’Speaking as a mother’: A membership categorisation analysis of
child-centric talk in a UK daytime television talk show
Abstract
In this study, we explore
motherhood as an interactionally emergent identity category which
speakers simultaneously construct and lay claim to in talk, and as a
category which is imbued with moral expectations of how its incumbents
should behave. We analyse 18 chid-centric debates from British daytime
television talk show This Morning. We use Membership
Categorisation Analysis to explore how, and to what effect, women deploy
claims to motherhood. We report 3 main findings; (i) Speakers routinely
quantify their motherhood credentials as they develop rights to be heard
on child-centric matters; (ii) Speaking as a mother habitually trumps
the arguments offered by other speakers, including those with
professional expertise; (iii) Any challenge to essentialist norms of
motherhood become accountable concerns for speakers. We conclude that
whilst there is power in motherhood insomuch as it vests women with
expertise and elevates their rights to be heard on child-centric
matters, the speakers in our study of mainstream debates about
child-centric issues nevertheless construct motherhood in a manner which
(re)produces and elevates essentialised notions of gender.
Keywords: Motherhood ; membership categorisation analysis ; gender ;
parenting ; discourse analysis; experiential expertise; moral discourse