Extract 11
1 Hol.: in what way do:es changing nappies translate to:
2 (.) running a boardroom↑ exactly
3 Ally: if you can change a na ppy (0.4) you can change the
4 wor ld
5 Hol.: well i can change nappies and i don’t have a
6 child so:↑
Here Holly uses “changing nappies” (line 1) as a category-resonant descriptor of motherhood, contrasting this basic task of motherhood with an empowered image of a Businessperson as capable of “running a boardroom” (line 2). Ally accepts and reframes this category descriptor, hyperbolically equating changing nappies with changing the world (lines 3-4). Both speakers rely on common sense knowledge of the category-bound activity as an identifier of motherhood. In lines 5-6, however, Holly problematises this categorical tie, reframing the ability to change nappies as not category-bound to motherhood. This offers a striking demonstration of the capacity for normative category expectations to be manipulated within argumentative talk, revealing the instability of such knowledge and how it can be reconstructed in various, and often contradictory, ways.
Our final extract, concerning a debate about gender-neutral school uniform, illuminates how motherhood incumbents, on occasion, seek to uphold their argument by (re)producing and policing category rights, norms, and values as qualities and concepts that are potentially only comprehensible to those who are members of the category.