INTERVIEWS:
Katherine Doncaster
B.A. (Hons.) Oxford Polytechnic
Katherine Doncaster
B.A. (Hons.) Oxford Polytechnic
ABSTRACT
I argue that the discursive complexities which I expose in these interviews are of
general interest to social scientists because of the widespread use of research
interviews to collect data about people's lives.
MAKING MEANING IN RESEARCH INTERVIEWS:
DISCURSIVE PRACTICES IN INTERVIEWS WITH MATURE
STUDENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I
THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW:
SOCIAL PRACTICE AND DATA COLLECTION SITE
INTRODUCTION TO PART I 1
CHAPTER 1
AIMS AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
1.1. INTRODUCTION 3
1.2. AIMS OF THESIS 3
1.3. APROACHES TO THE ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSE 4
1.3.1. LANGUAGE AS 'DISCOURSE' 6
1.3.2. THE RELATION OF DISCOURSE TO OTHER
SOCIAL PRACTICES 6
1.4. A RANGE OF TYPES OF ANALYSIS 8
1.4.1. THE DISCURSIVE EVENT AS TEXT 8
1.4.2. THE DISCURSIVE EVENT AS DISCURSIVE
PRACTICE 9
1.4.3. THE DISCURSIVE EVENT AS SOCIAL
PRACTICE 10
1.5. THE INTERVIEWS AND THEIR INSTITUTIONAL
CONTEXT - THE UNIVERSITY 11
1.5.1. CONVERSATIONAL TENDENCIES IN THE
ORDER OF DISCOURSE OF 'THE UNIVERSITY' 12
1.5.2. INTRODUCTORY WEEK: MULTIPLE
POSITIONING OF NEW STUDENTS BY A RANGE OF
DISCURSIVE PRACTICES 13
1.6. INTERVIEWS: A TOOL FOR QUALITATIVE SOCIAL
SCIENCE RESEARCH 15
1.7. OUTLINE OF THESIS 18
1.8. PERSONAL COMMENTS ON THE THESIS 20
1.8.1. BACKGROUND INTERESTS 20
1
1.8.2. SUBJECTIVE INVOLVEMENT IN THE
RESEARCH 21
1.8.3. WRITING THE THESIS 21
1.9. CONCLUSION 21a
CHAPTER 2
COLLECTION OF DATA AND ETHICAL ISSUES
2.1. INTRODUCTION 22
2.2. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS 23
2.2.1. QUALITATIVE VERSUS QUANTITATIVE
METHODS 23
2.2.2. THIS PROJECT - A QUALITATIVE ONE 24
2.2.3. VALIDITY, GENERALISABILITY AND
OBSERVER EFFECTS 24
2.3. DATA 25
2.3.1. DATA COLLECTION 26
2.3.1.1. Initial area of interest 26
2.3.1.2. Pilot studies 27
2.3.1.3. Preliminary sampling criteria for main
study 28
2.3.1.4. Summary of data collection procedures 29
2.3.1.5. Expanded description of data collection
procedures 30
2.3.2. THE DATA SET 32
2.3.2.1. A change of focus 32
2.3.2.2. The final data set 33
2.3.2.3. Biodata for the participants in the final
sample 34
2.3.3. THE DATA AS TRANSCRIPTS 36
2.4. ETHICAL ISSUES 39
2.4.1. ETHICS AND INTERVIEWS 40
2.4.2. ISSUES RAISED BY DATA COLLECTION
PROCEDURES 41
2.4.2.1. The unintentional selecting out of certain
participants 41
2.4.2.2. The unintentional selecting in of certain
participants 42
2.4.2.3. Informed consent and changes in research
focus 43
2.4.3. ISSUES RAISED BY MY RELATIONS WITH
THE PARTICIPANTS 45
2.4.3.1. Research on, for or with participants 45
2.4.3.2. My own conflict over relationships with
participants 46
2.4.4. ISSUES CONCERNING ANONYMITY 47
2.4.4.1. Reasons for my concern with anonymity 47
11
2.4.4.2. Possible ways of resolving the anonymity
issue 48
2.4.4.3. Why I did not check with interviewees once
I had changed the focus of my research 49
2.4.4.4. The action I took to resolve the issue 49
2.5. CONCLUSION 50
PART II
POWER AND INTERPERSONAL MEANINGS IN THE
INTERVIEWS
INTRODUCTION TO PART II 52
CHAPTER 3
POWER RELATIONS IN THE INTERVIEWS
3.1. INTRODUCTION 54
3.1.1. AIMS OF THIS CHAPTER 54
3.1.2. ANALYSING SOCIAL INTERACTIONS OF
WHICH I WAS A PART 55
3.2. THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW: A CONVERSATION
WITH A PURPOSE 56
