Problematizing Interview Data: Voices in the Mind's Machine?

Author(s): David Block

Source: TESOL Quarterly , Winter, 2000, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter, 2000), pp. 757-763
Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)

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 RESEARCH ISSUES

TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of qualitative and quant

tive research. For this issue, we asked two researchers to discuss issues related to
interview research in TESOL.

Edited by PATRICIA A. DUFF

University of British Columbia

Interview Research in TESOL

Problematizing Interview Data:

Voices in the Mind's Machine?

DAVID BLOCK
Institute of Education, University of London
London, United Kingdom

* In recent years, there has been a noteworthy increase in

language education researchers publishing work that mi
as ethnographically oriented. Although the questions be
this research vary greatly, there is a common tendency to
as an important part of triangulated data collection, along
tion, diaries, letters, and questionnaires (e.g., recent TE
articles by Cox & Assis-Peterson, 1999; Flowerdew, 2000; H
Ibrahim, 1999; Morita, 2000). When analyzing and discu
resulting from interviews, these and other researchers ten
the content of the words produced by research partic
Freeman (1996) suggests, to take research participants "
The researchers relying on interviews for data are not obl
problems this stance entails. However, given the space
journals and books, there is generally very little scope for
this issue. What most readers encounter, then, is prese
plus content analysis, but no problematization of the data
the respective roles of interviewers and interviewees.

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 34, No. 4, Winter 2000 757

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PERCEl'IONS OF INTERVIEW DATA

There is a long tradition in the social sciences whereby

gists, sociologists, sociolinguists, and educationists see
conversations and co-constructed discourse events (e.g.,
Burgess, 1984; Cicourel, 1964; Mishler, 1986) and therefore n
windows on the minds of interviewees. More recently, K
contrasted two readings of interview data, the veridical and
atic. In the former case, the accounts produced by research
during research interviews are seen as reliable (or as reliabl
reports of events provided by well-meaning individuals. In t
the analyst deems these accounts to be more about t
participant's relationship to the topic and the interview
about the topic being discussed. Thus when Kvale interv
secondary school students about grades, very often his
provided accounts that proved to be veridically suspect, or
contested (Kvale uses the term false) when compared an
with other accounts by means of triangulated interviews. F
students might state firmly that teachers gave better grad
who spoke the most, but comments of teachers and fe
might contradict this view. However, Kvale makes the p
discovery of such inconsistencies did not invalidate the data;
him to see that the false (i.e., contested) accounts were sym
his research participants' feelings about grades rather than
tive of phenomena that had occurred. Thus, students giv
accounts of events were saying much more about their rela
their teachers, or even about how they viewed the in
someone to whom they could give negative informatio
teachers, than they were about their experiences with grad
When I have analyzed interview data over the past deca
first instinct has always been to take my research participa
word, that is, to believe that they were providing veridical
and evaluations of their lessons (Block, 1998). Despite this ac
wonder if I might not conceptualize the data produced by
in a different but complementary way, one that leans more
symptomatic end of the continuum described by Kvale
Freeman (1996), I might see interview data as representa
events or as presentational of the individuals speaking. Adopt
stance means taking on some of the issues related to the pr
self, such as how the interviewee constructs the intervi
relationship, and the purpose of the interview (see Block
In addition, I might move from seeing interview data as r
research participants' memories of events (in other word
phenomenon) to seeing them as reflections of how research

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relate to the interview context as actors in a particular context (a social
phenomenon). This means a rejection of the symbolicist perspective
(i.e., underlying mental models that generate actions) and the accept-
ance of an interactionist perspective (i.e., interview data as a product of
the interaction between interviewer and interviewee). Thus, interview
data are not seen as the production of an individual interviewee but as
the co-construction of interviewer and interviewee. These continua are
presented in Figure 1.
The conceptualization of interviews as co-constructions means t
interview data are seen not as reflections of underlying memory but
voices adopted by research participants in response to the research
prompts and questions. These voices might or might not truly represe
what the research participant thinks or would choose to say in anothe
context and on another occasion. However, at the same time, they mu
conform to what is allowed in what Gee (1996) calls a Discourse, defined

a socially accepted association among ways of using language, other symbo

expressions, and "artifacts," of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and act
that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaning
group or "social network," or to signal [that one is playing] a sociall
meaningful role. (p. 131)

