Possible -isms and ethnomethodology

With its interest in members’ methods for accomplishing social actions, ethnomethodology has long been concerned with -isms in interaction (Rawls et al. Reference Rawls, Whitehead; and Duck2020). This concern dates back to Garfinkel's and Sacks’ work in the mid-twentieth century on constructing gender, race, and ethnicity (see Rawls et al. Reference Rawls, Whitehead; and Duck2020 for an overview), and it could be observed in Jefferson, Sacks, & Schegloff's (Reference Jefferson, Sacks, Schegloff, Button and Lee1987:161–63) examination of the ‘catchall term’ (Reference Jefferson, Sacks, Schegloff, Button and Lee1987:192, n. 4) potential improprieties: talk that ‘breaches conventional standards of courtesy, propriety, tact, ethics, commonality, etc. etc., the breach in conventional standards at least potentially being offensive to other parties to the interaction’ (Reference Jefferson, Sacks, Schegloff, Button and Lee1987:160). Since then, a growing body of ethnomethodological research, including membership categorization analytic and conversation analytic (M/CA) work, has examined subtle practices of producing, sustaining, and resisting -isms (e.g. Hansen Reference Hansen2005; Kitzinger Reference Kitzinger2005a,Reference Kitzingerb; Pagliai Reference Pagliai2009; Robles Reference Robles2015; Romaniuk Reference Romaniuk2015; Stokoe Reference Stokoe2015; Weatherall Reference Weatherall2015; Whitehead Reference Whitehead2015, Reference Whitehead2018; Shrikant Reference Shrikant2018, Reference Shrikant2022; Rawls & Duck Reference Rawls and Duck2020).

Focusing on -isms in naturally occurring interaction, M/CA researchers consider in fine, multimodal detail when and how -isms are produced and receipted and for what interactional purposes. The level of detail in this process is crucial, as it reveals the taken-for-granted, seen-but-unnoticed ways of (unwittingly) sustaining systemic exclusion (Rawls et al. Reference Rawls, Whitehead; and Duck2020). Such microanalysis has, for instance, uncovered the often delicate, defeasible, and generally tacit (re)production of -isms, which has led Stokoe (Reference Stokoe2015) and Whitehead (Reference Whitehead2015) to propose a focus on possible (rather than ‘real’) -isms: utterances which could be heard as racist, classist, (hetero)sexist, or otherwise prejudiced or exclusionary, although their exclusionary nature may be (re)negotiated in situ. Prior M/CA research has also illuminated the role membership categorization and preference organization play in sustaining and challenging -isms, which I review next.

Possible -isms and membership categorization

Possible -isms entail hearably exclusionary treatment of social groups, making membership categorization analysis especially useful in their examination. Membership categorization refers to the process of constructing and invoking different social types—that is, categories—in interaction. In this process, interactants tie certain features, including attributes, activities, competencies, rights, and obligations to certain categories (Sacks Reference Sacks1992; Hester & Eglin Reference Hester and Eglin1997). Individuals that (presumably) possess features tied to specific categories may then be ‘assigned’ to those categories, attributed other category-tied features, and held accountable for (not) acting in category-appropriate ways. To use Sacks’ (Reference Sacks, Gumperz and Hymes1972) classic example, a person picking up a crying infant may be categorized as the infant's parent, given that their action can be seen/heard as tied to the parent category—soothing one's child. A person who is merely sitting next to a crying infant might also be categorized as the infant's parent and then held accountable for not engaging in expected, category-tied behavior. Of course, the person and infant could be categorized in many other ways, for example, according to their activities, gender, race/ethnicity, and so on; and their categorizations will be achieved, managed, and negotiated in situ, revealing interactants’ social knowledge and expectations.