3.2.1. DEFINING THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW 56
3.2.2. DEFINING MY INTERVIEWS 57
3.3. THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW: POWER RELATIONS
AND DISCOURSE 58
CHAPTER 4
INTERACTIONAL CONTROL
4.1. INTRODUCTION 70
4.2. THE ANALYSIS OF QUESTIONS 71
111
4.2.1. CODING CATEGORIES 73
4.2.2. RESULTS: SPREAD OF INTERROGATIVE
TYPES ACROSS THE DATA SET 75
4.3. QUESTIONS AND INTERACTIONAL CONTROL 78
4.3.1. INTERVIEWER QUESTIONS: NON-POLAR 78
4.3.1.1. Non-polar questions give new information 78
4.3.1.2. The obligation to impart new information 80
4.3.2. INTERVIEWER QUESTIONS: POLAR 81
4.3.2.1. Extended rather than minimum responses 81
4.3.2.2. Polar questions that gave an expected
minimum answer 82
4.3.2.3. Reasons for extended rather than minimal
responses 84
4.3.3. INTERVIEWEE QUESTIONS 85
4.3.4. QUESTIONS AND TOPIC SHIFTS 89
4.3.4.1. Abrupt shift of topics 90
4.3.4.2. Incremental shifts of topic 90
4.4. FORMULATION 92
4.4.1. DEFINITIONS DRAWN FROM
CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS 93
4.4.2. FORMULATION AS A MEANS OF JOINTLY
CREATING MEANINGS 94
4.4.3. FORMULATION AS A MEANS OF
INTERACTIONAL CONTROL 95
4.4.3.1. Formulations by the interviewer 96
4.4.3.2. Formulations by the interviewees 97
4.5. CONCLUSION 99
CHAPTER 5
SELF DISCLOSURE
iv
5.2.2.2. Individual differences 111
5.2.3. VALENCY 111
5.2.4. EXPLICIT SELF REFERENCE 112
5.2.5. DESCRIPTIVE AND EVALUATIVE SELF
DISCLOSURE 114
5.3. POWER RELATIONS AND THE INTERVIEWEES' USE
OF SELF DISCLOSURE 115
5.3.1. SELF DISCLOSURE IN A PUBLIC DOMAIN
CONTEXT 116
5.3.2. VOLUNTARY AND ELICITED SELF-
DISCLOSURE 118
5.3.2.1. Directly elicited self disclosure 119
5.3.2.2. 'Textually determined' self disclosure 120
5.3.2.3. Voluntary self disclosure 120
5.3.2.4. The role of the recipient of self disclosure 121
5.4. POWER RELATIONS AND THE INTERVIEWER'S USE
OF SELF DISCLOSURE 123
5.4.1. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ABOUT
INTERVIEWER SELF DISCLOSURE 124
5.4.1.1. Self disclosures about my research interests 124
5.4.1.2. Complexities in my role as interviewer 126
5.4.2. RAPPORT: INSTRUMENTAL USE OF
CONVERSATION AND 'GENUINENESS' 127
5.4.2.1. The instrumentality of rapport 128
5.4.2.2. Rapport and 'genuineness' 128
5.4.2.3. Effects of the reciprocity norm 130
5.5. CONCLUSION 132
PART III
DRAWING ON EXPERIENCE:
INTERVIEWEE MEANING MAKING PRACTICES
CHAPTER 6
TOPICS OF THE INTERVIEWEES' TALK
vi
6.7. TOPIC CATEGORY: SENSE OF SELF 165
6.7.1. PERSONAL FULFILMENT REASONS FOR
DOING A DEGREE 165
6.7.1.1. Wish to learn 166
6.7.1.2. Self discovery and personal change 166
6.7.2. FITTING IN AT THE UNIVERSITY 167
6.7.3. THE ISSUE OF SELF CONFIDENCE 168
6.7.3.1. Confidence develops with experience 168
6.7.3.2. Ambivalent feelings 168
6.7.3.3. Rising to the challenge 169
6.7.3.4. Realising intellectual capabilities 169
6.8. CONCLUSION 169
CHAPTER 7
TYPES OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NARRATIVE IN THE
INTERVIEWS
vii
7.5. THE CASE OF HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES 193
7.5.1. NARRATIVES ABOUT POSSIBLE FUTURES 193
7.5.2. HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT
EMPLOYMENT 194
7.5.3. HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT
EDUCATION 195
7.5.3.1. Academic work 196
7.5.3.2. The university institution 196
7.5.4. HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT HOME
LIFE 198
7.5.5. HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT SENSE
