The Construction of Stance in Social Research Interviews
Summary: Qualitative research interviews provide an important basis of social knowledge both for academic researchers and for commercial marketing and public opinion research. There is a large literature on the practice of interviewing that treats interviews as, ideally, a neutral channel for information and attitudes. But recently discourse analysts have begun to treat research interviews as social encounters, in which both interviewer and interviewee present themselves, moment to moment, responding to and anticipating responses of the other person. One aspect of this interaction is stance, the ways participants mark the propositions they present, strengthening or weakening them, conveying attitudes towards them, and suggesting the style of delivery. In this study, we analyse transcripts from ten social research projects in which qualitative interviews were an important component. We identify the different kinds of stance-taking, and relate them to the ways the interviewees (and interviewers) present themselves, the functions served in particular interactional contexts, and the use of stance-taking to deal with interactional problems such as sensitive issues and possible contradictions. The framework we develop will help researchers who use interviews by sensitising them to interactional issues in transcripts, allowing them to locate key passages, and showing shifting interviewer-interviewee relations.
Key Facts
Funder: ESRC
Principal Investigator: Greg Myers
Research Associate: Sofia Lampropoulou
Dept/Research Group: Linguistics and English Language
Keywords: Qualitative methods, Discourse analysis
Project Funder
ESRC - £72,678.30
Associated Events
Analysing the language of interviews
Date: 30 October 2009 Time: 10.00 am-16.30 pm
What is it? This workshop for Qualitative Research practitioners, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council, focuses on how w ... Read more»