Academic Paper |
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| Title: | Interviews as interactional data |
| Author: | Stanton Wortham |
| Institution: | University of Pennsylvania |
| Author: | Katherine Mortimer |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Institution: | University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education |
| Author: | Kathy Lee |
| Institution: | University of Pennsylvania |
| Author: | Elaine Allard |
| Institution: | University of Pennsylvania |
| Author: | Kimberly Daniel White |
| Institution: | University of Pennsylvania |
| Linguistic Field: | Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics |
| Abstract: | Interviews are designed to gather propositional information communicated through reference and predication. Some lament the fact that interviews always include interactional positioning that presupposes and sometimes creates social identities and power relationships. Interactional aspects of interview events threaten to corrupt the propositional information communicated, and it appears that these aspects need to be controlled. Interviews do often yield useful propositional information, and interviewers must guard against the sometimes-corrupting influence of interactional factors. But we argue that the interactional aspects of interview events can also be valuable data. Interview subjects sometimes position themselves in ways that reveal something about the habitual positioning that characterizes individuals or groups. We illustrate the potential value of this interactional information by describing "payday mugging" stories told by interviewees in one New Latino Diaspora town. (Interview data, narrating events, transference) |
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This article appears in Language in Society Vol. 40, Issue 1, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
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