OF SELF 199
7.6. CONCLUSION 199
CHAPTER 8
CONNIE'S STORIES - DRAWING ON AN EVERYDAY WORLD
OF EXPERIENCE
viii
8.5. CONCLUSION 223
8.6. CONNIE'S TEXT 224
CHAPTER 9
DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION - INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 10
DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION - REALISING POINTS OF
VIEW ON THE INTERVIEWEES' EXPERIENCE
ix
10.3. INSTANCES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
WHICH SPECIFICALLY REALISED POINTS OF VIEW ON
THE INTERVIEWEES' EXPERIENCE 257
10.3.1. FUNCTIONS OF DISCOURSE
REPRESENTATION IN THE DATA 258
10.3.2. THE INSTANCES REALISING POINTS OF
VIEW 258
10.3.3. THE REMAINING INSTANCES OF
DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION IN THE DATA 259
10.4. MODES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION 260
10.4.1. FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE DIFFERENT
MODES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION 261
10.4.1.1. Representation of thought 262
10.4.1.2. Representation of speech 263
10.4.2. THE RELATIONSHIP OF REPRESENTING
AND REPRESENTED DISCOURSE IN THE
DIFFERENT MODES 265
10.4.2.1. Oppositional dialogues in Direct
Discourse, (DD) 265
10.4.2.2. Reporting clauses 267
10.4.2.3. Interviewee evaluations of their
represented discourse 268
10.4.2.4. Free Direct Discourse, (FDD) 270
10.5. TOPICS ADDRESSED USING DISCOURSE
REPRESENTATION 271
10.6. WHOSE DISCOURSE WAS REPRESENTED: THE
VOICES INTERVIEWEES DREW ON 274
10.6.1. THE RANGE OF VOICES DRAWN ON BY THE
INTERVIEWEES 274
10.6.2. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE DOMAIN VOICES 277
10.6.3. INTERVIEWEES' OWN VOICES 278
10.6.3.1. Ambivalence realised as internal
dialogues -)78
10.6.3.2. Representing single points of view 280
10.6.3.3. The interviewee as participant in reported
conversation 280
10.6.4. VOICES WITH OFFICIAL EXPERTISE: THE
UNIVERSITY 281
10.6.4.1. A range of specific university voices 281
10.6.4.2. Hypothetical voice of university authority 284
10.6.4.3. Other voices of official expertise: school
and college 285
10.6.5. VOICES WITH INFORMAL EXPERTISE 286
10.6.6. UNNAMED VOICES 288
10.6.6.1. People 'in general' 288
10.6.6.2. Hearsay 288
10.6.6.3. Obfuscation of agency 289
10.7. CONCLUSION 290
x
CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 11
REFLECTING ON APPROACH FOLLOWED IN THESIS
BIBLIOGRAPHY 298
APPENDIX 1 301
APPENDIX 2 304
xi
FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 6.1.:
The topic categories 142
Table 7.1.: Narratives in the data set, coded by type and topic 184
xii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the students who were so willing to talk to me about their
university experience when I was gathering material for this project. My thanks
I would also like to thank the two people who supervised me during my time as a
research student, both of whom gave me generous amounts of their time and
expertise. Roz was a consistent source of encouragement and sound advice, while
place.
I am also grateful to all those whose heart-warming kindnesses, both small and
large, have kept me going. In particular, I would like to thank Helen, Faith, Roz,
Helen, Jodi, who, among many others, listened to me, opened their homes to me,
reminded me that there is more to life than a PhD. Finally, I would like to thank
my parents for their financial help and Lancaster University for awarding me a
grant.
