The discursive construction of categories. Categorisation as a dynamic and co-operative process Eugenio Goria University of Torino, Italy article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Categorisation Conversation Spoken language Italian abstract In this paper, I provide an account of categorisation intended as an action that participants carry out in conversation. As opposed to cognitive theories, which are mainly interested in how language structure can be explained with reference to the human conceptual system, discourse-based theories are interested in studying how linguistic resources are used to create categories on a locally relevant basis. Based on recent contributions within the latter framework, I provide in this article a preliminary overview of a corpus study on spoken Italian (Goria and Mauri, 2018) and I illustrate different types of structurally unrelated constructions that are recruited by the participants to perform categorisation in sponta- neously occurring interactions. Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In this contribution I take into account the process of linguistic categorisation, intended as a conversational practice whereby the participants in an interaction co-operate in order to construct a locally relevant category of entities. To perform this task, they resort to different types of verbal resources, which are the main point of interest of this paper. As will be argued, every instance of categorisation involves abstracting from a single entity to a broader set, or category, of which that entity is a part. As already pointed out by Lakoff (1987: 6) “[m]ost categorization is automatic and unconscious, and if we become aware of it at all, it is only in problematic cases”. Therefore, I will concentrate on these “problematic cases”, that is when language users need to make clear that they are categorising the reality in a particular way and exploit different types of linguistic resources in order to achieve this result. In Section 2, I discuss recent accounts of categorisation in language, and I outline my approach, that takes into account most of Derek Edwards’s critiques to a purely cognitive theory of categorisation. In Section 2.1 I provide an account of the nature of ad hoc categorisation, trying to distinguish between coded meanings, that is grammar, and inferences, that is pragmatics (see Ariel, 2008). In the light of this distinction, Section 2.2 identifies two separate sets of strategies involved in categorisation. On the one hand, there are grammatical strategies, that is, conventionalised ways in which the grammar of single languages may refer to categories based on one or more exemplars. on the other hand, there are discursive strategies, that is, conversational practices that do not represent sedimented grammatical constructions and often involve the adap- tation of linguistic material to local contexts and the triggering of inferences. From Section 3 onwards, I will present a pre- liminary corpus-based account of some strategies found in contemporary spoken Italian, with a particular focus on interactional strategies. A three-way distinction is outlined, namely between zero-strategies (Section 4.1), lexically-based E-mail address: eugenio.goria@unito.it. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Language Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2019.06.003 0388-0001/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Language Sciences xxx (xxxx) xxx Please cite this article as: Goria, E., The discursive construction of categories. Categorisation as a dynamic and co-operative process, Language Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2019.06.003