Both conversation-analytic and ethnographic studies of interaction tend to isolate situated conduct from the full biographical context that is meaningful to actors. This article argues that there are good analytic reasons to recover some of that biographical context by incorporating character-driven ethnographic representation within interactionist research. I make this case in reference to a rule dispute captured on video during an ethnography of a public park basketball game. Through a biographically contextualized analysis of players’ situated conduct, I show how character representation allows unspoken threads of actors’ lives to become analytic resources. Incorporating biographical context also opens a methodological path for interactionists to leverage the close-up study of situated encounters for empirical claims about broader forms of social organization. In this case, I argue that character-driven representation allows for an analysis that identifies rule disputes as an interactional mechanism of socially integrative park use.

互动的对话分析和人种学研究都倾向于将情境行为与对演员有意义的完整传记背景相隔离。本文认为，有充分的分析理由可以通过将角色驱动的人种志表示法纳入互动主义研究中来恢复某些传记背景。我以在公园篮球比赛的人种志期间在视频中捕获的规则争端为例进行说明。通过对球员的处境行为进行传记式背景分析，我展示了角色表征如何使演员生活的潜意识线索成为分析资源。结合传记背景还为互动主义者开辟了一条方法论途径，以利用对相遇遭遇的特写研究来获得关于更广泛形式的社会组织的经验性主张。在这种情况下，我认为，角色驱动的表示方式允许进行分析，将规则争端识别为公园一体化的社会互动机制。