Conventions for the presentation of quotations and
references
Quotations from book and articles are inset and enclosed in quotation marks. I
have used the following notation conventions, which also apply to quotations from
Quotations from the interview transcripts are generally inset. These quotations are
in bold type with the speaker represented at the left hand margin by the first three
letters of her or his name, for example, 'Pen' for Penny, and 'It' for myself, as the
interviewer. I have also used the following notation conventions, (after Atkinson
( ) -Unclear speech
= -Contiguous speech between participants
[ [ -Non-speech sounds
. -Short hesitation
-Long pause, (over 3 secs. approximately)
[ -Overlapping
] speech
[name] -Deleted proper name of person or place
Quotations from the transcripts which are very short remain within the body of the
text. These quotations are in italics and followed by line number references.
Cross references to other parts of the thesis always refer to the most inclusive
section. So, if I refer to chapter 2, section 2.4.1., my reference includes the sub-
xiv
-PART I -
INTRODUCTION TO PART I
In Part I I introduce the analytical framework for the thesis and the data set I use
Generally theses begin with a review of the literature. However, this study
analysis which underpins the thesis as a whole. I discuss here the concept of
discourse as a type of social practice, and how it may be analysed. I introduce 'the
In chapter 2 I turn to the interview data I analyse. In this study I treat interviews
as a type of social practice which shapes the meanings made in them - not simply
as a site for the collection of data. However, in this chapter I describe how I
collected the interview data. I also discuss the ethical issues that arose from the
1
methods I used to do so. These are issues which have general significance for
social scientists, because of the frequency with which interviews are used as a
means of gathering data. My concern here with ethical issues acts as a bridge to
2
CHAPTER 1
1.1. INTRODUCTION
1.2. AIMS OF THESIS
1.3. APPROACHES TO THE ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSE
1.3.1. LANGUAGE AS 'DISCOURSE'
1.3.2. THE RELATION OF DISCOURSE TO OTHER SOCIAL PRACTICES
1.4. A RANGE OF TYPES OF ANALYSIS
1.4.1. THE DISCURSIVE EVENT AS TEXT
1.4.2. THE DISCURSIVE EVENT AS DISCURSIVE PRACTICE
1.4.3. THE DISCURSIVE EVENT AS SOCIAL PRACTICE
1.5. THE INTERVIEWS AND THEIR INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT - THE UNIVERSITY
1.5.1. CONVERSATIONAL TENDENCIES IN THE ORDER OF DISCOURSE OF
'THE UNIVERSITY'
1.5.2. INTRODUCTORY WEEK: MULTIPLE POSITIONING OF NEW STUDENTS
BY A RANGE OF DISCURSIVE PRACTICES
1.6. INTERVIEWS: A TOOL FOR QUALITATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
1.7. OUTLINE OF THESIS
1.8. PERSONAL COMMENTS ON THE THESIS
1.8.1. BACKGROUND INTERESTS
1.8.2. SUBJECTIVE INVOLVEMENT IN THE RESEARCH
1.8.3. WRITING THE THESIS
1.9. CONCLUSION
1.1. INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I outline the aims of the thesis. I then discuss the theoretical
approach I take in it, in order to provide a broad context for the more specific
theoretical concerns associated with the analyses in Parts II and III. I end with a
chapter by chapter summary of the thesis, and some personal reflections on it.
The data for this study are sixteen one to one research interviews which I
conducted with mature undergraduate students, newly arrived at Lancaster
the students to talk about their experience of the university. My initial aim in
interviewing new members of the university was to explore how they discursively
constructed their initial experience of it. I discuss this in more detail in chapter 2.
3
This study is an exploration of how meanings are discursively realised in this
group of research interviews. My general aims in the three parts of the thesis are
analysis of discourse which I use in this project, and the collection of the
interview data I analyse. Parts II and III of the thesis comprise the analyses
In Part III my focus includes the ideational meanings of what is usually taken as
the 'content' of research interviews, that is, what interviewees say in them. But I
also discuss how the interviewees constructed those meanings, by analysing two
discursive practices they frequently employed to draw other experiences into their
talk about starting at university - narratives and the representation of discourse.
significant for social scientific research generally that 'data' collected from
research interviews is the product of both interpersonal as well as ideational
elements, as I show in this thesis. A more limited aim, but one similarly oriented
In this section, and in section 1.4. I outline Fairclough's approach to the analysis
of discourse which underpins this project. I note to start with that the concept of
'discourse' is a slippery one because of the number of ways in which it has been
4
defined and used, (Fairclough, 1992:3), both within Linguistics and in other social
science disciplines. However, the broad definition of discourse that I work with in
units above the sentence; and for 'critical' approaches such as Fairclough's, a focus
on how language is used for purposes of power and control in specific social
contexts. He notes that it is the
"the concern with power as the condition of social life, and the need for a
theory of language which incorporates this as a major premise", (Hodge
and Kress, 1993:xii).
