on your reference list.
2
• Consider using sub-headings to assist you in organizing your paper and making it as clear
and readable as possible.
• Please carefully edit your work for clarity, flow, and to eliminate unnecessary grammatical
and typological errors. These “stylistic” matters make a real difference to the quality of your
work, and may easily be the difference between the grade you’d like to get and the grade you
actually earn!
• The recommended length for the paper is 2,000-2,500 words (excluding data transcripts and
references). Please do not exceed the upper limit of this recommended range.
• If, after carefully reading these instructions, you have questions or encounter problems in
writing your paper, please do not hesitate to contact me to ask for assistance!
This paper is worth 30% of your course grade. Please type your work, double-spaced, with one-inch
margins. Please be sure to put your name on the first page of your paper. The paper is due at 12pm on
June 11, and should be submitted to me by email at [email protected]. Early submissions are
welcomed.