Elsewhere, Lemke (1995) makes the point that

we speak with the voices of our communities, and to the extent that we h
individual voices, we fashion these out of the social voices already available
us, appropriating the words of others to speak a word of our own. (pp. 24-

In both Gee's (1996) and Lemke's (1995) ideas there is, of course
link back to Bakhtin's (1981) oft-cited concept of voice: the voices
others inhabit individuals' voices, which in turn inhabit the voices of
those with whom they participate in ongoing dialogue. What people say,
therefore, is both constituted by and constitutive of the words of those
with whom they share membership in a particular discourse community.

FIGURE 1

Perceptions of Interview Data

Veridical ( ) Symptomatic
Representational )> Presentational
Cognitive < > Social
Symbolicist < Interactive
Individually constructed 4 0 Co-constructed

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Combining Gee's, Lemke's, and Bakhtin's ideas, one could see any
statement provided by a research participant as originating in a particu-
lar community that conforms to a particular Discourse and that may be
classified as the kind of thing one is allowed to say in that community and
within that Discourse. It is, therefore, data representative of that commu-
nity, a particular voice that a particular research participant has adopted
momentarily when providing an account.
Elsewhere, Holstein and Gubrium (1995) add a further element to
this conceptualization of interview data. They point out that during the
course of an interview, interviewees might adopt different roles in
response to their perception of being positioned in particular ways by
particular questions. Thus in the research context described by these
authors-individuals describing the type of home care they provide for
their aging parents-interviewees responded in different ways depend-
ing on the stock of knowledge (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995) they drew on:

Speaking as a daughter, the respondent is likely to frame her answer in terms

of the events and sentiments of the daughter and mother's interpersonal
history. Speaking as spouse, the experiential purview of the respondent's
answers keys into relations with her husband and their domestic affairs.
(p. 31)

The point is that in the course of an interview the same research

participants might change voices depending on the way they situate
themselves vis-a-vis a particular question and the person asking it. What is
produced comes to be seen more as symptomatic of a particular state of
mind and even ephemeral, ongoing social interaction than as a reflec-
tion of underlying memory or mental models of particular domains of
knowledge and experience.

A CASE IN POINT

To exemplify some of the points I have made here, I

interview I carried out with an adult learner of English in
Spain, several years ago as part of longitudinal study of a
learners' evaluations of their teachers and their classes. D
interview, I asked this learner (whom I shall call V) questi
inconsistencies in class attendance, a phenomenon she had
problem in earlier interviews. V responded to my questions, te
about fluctuations in attendance, explaining how they played h
the rhythm of classes and, ultimately, adversely affected classes
however, in midsentence, her voice trailed off, she uttered a to
"I don't know," and she said that she was ready to finish h
course. Noting her fatigue, I asked her if she was tired of