discursive practices with other social practices, though its focus is on broader
5
way. I situate my analyses within his three dimensional conception of discourse,
II), but I do not focus on the relation of the interviews to wider social contexts.
discursive practice, that is, the text is situated within the network of practices or
relationships that are involved in its production and interpretation. Signs of these
relationships are visible in the text: the process of production "leaves traces in the
text, and the interpretative process operates upon cues in the text", (ibid.).
context in which power issues are manifested - the immediate 'context of situation'
in which a discursive event occurs; the level of the social practices associated with
the domain or institution in which it is embedded; and current trends in the larger
societal-level context. (Halliday and Hasan subsume the latter two under the term
'context of culture').
6
practices, (and the relations between them), which together establish the
conventions for language use in a particular institution. One of the ways in which
discourse is related to other social practices is that discourse conventions embody
particular world views and thus can help to reproduce social relations of
domination. Among the discursive practices which form the "elements" of orders
of discourse, Fairclough, distinguishes discourse types, that is, "ways of signifying
Fairclough argues that the relationship of discourse, (as one type of social
practices and the like, but it is also involved in shaping them. He draws on
knowledge, (i.e. what the clause is about). The "interpersonal" function realises
always has a grammatical realisation, and discourse shapes other social practices
by realising particular social meanings through these social meta-functions, (to
7
1.4. A RANGE OF TYPES OF ANALYSIS
dimensions of the discursive event, and the different theoretical concepts that
specifically underpin them. I then outline the particular types of analysis I have
done in this project at each level. It is important to point out that in this thesis,
where I analyse features of the discursive event of the interview, I relate analyses
associated with different levels. So, for example, in Chapter 4, my text dimension
analysis of interrogatives is related to my analysis of questions as an aspect of the
interview.
Fairclough points out that analysis can move in many different directions. What
directions are taken is inevitably a selective process, the choices depending on the
emphases of the project. My own study is not an exhaustive analysis of one
particular feature, but incorporates a selected range of analyses, which provide a
said, the chapters devoted to analysis contain combinations of analyses from the
three different levels. Together these build up a complex picture of the social
Fairclough outlines a number of directions that the analysis of the text dimension
of a discursive event can take. His use of Halliday's socially oriented view of
8
appropriate method of grammatical analysis - to show up what choices have been
made in the text to signify social identities, relations and representations of the
world. (This can also include Halliday's 'textual' function to explore cohesive
relations between clauses - how the text is organised). Analysing the discursive
event as text can also involve analysis of vocabulary, and what choices in wording
The analyses I have done in my project at the textual level, focus on aspects of the
grammar of the interview texts. I explore certain interpersonal meanings by
analysing interrogative mood structures, (see chapter 4); and certain ideational
discourse are drawn upon in a discursive event. In other words, the focus is on
what elements of orders of discourse are used, (for example genres and discourse
types); what sorts of relationship exist between them; and especially whether
boundaries between orders of discourse, or elements in them, are maintained or
with Kristeva's notion of intertextuality, (Kristeva, 1986:37), that is, the concept
that any text is more or less heterogeneous, constituted out of a mix of genres and
discourse types, out of a "mosaic of quotations", (ibid.). He distinguishes between
what he calls "manifest intertextuality", that is, the heterogeneity of a text, which
is the result of specific other texts being drawn on, and "interdiscursivity", where
the heterogeneous nature of a text is the result of the mix of genres and discourse
9
I have already mentioned that Fairclough points out that texts embody markers of
the way they were produced, and indications about how they are to be interpreted.
aspects of text production - how they are constituted out of fragments of other,
narrative genre in chapters 7 and 8., and I devote chapters 9 and 10 to the analysis
Fairclough points out that another analytical focus for the discursive event as a
produce and interpret individual texts. He suggests that the work of conversation
analysis and pragmatics is useful for this type of analysis. In my own study, I
As I have already pointed out, this dimension of the discursive event focuses on
its relation to different levels of social context, in particular to issues of power that
discursive event with Gramsci's concept of hegemony, that is, the "control of the
10
One result of this is that the social power and authority established by the
dominant group is open to challenge by other groups. Power relations are thus
unstable. Fairclough points out that the usefulness of the concept of hegemony
for a social theory of discourse is that struggles for power are often struggles over
which the discursive event is embedded. It can also involve identifying the orders
of discourse associated with those social contexts, and how they are drawn on in
been made about what sorts of knowledge, social relationships and identities to
establish in them.
