Lessons from transcription (No. 2): my interview style

Over the course of these interviews, I guess about 25 ish in total over the summer, I think my style has developed quite significantly. I think this is the main thing I may get from doing this pre-pilot study (as I’m sort of coming to see it as). I’ve always been good at the developing rapport bit and making people feel comfortable and chatty early on, and have, indeed, been complimented on that by people throughout this spring and summer. But I’ve noticed something I’ve started doing, from about the second school I went to this year, related I think to ‘hedging’. When I’ve been transcribing, I’ve noticed that I do something linguistic that I seem to subconsciously think will make my participants feel more relaxed and comfortable. I’m pretty quick in conversation, generally, and can have a tendency to leave people behind if they don’t catch on – blame my ex-husband, we were both like that and batted off each other! That doesn’t perhaps feel ideal for an interview scenario though, and so I can hear myself actively slowing down, taking extra pauses, pretending that I can’t recall a word, hesitating, throwing a question I know the answer to to the participant etc etc. during the interview process. It seems to pass unnoticed by the participant and does seem to oil the wheels. I guess I come across less as a know-it-all and more as a nice conversationalist if I’m occasionally a bit inept. I wonder if there’s any literature out there on this aspect of interviewing. I shall endeavour to look it up as I think it may be a relatively permanent feature in my style, unless of course I lose the high-speed conversational style that I’ve hitherto had!