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English, and V proceeded to tell me about a trip she had made to
London during the previous week. She told me about her frustration at
not being able to communicate in an effective manner with the London-
ers she encountered, citing two episodes, one at a bar in a park and the
other at a hotel. After reporting her problems understanding service
personnel or being understood by them, she concluded by saying that
she was ready to give up her studies of English.
However, in V's account of her London trip, I wondered if what she
had produced was a veridical account or something more symptomatic.
For example, when she went into detail about the frustrating experience
in the park, she in essence contradicted herself. After saying, "When they
talked to us it was like they were speaking Chinese!" and that the bar staff
"didn't really try to understand me," she went on to say that she and her
friends had not even tried to order and therefore had not exchanged
words with the bar staff or anyone else present. One possible interpreta-
tion of this inconsistency is that V was simply making up her story as she
went along. However, another way to see these data is as performances of
plausible voices, in this case plausible learner accounts of interactions
with English. In Holstein and Gubrium's (1995) conceptualization, V
draws on two distinct knowledge bases in the interview episodes of class
attendance and her experiences in London. In the former case, she is
giving voice to two widely held views among her language student peers
about optimal conditions for language classes: Smaller groups are better
than larger groups, and attendance should be consistent. Speaking as a
tourist in London, V adopts the voice of the student of English who goes
abroad and discovers, to her horror, that what she has learned in the
classroom does not help her in an English-speaking environment.
I do not wish to discredit V or call into question her honesty when
providing her account of events; rather, her accounts of events in
London may be taken as plausible stories, events that befall tourists and
might have happened to her, but not necessarily exactly as she explained
them. By the time this interview took place (late in her course), V was fed
up with a situation in which variable attendance had led to the teacher's
losing control over the rhythm of the class, making class attendance less
attractive and leading to more absences among students. Adopting the
plausible voice of the inept tourist allowed her to express her frustration
with her own progress in learning English and, more importantly, her
discontent with her teacher, who ultimately was to blame for her lack of
progress.
Another consideration when examining this interview episode is V's
construction of me as her interlocutor. In other words, who was I in V's
mind? First, I was not V's teacher, although I was a teacher in the school
where she studied. Although V might have taken the position that
anything she said might be relayed back to her teacher, she seems to have

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taken almost the opposite tack, using me as a depository for her
expressions of frustration and discontent with her classes. More impor-
tantly, however, I think that V came to see me as a sympathetic ear, an
individual who had nothing to do with the situation that was so
frustrating to her but who understood the context and could speak to
her about it in Catalan, her L1. In this sense, for V our meetings must
have been more akin to therapy sessions than opportunities for informa-
tion exchange. Indeed, about a week after V's course and our last
interview had concluded, she appeared at my office. When I told her that
the study was effectively over but that we could still talk if she wished, she
muttered something to the effect that it really did not matter and left.
Thus, in some sense, it seems that the research interview was relaxed and
unthreatening enough for V to want to come to talk about her classes
each week and unload her frustrations related to her teacher, her classes,
and the English language. In any case, it was more than just an infor-
mation exchange between interviewer and interviewee.

CONCLUSION

When researchers analyze interview data, they are not o

representational accounts of events and the views of indiv
also confronting what is intelligible and plausible to s
discourse community and how members of that communit
resources to construct a position in an interview. Interview
complex social and sociolinguistic events. Although adoptin
view of interview data makes researchers' interpretive
more difficult, it also allows them to see phenomen
otherwise pass unnoticed were they to adopt a purely v
their data (see Block, 1995, 1999).

THE AUTHOR

David Block works at the Institute of Education, University of

interests are research methods, teacher education, second langu
(SLA), and culture in language teaching and learning. He is coedi
Cameron) of Globalization and Language Teaching (Routledge, in pr
a book on the state of SLA.

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Conducting Individual and Focus Group Interviews

in Research in Albania

SILVANA DUSHKU
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois, United States

* Interviewing is one of the most commonly used survey

present-day qualitative research (Berg, 1998; Denzin & Lin
Jones, 1985; Kvale, 1996; Mishler, 1986; Morgan, 1993). Us
qualitative data through a social interaction between the inter
the interviewee(s), interviewing can provide information o
behavior, attitudes, and beliefs, and contribute to an in-de
standing of research participants' perspectives or experienc
1985). However, interview research in developing countri
Albania, can be complicated by economic, political, and so
straints on local contexts and on participants that result i
emigration, turnover, workloads, and overall instability. In th
describe a study I conducted in Albania in 1995-1999 to evaluat

RESEARCH ISSUES 763

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