As I have said, (section 1.3.), I do not focus on the relation of the interviews to
societal-level social contexts. However, I devote Part II of this thesis, (chapters 3
In this section and section 1.6. I turn my attention to the interview data I analyse
in this project. In this section I discuss the institutional context of the interviews -
the university setting in which they occurred - and in section 1.6. I discuss
11
I distinguish here and for future reference between the university as part of the
'public' domain, (which includes both private and public sector institutions); and
made in them - it is necessary to bear in mind that they were a site where
discursive practices of both the public domain and the private domain, interacted.
In sections 1.5.1. and 1.5.2. below, I discuss this interplay between public and
chapters.
Universities, along with many other public domain institutions, are currently in a
for students. These changes affect the make-up of the university's order of
discourse. One way in which they do this is to weaken boundaries between the
university's order of discourse and the orders of discourse of other domains.
that here there is a weakening of boundaries between market discourses and the
12
informal and conversational discourse practices usually associated with the private
domain into the public domain. The interview is a genre which both incorporates
Even within the university domain, the diversification of the genre is apparent -
one can distinguish job interviews, interviews with student applicants to the
Week. Introductory Week is one of the first face to face contacts a new student
has with the hitherto unfamiliar domain of the University, once she or he has
accepted the offer of a place. It involves a positioning of new students with
laid down by the University reiating to academic and other conduct of students"
and to "how the University expects its student members to behave", (Rules of the
13
welcoming place. For example, the letter accompanying the Information Pack
how another of the interviewees, Connie, focused on this image of the university,
in describing her experiences of Introductory Week, (section 8.4.).
Introductory Week is a site where the discursive practices of the university and
the university presents of itself during Introductory Week highlight some of the
heterogeneity of its order of discourse, with which new students must engage. The
interviewees from whom I collected my data were entering the domain of higher
education for the first time, (except for one, Penny). They brought with them their
- the research interviews they had with me. For these students, this became an
interactions with the university, they are also a site where that interaction is
actually instantiated, where the interviewees are actually interacting with the
university's order of discourse. These are important themes for this thesis. They
underlie the analyses I do in Parts II and III, and I take them up again there, in
relation to the specific discursive features of the interviews which I analyse.
14
1.6. INTERVIEWS: A TOOL FOR QUALITATIVE SOCIAL
SCIENCE RESEARCH
The focus of this project is on how meanings are discursively constructed in a set
of research interviews. I do not treat them simply as a site for gathering content
interviews in line with the approach I have so far laid out in this chapter.
However, in this section I wish to discuss several critiques of the use of interviews
in social science research, in order to provide some background for the perspective
Problematising the use of interviews for qualitative social science research has
recently become a focus of attention for some researchers, for example Silverman,
(1993), Briggs, (1986), and Mishler, (1986) - to whom I shall refer in this section.
They are each concerned with how, considering the widespread use of interviews
Silverman, (op.cit.), points out that interviews are used as part of both quantitative
and qualitative research methods, but what is considered meaningful to measure
differs in each case because of the different underlying schools of thought. The
school of thought underlying quantitative uses of interviews is 'positivism'.
According to positivism interviewees are understood to report facts about the
world 'out there'. What they say is seen as valid, reliable and independent of the
15
school the value of interview data is not that they give 'true', (or false)
representations of attitudes and behaviours but accounts, the main value of which
is what they reveal about the social construction of reality.
Silverman argues that one of these approaches is not better than the other. The
both these approaches to the use of interviews. His criticism of the positivist
language, (ibid:93), a point that Briggs also makes, (see below). His criticism of
interpretivist views of interviews is that open ended interviews are still a form of
social control, (ibid:95). I return to this in Part II. There is also the tendency to
assume that data gathered in open ended interviews really are unique, authentic
that qualitative research often tries to discover 'truths' about raw experience when
this is in fact mediated by the forms in which it is represented. He argues that
whatever the kinds of question interview data is being used to answer they must
their common sense knowledge of the social world to give relevant and adequate
utterances.