For analysts concerned with possible -isms, it is exclusionary categorization that becomes a key focus: when, how, and why interactants construct social categories in hearably discriminatory or offensive ways. M/CA researchers have examined how gender, racial, and ethnic categories can be invoked to perform criticisms and insults (Stokoe & Edwards Reference Stokoe and Edwards2006; Weatherall Reference Weatherall2015), manage accusations and complaints (Hansen Reference Hansen2005; Whitehead Reference Whitehead2013), and reproduce and challenge exclusion (Talmy Reference Talmy2008; Robles Reference Robles2015; Stokoe Reference Stokoe2015; Whitehead Reference Whitehead2015, Reference Whitehead2018; Shrikant Reference Shrikant2018, Reference Shrikant2022). The current study builds on this work by examining how exclusionary categorization might be shaped by interactants’ orientations to tacit principles of social conduct—that is, preference organization.

Possible -isms and preference organization

Preference organization refers to participants’ differential treatment of actions which promote or threaten certain principles of social conduct (Pomerantz & Heritage Reference Pomerantz, Heritage, Sidnell and Stivers2013). One prevalent principle is that of solidarity or of supporting one's interlocutor (Heritage Reference Heritage1984; Clayman Reference Clayman, Thye and Lawler2002). While what counts as support is context-dependent, in gross terms, supportive, solidarity-enhancing actions include agreement, approval, and/or appreciation, and solidarity-threatening actions include disagreement, denial, and/or disapproval. A preference for solidarity becomes observable in interactants’ differential treatment of solidarity-enhancing and solidarity-threatening actions: The former tend to be delivered quickly and directly, as socially unproblematic or ‘preferred’; and the latter tend to be delivered with mitigative delays and accounts, as socially problematic or ‘dispreferred’ (Heritage Reference Heritage1984). This preference organization may be complicated, however, by the concurrent relevance of multiple, even conflicting principles. For example, while recipients of assessments may orient to solidarity by treating agreement with assessments as preferred, recipients of complimenting assessments might orient to both solidarity and modesty by downgrading compliments or shifting their focus, rather than simply agreeing with them (Pomerantz Reference Pomerantz, Atkinson and Heritage1984).

Solidarity becomes relevant around possible -isms since such utterances reveal speakers’ (socially delicate) stances and make them vulnerable to criticism; and this vulnerability can be managed through solidarity-enhancing actions (e.g. agreement, approval, or appreciation). For instance, examining institutional and casual (friends-and-family) interactions, Pagliai (Reference Pagliai2009) uncovered a preference for solidarity around racist portrayals of immigrants. Recipients confirmed, co-constructed, and expanded speakers’ -isms, creating a ‘spiral effect’ of ‘increasingly racializing statements’ (Reference Pagliai2009:556). Jefferson and colleagues (Reference Jefferson, Sacks, Schegloff, Button and Lee1987) showed that producers of -isms (and potential improprieties in general) similarly oriented to this preference by apparently expecting and using -isms to invite laughter and enhance solidarity.

Since -isms can compromise one's moral standing, they also make moral accountability relevant (Whitehead Reference Whitehead2015, Reference Whitehead2018); and interactants can enact a preference for moral accountability through unequivocal (and solidarity-threatening) challenges to -isms. Preferences for moral accountability and solidarity therefore come into conflict: challenging -isms helps interactants maintain moral accountability but threatens their solidarity, and (co)constructing -isms helps interactants build solidarity but compromises their morality. Interactants might resolve this conflict by softening objections to -isms with delays and accounts (Whitehead Reference Whitehead2015, Reference Whitehead2018), but they might also prioritize one preference over another. Whitehead (Reference Whitehead2018), for instance, observed that hosts of call-in radio shows oriented solely to solidarity by agreeing with -isms that were restricted to callers’ personal experiences. In mediations, by contrast, Stokoe (Reference Stokoe2015) found that moral accountability somewhat outweighed solidarity: mediators delicately challenged (prospective) clients’ -isms despite being institutionally required to enact impartiality.

