Abstract The aim of the study was to study how partners in heterosexual relationship do gender in interaction. The study was guided by the research questions; In what ways is gender done in interaction?; What different norms become visible?; And, what interactional consequences does gender construction lead to? An ethnomethodological perspective was adopted in which the way people in everyday life creates a common understanding of the world is focused. In line with the perspective gender was assumed to be a social construction created when people interact. Eight extracts from TV-interviews with couples was transcribed and analyzed using Membership categorization analysis (MCA). The chosen analytical method focuses on interaction participant’s referral to and use of membership categories and to these associated character traits and actions. The analysis showed that gender was created through explicit as well as implicit referrals to membership categories and character traits and actions associated to these. The gender norms that was made visible was the woman’s responsibility of home and family and the mail conqueror. Doing gender resulted in several consequences; (1) the maintenance/risk of maintenance of unequal division of responsibilities within couples/family constructions, were the greatest responsibility for family and home falls on the woman; (2) that the women sometimes was positioned, many times implicitly, in inferior gender roles; (3) that gender-based alliances could be created among the interaction participants; and (4) that statements, questions and answers could contain references to gender categories in ways that they appeared to be common knowledge and could function as support to what was sad. As the analysis also showed that gender categorization was a common feature associated with participants either holding themselves or others accountable it appears to be a topic for future research.

This thesis focuses on literacy in children aged 11-12. The overriding purpose is to describe the specific competencies that children employ in their daily use of writing. What do they do with writing and how do they do it? The theoretical framework is primarily the strand of literacy research that belongs to the field of New Literacy Studies, where literacy is understood as socially and contextually related. The study also draws on ethnomethodology in the sense that the object of study is the daily actions through which we construct our lives and negotiate identities. Two children, a boy and a girl, with different socio-economic backgrounds and family situations were observed at home, in school and during freetime activities for more than a year through an ethnographic research approach. The thesis identifies the different competencies that the children activate. In one case competencies involving oral skills are primarily used as resources in problem solving, while writing and reading are used to solve similar problems as a matter of course in the other case. The thesis also shows that a common use of writing is to regulate and organise everyday and special activities such as planning Christmas gifts and to write reminders that school tasks need to be completed andreported. In terms of materiality, writing is available in more or less conventionalised formats. Common formats for everyday written products are sheets of paper in different sizes (A4 to post-it notes), or digital screens (computer, TV, mobile phone). The school whiteboard has a special materiality and is the material source of a great many of the everydaywritten products.