Self-categorization: a resource for the management of experiential entitlement in talk about child death

Abstract In this paper, I examine self-categorization practices as resources for the interactional organization of relative experiential entitlements. Locating the study in talk about child death, an explicitly moral domain of social life, this study utilizes 18 radio-based interactions from a South African talk-radio broadcaster. Using an ethnomethodological, conversation-analytic approach, I examine affective responses to reports of child deaths, demonstrating how these practices reproduce child death as a contemporary social and moral concern. My findings demonstrate how practices of, and variations in, self-reference and self-categorization are resources for managing relative rights and obligations, thereby reproducing common-sense knowledge about parents and children in contemporary South African society. This research contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of membership categorization analysis and the social organization of experience.