Research on preference also suggests that orienting to either solidarity or moral accountability can ‘complicate’ sequences with -isms and halt their progressivity—the former with ‘spiral effects’ (Pagliai Reference Pagliai2009) and the latter with delays and accounts (Whitehead Reference Whitehead2015, Reference Whitehead2018). These ‘complications’ then make relevant the principle of progressivity, that is, moving an interaction forward (Schegloff Reference Schegloff1979). Land & Kitzinger (Reference Land and Kitzinger2005), for example, uncovered this preference in various institutional calls as callers accepted, or corrected only in passing, heterosexist references to their same-sex partners in order to promote the ongoing business of their calls. Although not originally addressed in these terms, the practices of deleting (Stokoe Reference Stokoe2015) and disattending (Jefferson et al. Reference Jefferson, Sacks, Schegloff, Button and Lee1987) -isms can also be tied to progressivity: Both practices entail disregarding the -ism and responding only to an innocuous part of the prior utterance, which helps move the sequence forward. In the adult second language classrooms examined here, interactants similarly pursued progressivity by deleting -isms, and they regularly accompanied these deletions with agreement and appreciation.

Possible -isms in classroom interaction

Research on classroom interaction has long been concerned with systemic exclusion (e.g. Cazden Reference Cazden2001). Studies have found that interactants may tacitly reproduce exclusion by marginalizing minoritized students’ knowledge and participation (e.g. Talmy Reference Talmy2008, Reference Talmy2010; Martinez Reference Martinez2017), essentializing race/culture (e.g. Paoletti Reference Paoletti2000; Lee Reference Lee2015; Charalambous, Zembylas, & Charalambous Reference Charalambous, Zembylas and Charalambous2016), and reinforcing raciolinguistic ideologies (e.g. Flores & Rosa Reference Flores and Rosa2015; Chaparro Reference Chaparro2019; Ricklefs Reference Ricklefs2021); and they may challenge exclusion through critical discussions about difference and discrimination (e.g. de Souza Vasconcelos Reference de Souza Vasconcelos2013; Godley & Loretto Reference Godley and Loretto2013; Thomas Reference Thomas2013). While this research has illuminated how exclusionary practices in education can be reproduced and resisted, it has not considered how they might be shaped by underlying principles of conduct. Microanalyses of possible -isms in classrooms (cf. Talmy Reference Talmy2010), and specifically in adult second language classrooms (cf. Lee Reference Lee2015), is also lacking within this corpus.

The issue of possible -isms in adult second language classrooms is especially pertinent considering institutional roles and objectives specific to this context. Possible -isms and the principle of moral accountability become institutionally relevant as participants work on promoting language appropriacy and criticality (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2014) and explore cross-cultural differences in categorization practices (Lee Reference Lee2015). Solidarity and progressivity, however, become respectively relevant as participants aim to foster a supportive environment conducive to participation and learning (Nguyen Reference Nguyen2007) and complete various instructional activities within set time constraints (Sercu Reference Sercu2006). Additional complications around -isms stem from participants’ presumed competencies. Teachers and students in these classrooms are typically of highly diverse sociocultural backgrounds and relatively close in age; thus, despite their differing levels of second-language knowledge, as presumably competent members of different cultures, they may enact equal rights around normalizing or problematizing possible -isms. Given these various institutional roles and objectives, I explore how classroom participants orient to different principles of conduct around possible -isms.

Solidarity

A preference for solidarity can first be observed in participants’ quick and direct support—for example, approval, agreement, and/or appreciation—for possible -isms. We see this ‘preferred’ treatment of support in the first extract, where a teacher strongly agrees with a student's telling as soon as the student engages in potentially racist category work. The student, Catherine (CAT), is reporting a current event in Germany: an attack on refugees, tentatively identified as being from “Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, those countries” (data not shown). In sharing her (ultimately supportive) stance on the refugees (from line 1), Catherine categorizes the refugees as sexually violent and receives immediate (and increasing) agreement from the teacher Greg (TG).

