Reality Analysis in a Classroom Storytelling

Abstract

In the first part of this paper ethnomethodology is compared with realist and social constructionist sociology, with specific reference to notions of 'reality'. In contrast with sociological concerns about the correct theorization of reality, for ethnomethodology 'reality' is approached as a members' phenomenon. Ethnomethodology seeks to investigate how concerns with the 'real' inform members' locally ordered practical action and reasoning. In the second part of the paper, the authors offer an ethnomethodological analysis of reality-as-a-members'-phenomenon in the context of a classroom storytelling. Our focus is on aspects of the teacher's and pupils' 'reality analysis' which is touched off by events within the story. The discussion is divided into two sections : the first examines the participants' analysis of the 'believability' of specific events in the story ; the second considers their analysis of the status of these events with reference to the distinction between dreaming and being awake. In conclusion, they elaborate the differences between ethnomethodology's respecification of reality analysis as a topic of investigation and conventional sociology's theorizations of reality. In so doing, they emphasize the mundane and locally ordered character of members' - including sociologists' - reality analysis