‘What do you think about...?’: Generating views in an interview

Rapley, M. and Antaki, C. (1998) ‘What do you think about...?’: Generating views in an interview. Text - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, 18 (4). pp. 587-608.

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Abstract

We examine whether a range of devices, previously found to privilege the knowledge and interests of one speaker at the expense of another, turn up in the talk of a researcher conducting an open-ended, 'view-soliciting' interview, where the interviewer is supposed to defer to the interviewee. We show that these devices do appear, and that they can have the effect of privileging the interviewers' views over those of the interviewee. To the general resource of 'cover identities' identified by Sacks, the devices of Maynard's 'perspective-display series' and Bergmann's 'discreetly exploring utterance', we also make a case for adding the device of the interviewer generalizing the respondents' use of particulars, as suggested by Billig (1987) in a different context. We discuss the implications of such talk for the interpretation of open-ended 'views'-eliciting research interviews.