1. (1) refugees (TGW0330A1_0:46:50) (CAT: Catherine; TG: the teacher, Greg; MIN: Minako; HEE: HeeJin; LOL: Lola; ALE: Alex)

   

With contrastive stress and structure (lines 1 and 3), Catherine projects a counter to negative opinions about refugees in Germany and initially receives (mere) shows of recipiency from Greg—occasional slight nods (lines 5, 11, and 13). In building up to her counter, though, Catherine also constructs an -ism, describing the men “from those countries” as, factually (e.g. “there has been”, line 9) and frequently (“many cases”, line 10), sexually violent (line 14). As soon as Catherine ties the activity of “sexually assault[ing] women” (line 14) to the refugees, Greg begins to show not only recipiency but agreement with a deep nod (line 16) (see Stivers Reference Stivers2008), repeated confirmations (line 21), and reported familiarity (lines 18 and 23). These responses arguably allow Greg to navigate the delicate task of (a man) receipting a woman's troubles telling on sexual violence against women (cf. Jefferson Reference Jefferson2015; Lo & Tadic Reference Lo, Tadic, Wong and Waring2021); however, they also overtly support Catherine's hearably racist categorization.

Catherine subsequently advances her possible -ism by positioning refugees as morally inferior to ‘us’ and “our culture(s)”, which, being apparently free from sexual assault (lines 30–31), “should” be learned (lines 26–27). It is at this juxtaposition of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that Greg could possibly be seen as orienting to moral accountability, that is, as tempering his support for Catherine's talk through gaze aversions (lines 23 and 29; cf. Robinson Reference Robinson2020; see also students’ smiles and laugh particles in lines 27, 30–33). However, these gaze aversions only equivocally (if at all) suggest an orientation to moral accountability, and they are importantly surrounded by Greg's increasing agreement: nods (lines 28 and 29), repeated and intensified confirmations (note the emphasis, line 34, and “absolutely”, line 35), and an elaboration (lines 38–40). With this elaboration—initiated in partial overlap—Greg also delays Catherine's projected counter (“but I think”, line 37) and upgrades her -ism: He implies that refugees would do well to adopt “our culture” in general, but “especially if they're in that cul- country” (lines 38–39) and, with this straightforward formulation of the refugees’ current location (i.e. “they're in that country”), glosses over the perilous circumstances surrounding their forced displacement and resettlement. Greg therefore enacts a preference for solidarity by treating agreement with Catherine's -ism as preferred—delivering it quickly, intensifying it, and temporarily halting sequence progressivity to expand it.

Greg's agreement with Catherine at her very invocation of a possible -ism might also suggest Catherine's orientation to a preference for solidarity. Namely, Catherine produced a possible -ism while receiving (mere) displays of recipiency but not (yet) agreement. It is difficult to claim with certainty though that Catherine used a possible -ism specifically “to pursue” agreement from her recipients.

However, speakers in my data did occasionally more clearly invoke possible -isms as they pursued support for their ongoing (previously resisted) courses of action, thus seemingly treating supportive responses to -isms as expected and preferred. In other words, when encountering resistance to an action (e.g. advice), speakers at times produced possible -isms, as if expecting those -isms to garner recipient support for their thus-far-resisted action. We see one such example next, when a teacher invokes a possible -ism to counter a challenge and pursue agreement with his claim. In discussing innovations, the teacher Simon (TS) has just described the light phone (a cell phone designed to be used as little as possible) as important for improving people's work-life balance (data not shown). Johnny (JOH), however, disagrees and assesses this device as unnecessary, at least in countries like Colombia (Johnny's home country), where people already have a good work-life balance (e.g. lines 1–4). To further support his (resisted) claim about the significance of the light phone, Simon invokes a potentially racist categorization of Japanese people as having an unhealthy work-life imbalance.

