Gender and categorial systematics

In this chapter, we explore membership categorization analysis (MCA) as a method for interrogating the systematic ways in which gender, as an everyday members' category, is invoked, given meaning, and sustained in various spoken and textual forms of social interaction. To this end, the chapter begins with a discussion of recent developments within MCA and how they allow for the possibility not just of a categorial systematics, but of a categorial systematics that can contribute to the project of language and gender studies. A practical, step‐by‐step explanation of how to do categorial systematics is then followed by three case studies that exemplify the method in use. In this way, the chapter shows that and how MCA works as a corpus‐based approach which, like conversation analysis (CA), can use collections of naturally occurring data to reveal people's discourse practices for accomplishing social action