I've been attempting to reconstruct my interview all morning, and I'm finding it to be very difficult. I started by trying to remember the sequence of questions-responses-follow up questions that created the framework for our conversation. It was easy for me to remember what Fumi said, but it was impossible for me to remember what, exactly, I had asked.
Next I tried to map our conversation more thematically. I remember that our conversation was not linear; we did not go through her life history chronologically. Instead, we followed a web of connections between her life and mine and between different events in her life. Unfortunately, I am unable to recall the structure of the "web." My memory subsequently organized Fumi's life story chronologically, which is great for helping me remember details, but I think the "web" might have also been informative because there are probably reasons why one idea was connected to another idea. So, even though I can see some themes in the content of Fumi's responses to my questions, I am frustrated that I cannot remember either the questions or the web-like structure of our conversation.
Because I cannot remember the questions or the flow of the conversation, I'm worried that I might be misinterpreting (or misremembering) somethings and I'm worried that I've lost an opportunity to gain insight from the framework of the questions and the conversation.
Anyone else having difficulties reconstructing the interview? ~~ Melissa
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Yes! My "notes" from my [delightful!] conversation with Jennifer look like my notes from class -- mostly arrows, and single words surrounded by boxes or squiggles or a cloud bubble. Seriously. In fact, the single words that I've enclosed the most ornately or underlined the most emphatically were often points where we shared a specific connection. For example, we have both lived on the Olympic Peninsula and we shared similar experiences doing outreach with students and families for educational programs.
Am I a narcissist or what?! These were not the points where Jennifer said: Sarah, listen closely now because the life events I am about to share are the most important in my trajectory and the most salient to my identity. No, she definitely did not! If I were to take a linear narrative approach to writing up our conversation, creating some sort of "life of Jennifer" document, I would perhaps focus on the instances signified by the single boxed words because in my memory of our conversation and in my notes they are prominent. To say this narrative would be partial is an understatement.
However, these boxed words do suggest key anchor points for [my interpretation of] the conversational web of connections - the interplay between us that centered on similar experiences. Theoretically, in the web account as opposed to the narrative account, both participants in the interview/conversation are visible. However, as Melissa noted, without a transcript [or audio or video recording] the structure shaping the web is missing, making a valid web account difficult to produce. This seems like it could be a common problem for ethnographic interviews / ethnography. I'm not advocating that ethnography should be defined as / limited to conversation analysis. But I do think that an important interpretative resources for the ethnographer is lost when a substantial part of the discourse in an interview [in this instance, my questions & Jennifer's, and the order of questions and answers] is missing.
Mellisa,
I was so impressed by how well you remembered our conversation even though you didn't take notes! You are such a great ethnographer!
Fumi
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