1. (2) those people never stop working (TS0419A1_1:17:32) (JOH: Johnny; TS: the teacher, Simon; IVA: Ivana; VIN: Vincent)

   

Simon counters Johnny's disagreement by invoking an apparent opposite to Colombian people: Japanese people, who “never stop working” (lines 7–9). Although he receives soft acceptance of this counter (lines 10 and 11), Simon does not yet move to close the sequence, but rather extends it by furthering his category work with repeated extreme case formulations (“never”, lines 9 and 22) and increasingly emphatic delivery (lines 12, 22, 25–26, and 29–30). This categorization is hearably (and designedly) unfavorable, although Simon only equivocally orients to it as morally accountable in his reference terms: He shifts from a generic referent (“those people”, line 8) to specific category incumbents (lines 15–16 and 18–19; cf. Whitehead Reference Whitehead2018) and initially uses a non-ethnic term (“those students”, line 15), as if treating explicitly ethnic references as delicate (Hansen Reference Hansen2005).

Despite Simon's clearly unfavorable category construction, Johnny formulates a candidate positive result of incumbents’ work-life imbalance (line 37), again disagreeing with Simon (i.e. if “they are happy”, they might not need to improve their (im)balance with the light phone). While it could be argued that Johnny's turn here is ironic, neither Johnny nor Simon treats it as such: Johnny seemingly expects a confirming response (rather than laugher or further irony) given his declarative turn-design (line 37; Heritage Reference Heritage, Freed and Ehrlich2010) and repair initiation (line 39), and Simon strongly and repeatedly disconfirms Johnny's formulation as unironic (lines 38, 40, and 41). Simon finally receives agreement from Ivana (lines 42–46), and the two engage in a brief expansion, upgrading each other's claims about the dangers of (Japanese category incumbents’) work-life imbalance (lines 47–54). Only after he has received support from Ivana does Simon initiate a sequence closing with a summative “so” (line 56), and, after reasserting the importance of the light phone, he also finally receives a concession from Johnny (line 60). In this case then, Simon seems to orient to a preference for solidarity by using an -ism to elicit recipient support: He produces an -ism upon receiving disagreement with his claim and maintains it until he receives agreement instead.

In the above extracts, interactants oriented to a preference for solidarity by quickly and directly supporting possible -isms and invoking possible -isms to garner support. As they delivered and pursued supportive responses, participants only equivocally (if at all) oriented to moral accountability through gaze aversions, smiles, and ‘safe’ reference terms. Overall, however, they increasingly upgraded and collaboratively extended -isms, thus engaging in a ‘spiral effect’ (Pagliai Reference Pagliai2009) and halting progressivity. However, even when they oriented to a preference for progressivity, participants seemed to enact solidarity, as we see next.

Solidarity and progressivity

Participants enacted a preference for solidarity and progressivity by tacitly supporting an -ism that they otherwise attempted to disregard or ‘delete’ while moving the interaction forward. Participants deleted an -ism by explicitly commenting only on an innocuous part of the utterance containing it; but they simultaneously supported the -ism by subtly smiling and/or laughing at it. We see this in the following extract: In response to a student's possibly sexist contribution, the teacher moves the sequence forward by explicitly commenting only on the complexity of the student's turn; however, he implicitly also shows prompt appreciation for the -ism with smiles and light laughter. The students are taking turns to speculate about how people woke up on time before alarm clocks, and Johnny (JOH) has just proffered that “they should have been married [sic]” (data not shown). We join the class as the teacher Simon initiates a repair of Johnny's answer, which eventually leads to Johnny invoking the hearably sexist ‘nagging wife’ category (line 6; cf. Weatherall Reference Weatherall2015).

1. (3) wife make them crazy (TS0419A1_1:40:00) (JOH: Johnny; TS: the teacher, Simon; IVA: Ivana; VIN: Vincent)

   

Drawing on an idiomatic expression—“make them crazy” (line 6)—Johnny characterizes the “wife” category as irritating its presumed standardized-relational pair ‘husband’ (“them”, line 06) (see Kitzinger Reference Kitzinger2005a,Reference Kitzingerb on implicit heteronormative reference). This potentially sexist characterization could be heard as an impropriety inviting laughter (Jefferson et al. Reference Jefferson, Sacks, Schegloff, Button and Lee1987), and it is treated as such by Ivana, who immediately laughs (lines 8 and 13) and offers a candidate upshot in a smiley voice (line 11, “you don't sleep at all”). Simon, by contrast, offers continuers, nods, and smiles (lines 5–12), which are somewhat supportive, although they arguably fall short of the laughter Johnny's -ism may be inviting.

