Membership categorization in international business phonecalls: The importance of ‘being international’

Companies consider themselves ‘international’ when they operate in an international context. Many studies have analyzed communication in international contexts; few, however, have done so with a focus on how conversationalists in the international world of business orient themselves towards that context. This paper analyzes interactions between company representatives of different nationalities. It focuses on how businesspeople interact in an international context and categorize one another as members of different nations. The article also intends to show how the conversational partners categorize themselves as members of the international business world and ascribe importance to that membership in and through their coordinated actions in what the present author calls doing being ‘international’. One of the features of this phenomenon is an explicit statement to the effect that the companies represented by the speakers do business with several different countries. Another feature is that the identification by co-conversationalists of these business partners in different countries is not intended.