Mandarin ethnomethodology or mutual interchange?

• Published in: Discourse studies 2018-02, Vol.20 (1), p.120-141
• Main Authors: Maynard, Douglas W, Clayman, Steven E
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Appreciation; Comparative analysis; Conversation analysis; Discourse analysis; Ethnomethodology; Garfinkel, Harold (1917-2011); Lectures; Radicalism; Social movements
• ISSN: 1461-4456; 1461-7080
• DOI: 10.1177/1461445617734345

Contributors to the 2016 Special Issue of Discourse Studies on the ‘Epistemics of Epistemics’ (EoE) claim that studies of epistemics in interaction (how participants display orientations to their own and others’ states of knowledge) have lost the ‘radical’ character of groundbreaking work in ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA). We suggest that the critiques and related writings are a kind of mandarin EM, lacking an adequate definition of ‘radical’, other than to invoke brief and by now familiar statements from Garfinkel and Sacks regarding the pursuit of ‘ordinary everyday activities’ and the avoidance of ‘formal analysis’. Drawing on Egon Bittner’s work, we further suggest that the EoE group shares properties and problems common to social movements claiming the mantle of radicalism. Because of their particular focus on CA and Harvey Sacks’ early work, we also demonstrate that Sacks was not, as asserted, preoccupied with the singularity of occasions. Rather, from his earliest available work (the 1964 lectures), Sacks pursued trans-situational aspects of sequential organization, and documented these not only through single cases but also through the comparative analysis of specimen collections. We conclude by considering how EM and CA are compatible endeavors, both in their engagement with traditional research topics – or what Garfinkel called ‘asymmetric alternates’ – and in their appreciation of generic features implicated in the assembly of social actions and social worlds. This implies a relationship of mutual interchange between EM and CA.