Once Johnny reaches a transition relevance place (line 14), a response to his impropriety again becomes potentially relevant. At this point, Simon seems to delete Johnny's -ism: He explicitly comments only on an innocuous aspect of Johnny's response—its complexity (lines 16–19)—then (re)initiates a grammar-oriented sequence (“put it into a modal of… speculation”, lines 24–26; cf. Waring, Reddington, & Tadic Reference Waring, Reddington; and Tadic2016 on invoking learning orientation), and finally progresses the overarching activity (“what do you think”, line 33). Notice, however, that Simon still surrounds his apparent deletion of Johnny's -ism with subtle signs of appreciation: smiles, first occurring in line 5 precisely after Johnny has introduced his possible -ism (line 4), and a laugh particle (line 16), occurring after Johnny's embodied turn completion (line 14) (see also line 15). We thus see Simon orienting to both solidarity and progressivity: By promptly smiling and laughing at Johnny's possible -ism, he subtly supports it; but by explicitly commenting only on the complexity of Johnny's contribution, he preempts any expansions of the -ism and smoothly moves the activity forward.

Next, we see a teacher enacting the two preferences more collaboratively with a student. The teacher lightly smiles at the student's possible -ism only after the student seemingly pursues recipient support with her own smile; and once the teacher does not expand on her support (e.g. with explicit agreement), the two jointly delete the -ism and initiate a sequence closing. In answering the teacher Casey's (TC) question about whether the class would dissuade their children from pursuing any careers, Hanna (HAN), a female musician, has just said that she would dissuade her children from becoming musicians. After first accounting for her response by assessing the music career as “competitive” (lines 2–4), Hanna offers an alternative, possibly sexist account which positions women as financially dependent on men.

1. (4) girls fine (TC0614A3_1:21:14) (HAN: Hanna; TC: the teacher, Casey; SVE: Svetlana; YUN: Yunis)

   

We see Casey (merely) showing recipiency (lines 7 and 9) as Hanna partitions (Sacks Reference Sacks1992) the children category in terms of gender and projects a contrast between female categories (“girls”, line 5, “womans [sic]”, line 6), for whom a music career would be “fine”, and other gender categories, for whom it would not. As Hanna produces a tacit -ism, categorizing women as lacking or not requiring financial independence (“they don't have to earn money… regularly”, lines 8 and 12), she reaches the first possible completion points of her multi-unit turn; and although Casey could shift to more clearly supporting Hanna's categorization at these points through, for instance, agreement (e.g. ‘right’), she continues to only show recipiency with nods (lines 10 and 13). It is only after Hanna furthers her possible -ism, insinuating that men, unlike women, do need to earn money regularly (and should therefore not be musicians) that Casey offers a more supportive smile (line 15; see also lines 17 and 18). Importantly, however, this smile comes in return to Hanna's own laugh particles and smiley voice (lines 14 and 16), which ambiguously invite laughter (Jefferson et al. Reference Jefferson, Sacks, Schegloff, Button and Lee1987) and/or mitigate her potential sexism (cf. Potter & Hepburn Reference Potter and Hepburn2010). What's more, Casey's smile appears to be the full extent of her support. When Hanna creates space for additional responses to her -ism with a trail-off “yeah” (line 19), Casey expresses no further (more explicit) appreciation or agreement.

