Negotiating Membership in Employment Interviews at a Chinese Media Institution

Abstract

This article builds on Sacks' Membership Inference-rich Representative (MIR) device in exploring how interviewers and interviewees negotiate professional membership. The data for the research include the transcripts of authentic interviews between 6 interviewers working for a Chinese English-medium media institution and 11 interviewees, the interviewers' notes, and the recruitment results (9 successful ones and 2 unsuccessful ones). The analysis indicates that the Chinese media institution as a community of practice has its membership categories and inference-rich information relevant to the categories. The MIR device was used by the interviewers and the interviewees in their interactions with the successful interviewees orientating to or negotiating the target membership category of Chinese journalists by brokering boundary objects such as the inference-rich information relevant to the target membership category. The notion of membership contextualization cues is proposed by drawing on Gumperz's contextualization cues and Sacks' membership categorization device and applied in the interpretation of the findings.