"tada this is me" – Self-Categorization in the Sequential Unfolding of Focus Group Discussions on the Topic of Mental Illness

People attributed with a mental illness are often reluctant to disclose it, due to feared stigma and discrimination (Pahwa et al. 2017; Peter & Jungbauer 2019). Building up on Harvey Sacks’ (1972a; 1972b; 1989) concept of membership categorization, this thesis is interested in practices of self-categorization in the specific context of focus group discussions about mental illness. It is written in the context of the project ‘Drüber reden! Aber wie?’ at the University of Zurich. The project researches practices by which people talk about mental illness. This thesis analyzes practices of self-categorization in general and makes inferences on the specificities of self-categorizations as having a mental illness. Following Conversation Analysis (CA), membership categorization is considered to become manifest as situated practice in the sequential unfolding of the focus group interaction (Watson 1997). Interactants can self-categorize by explicit labelling practices or by talking about themselves. Yet, self-categorization can also become implicitly manifest in the ways in which participants adapt their behavior according to category-bound rights and obligations. This thesis focusses on three sequential environments in which participants make an own membership category relevant: self-introductions, answers, and responsive assertions. It is shown that self-categorization as having a mental illness is a) actively mobilized by participants in small conversational items like personal pronouns, b) locally consequential, for example, for claiming epistemic rights, and c) evolving from sequential opportunities to self-categorize. The analyzed focus group interactions are found to be a particularly encouraging setting for self-categorization as having a mental illness.