In light of this unexpanded support, Hanna and Casey both orient to progressivity by deleting Hanna's -ism and terminating the sequence. Hanna deletes the -ism by shifting to a non-gendered account for dissuading her children from becoming musicians (“it's really hard”, line 20), and Casey deletes it by omitting gender from her reformulation of Hanna's response (“it's maybe not stable”, line 24), but notably not omitting Hanna's earlier reference to financial stability (from lines 8 and 12). With the -ism collaboratively deleted, the sequence comes to a close (lines 27–29) and the class return to Casey's initial question (“how about the rest of you”, lines 30–31). Interestingly, as they delete the -ism and progress the sequence, Casey and Hanna also more clearly enact solidarity—strongly (“really”, line 22) and quickly (at the first point of possible completion and in partial overlap) agreeing with each other's non-gender-based contributions (lines 22–25). Throughout this segment, Hanna and Casey jointly orient to solidarity and progressivity by pursuing and offering minimal, unexpanded support—a subtle smile—before collaboratively deleting the -ism to move the exchange forward.

As the above cases show, participants displayed an orientation to solidarity and progressivity by showing implicit support (e.g. smiles and laugh particles) before deleting possible -isms. By offering (and pursuing) implicit rather than explicit support for -isms, participants managed to protect their solidarity without triggering a ‘spiral effect’ and could thus promote smooth sequence closings; and by showing support before, as well as while, deleting -isms, they appeared to slightly prioritize solidarity over progressivity. Smiles and light laughter further allowed participants to enact solidarity without explicitly endorsing each other's -isms, but also without clearly holding each other morally accountable for them. As we see next though, participants enacted (and prioritized) solidarity even when they clearly oriented to moral accountability.

Solidarity and moral accountability

A preference for moral accountability and solidarity emerged as participants delayed and mitigated challenges to possible -isms with supportive smiles, laughter, and pro-forma agreements. We see this in the following example, where a teacher softens her challenge of a student's potentially ageist remark by repeatedly foregrounding her agreement with the student. Prior to the extract, Veronica (VER) noted that, unlike the “younger generation” (including all present participants), the “older generation” struggles with technology. After sharing a story about her older uncle's persistent tech difficulties (data not shown), Veronica repeats her claim about people struggling to keep up with (i.e. “track”) technological advances as they age (lines 1–2 and 4). In response, the teacher Erin (TE) offers a turn-initial agreement token (line 5) and launches a second story (Sacks Reference Sacks1992) which eventually, and delicately, challenges Veronica's ageist category work.

1. (5) the ninety-year-old (TE0611A1_1:48:40) (VER: Veronica; TE: the teacher, Erin; SAR: Sara; LIN: Ling; JUL: Julia; CEL: Celina; HIR: Hiroaki)

   

Erin initially focuses her second story on her ninety-year-old grandfather (lines 5–6), who, as it later turns out, uses new technology with ease (lines 45–46). However, she delays this storyline at its inception (line 7) and instead launches a telling about her 100-year-old grandmother (line 9), which reaffirms Veronica's claims about older people struggling with technology (“but she doesn't know”, lines 13–14; “she's always surprised to see me”, lines 20–21). With a second saying (line 23; Wong Reference Wong2000), Erin then initiates a return to the story about her ninety-year-old grandfather, but once again delays it with claims that the elderly can and should learn to use new technology (lines 26–34 and omitted lines). These inserted claims hearably challenge Veronica's possibly ageist categorization, but notice that Erin mitigates them by: (i) repeatedly ascribing the claims to an article, rather than to herself (e.g. lines 33–34), and (ii) maintaining some of Veronica's ageist presuppositions (e.g. implying that older people might not be successful in their learning by inserting “at least like attempt”, line 30).

With “so” (line 34), Erin next projects a logical connection between her ninety-year-old grandfather and (the article's) claims about the elderly benefiting from learning new technology. She quickly abandons this trajectory, however, in favor of a but-prefaced assessment (“what's interesting with him”, lines 34–35), which, particularly with its added emphasis on him, marks the story of her grandfather as special and out of the ordinary—in effect, an “interesting” exception rather than a logical, representative example of an elderly tech-user. As the story unfolds, we see Erin finally more clearly challenging Veronica's agism by positioning herself—a member of the younger, presumably tech-savvy generation—as technologically unskilled (lines 39, 49, and omitted lines) and her grandfather as skilled (lines 40–46). Interestingly, Erin describes her challenge as a story “similar” to Veronica's (lines 50–51) and then terminates the sequence with a non-age-related moral about “willingness” (line 61), which she frames as co-constructed by her and Veronica (note the agreement tokens, “yeah. that's true”, line 60, and the tag, “right”, line 62). Therefore, while Erin orients to moral accountability by ultimately challenging Veronica's possible -ism, she also orients to solidarity by foregrounding her agreement with Veronica and framing her delayed challenge as a collaborative extension of Veronica's contribution rather than an explicit counter to it.

