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Kathryn Roulston
In this article the author argues that interactional difficulties and questioning practices identified in the methodological literature on qualitative interviewing as ‘problems’ provide topics of analysis. Methodological examinations of interview data drawing on conversation analysis also explicate how interview ‘problems’ may be conceptualized in relation to various theorizations of interviews. Two common conceptualizations of qualitative interviews include a neo-positivist approach in which a neutral interviewer elicits participants’ descriptions that reflect ‘true’ states of affairs that are employed in realist reports, and a romantic approach in which a reflexive interviewer facilitates genuine rapport with participants to generate confessional data. The author uses a constructionist conceptualization of interviewing to examine several issues identified in methodological literature as ‘problems’, including the use of the interview guide as a spoken survey, the use of closed questions, providing possible responses in questions and asking questions that include assumptions about participants’ life-worlds. These analytic demonstrations are used to argue that researchers in the field of applied linguistics might use this approach to examine interview interaction in order to develop insights into moderating their interview practice as well as considering questions pertaining to research design.
