The discursive enactment of anthracite coal miner identity (Pennsylvania)

This study describes, interprets, and critiques contextual influences upon the cultural identities of coal miners from the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania enacted in interview responses and a small group interaction. This study produced formal descriptions of the features and functions of talk enacted where coal miner identity was displayed. These findings illustrate how categorization analysis and critical and interpretivist approaches in communication research inform one another.; The miners avow and ascribe membership through accounts of their experiences and description of other miners' behavior. Dependence on coal for economic survival endured across miner generations. The miners made sacrifices to provide for family through ending childhood, injuries, and contracting black lung. Through mastering the code of miner talk and apprenticeship, they learned how to be miners. Norms of safety emerged through maintaining surveillance and correcting smoke and dust. While working safely, the miners valued being a producer and the independent nature of mining. Consequences of violating norms resulting in injury or death emerged. Lastly, a perspective emerged in which the miners viewed themselves as ordinary men doing a job.; By examining miner identity across the interview transcripts, descriptions of their cultural symbols, norms, ideology, and mining talk were pinpointed. These interpretive findings illustrate the contexted nature of miner identity which informs categorization analysis. Through categorization analysis, the features and functions of the miners' talk emerge illustrating how the miners accomplish miner identity in a small group interaction.; Categorization analysis reveals that through the miners' descriptions of their work and experiences, inference rich categories emerge. The miners enacted the membership devices of references to place, pitch and flat miner classifications, and mining era. These bounded activities provide knowledge about each of the miners as miners, thereby sequentially influencing the construction of miner identity as one membership category influences the next. The miners constructed their identity through a processes of culturally contexted implicature. This sequential construction of identity through category membership devices tied to culture and context functions to inform each of the miners about one another as miners thereby accomplishing deeper knowledge about their circumstances, experiences, and membership with a cultural group.