Membership categorization in children’s pretend play

Abstract

Drawing on data from 24 hours of video-recorded interaction of two bilingual (Korean, English) children aged between three and five, we use multimodal conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to show how pretend membership categories are invoked and mapped onto the children during social pretend play. In the examined data, the membership categories (person typifications) are organized into standardized relational pairs , such as “host” and “guest,” for which the existence of an incumbent of one category makes the existence of an incumbent of the other category programmatically relevant. The analysis shows some of the resources, which include place names and language alternation, through which the mapping of categories is contextualized, made relevant, and attempted or accomplished. The analysis also shows how mapping can be unproblematic and fleeting and how attempted mapping can be ignored, which highlights the necessity of collaboration for social pretend play. Data are in English and Korean.