Abstract
Concept of "social role" is an integral part of social sciences since the 1930s up to this day, however since the 1960s it has been criticised from various positions. Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EM/CA), which inform the perspective of my paper, approach the topic in a characteristic way.
The concept of social role is re-specified as a member phenomenon based on categorization work, which is employed during interaction as a device and resource in accomplishing different interactional tasks. The fact that people in society "play different roles" is a natural knowledge of the members and they manage it more or less artfully.
My contribution aims to find out how the EM/CA findings in this area can be expanded by a secondary analysis of oral history interviews, specifically the recordings from USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive (http://sfi.usc.edu). Oral history is (above all) a conversation of two particular people in a particular time and space.
It is a situated interaction, which attempts (among other things) to collaboratively establish a comprehensible account of the past. My paper provides illustrations for interactional and narrative layer of interview, consider their relations, similarities and differences, and mention some limitations of the data.