Participants also oriented to solidarity and moral accountability by using smiles and laughter to ambiguously show appreciation for -isms and/or mitigate (incipient) challenges to them, as we see in the final extract. Marianna (MAR), an au-pair, has just attributed her host-family's wealth to one “key word: own[ership]” of a textile business. As we join the class, the teacher Simon (TS) laughingly suggests that he could be equally successful in the textile industry (lines 1–2)—a suggestion which Johnny (JOH) rejects (from line 3) with a potentially racist account for the host-family's success (lines 5, 7, and 9).

1. (6) what does that mean (TS0322A1_0:22:05) (MAR: Marianna; JOH: Johnny; TS: the teacher, Simon; VIN: Vincent; IVA: Ivana)

   

Johnny's category-based account—framed as somewhat delicate through implicature (lines 5 and 7), delays (lines 3, 5, and 7), and a post-completion smile (line 9)—is eventually rejected by Simon with increased directness (“you can't say that”, line 44). Initially, however, Simon's response is more ambiguous. He first responds to Johnny's -ism with a repair initiation (“what does that mean”, line 10) which, apart from suggesting a preference for self- over other-correction (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks Reference Schegloff, Jefferson; and Sacks1977), can be an indirect challenge (Schegloff & Lerner Reference Schegloff and Lerner2009) or an attempt to resolve a problem of understanding. Simon also accompanies this repair initiation with a smile and laugh particle (line 10), thus further mitigating his incipient challenge and/or showing subtle appreciation for Johnny's possible -ism (see also line 13). Similarly, in response to Ivana's possibly racist reference—“money makers” (line 25)—Simon offers a headshake accompanied with hearably mitigative and/or appreciative laughter (line 28; see also line 29). These indirect and somewhat ambiguous responses can suggest Simon's orientation to solidarity, that is, his appreciation for the -isms, and/or moral accountability, that is, his mitigated (incipient) disapproval of them; and such ambiguity allows these possible -isms to unfold either as (unintentional) offenses requiring (self)correction or as ‘innocent’ improprieties inviting laughter.

As Johnny persists with his possibly racist categorization (lines 14, 16, 22–23, 30, and 34–35)—neither correcting it nor clearly (re)framing it as laughable—Simon moves from eliciting Johnny's self-correction to more directly challenging his -ism (from line 36). Notably, Simon still mitigates this challenge by: (i) garnering joint laughter (lines 40–43); (ii) tentatively (“kinda like”, line 37) and somewhat euphemistically formulating Johnny's categorization as a stereotype (line 37) rather than an -ism (see line 13); and (iii) delivering his unequivocal disapproval (“you can't say that”, line 44) in a smiley voice. Simon's orientation to moral accountability therefore gradually crystalizes as he shifts from an ambiguous, indirect challenge of Johnny's -ism to an increasingly direct one. Importantly, however, Simon not only delays this clear challenge but also continuously sprinkles it with solidarity-enhancing smiles and laughter.

As this section shows, even when participants oriented to moral accountability by challenging possible -isms, they still also enacted a preference for solidarity by surrounding their challenges with shows of support (i.e. subtle appreciation and agreement). Arguably, participants could have oriented to these two preferences concurrently by, for instance, delivering softened challenges without delays. However, that they regularly foregrounded (partial) support and delayed (and otherwise mitigated) challenges to -isms suggests that they prioritized a preference for solidarity over that for moral accountability.