The focus of Briggs' critique, (op.cit), is the lack of attention researchers pay to
of Western discursive events. These norms include implicit theories about social
reality and also about the kinds of data interviews produce. He argues that the
16
imposing of these on interviewees, even when they are from the same culture as
the researcher, ignores interviewees' own norms of communication, which may be
very different..
Briggs argues that one of the main norms which interviews encapsulate is a bias
interviewee talk away from the communicative event of the interview itself onto
other topics. These are introduced by the interviewer, and since she has usually
not been a part of them, they increase the illusion of her objectivity and the
tendency to view what is said in interviews as a reflection of the 'out there' world.
indexical meanings. These are the context sensitive features of language, and
therefore more related to the interview event than to the topics discussed in it.
before analysis ever begins and can lead researchers to misinterpret interviewee
responses, a situation which may then be perpetuated in their analysis of the
interview data. He also argues that leaving the interview out of the analysis
means there is no need for the interviewer to examine her own role in meaning
discourse.
exchange, not a discursive one. This results in the interview event being viewed
as essentially unproblematic. It also erases what he considers the primary feature
17
of interviews, that they are meaningful conversations, and ignores the social
questions), so as to get the 'true' response from the interviewees. He argues that
this standard 'scientific' approach is inadequate for studying how people express
their experience because it does not examine how experience is related to social
appropriateness and relevance that are part of participants general and shared
linguistic competencies. This means that interpretation and analysis must take
account of how people talk to each other. He focuses on one way this may be
people give coherence, meaning and relevance to their experience. I take this
approach to the analysis of my own interview data in chapters 7 and 8, and discuss
Mishler's advocacy of narrative analysis further in chapter 7, (section 7.1.).
The call of researchers such as Silverman, Briggs and Mishler for a greater focus
In this section, I give a chapter by chapter summary of the thesis. This is a brief
outline, with the Introductions to Parts I, II and III containing more detail about
each chapter. The summary of the thesis is given in Figure 1.1. below.
18
-PART I -
THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW: SOCIAL PRACTICE AND DATA
COLLECTION SITE
- Analytical framework - data collection - ethical issues -
Chapter 1: Aims of the study; discourse analysis framework used in it.
Chapter 2: Situation of this study within the qualitative research paradigm; method of
data collection; data used in this study; ethical issues from methods used for collecting
data.
- PART II -
DISCURSIVE REALISATIONS OF POWER
- Analysis of interpersonal meanings resulting from the power relations in the interviews,
via a focus on two contrasting sets of discursive practices in them -
Chapter 3: The research interview as data collection site, and social situation in which
particular relations of power obtain; distinguishing of two sets of discursive practices in
interviews, characterised by different realisations of power - 'institutionally defined' and
'conversational' discursive practices; introductory analysis of shifts in balance of power
during different stages of my own interviews.
Chapter 4: Focus on 'institutionally defined' discursive practices in my interviews,
through analysis of two interactional control features: questions and formulation;
discussion of the finding that these control features were not the sole prerogative of the
interviewer.
Chapter 5: Focus on 'conversational' discursive practices in my interviews, through
analysis of self disclosure; critical commentary on characteristics of the interviewees'
disclosures, and the interviewer's rapport-building self disclosures.
- PART III -
DRAWING ON EXPERIENCE: INTERVIEWEE MEANING MAKING
PRACTICES
- Analysis of what the interviewees' constructed meanings about - analysis of how they
drew on narratives about their lives, and representations of discourse to construct
meanings -
Chapter 6: Analysis of the ideational content of the interviews; discussion of the five
domains of experience that the interviewees talked about.
Chapter 7: Analysis of narratives 1: Cross-sectional analysis of types of narrative,
(past, concurrent and future), in whole data set; critical commentary on the types of
narrative; particular emphasis on 'hypothetical narratives' about the interviewees' hopes
for the future.
Chapter 8: Analysis of narratives 2: In-depth analysis of story-type narratives in part
of Connie's interview; critique of Labov's method of narrative analysis; critical
commentary on the everyday world Connie represented in these narratives.
Chapter 9: Analysis of discourse representation 1: The modes of representation;
discussion of discourse representation as a type of intertextuality.
Chapter 10: Analysis of discourse representation 2: Analysis of selected instances of
discourse representation, (those specifically realising points of view on the interviewees'
experience of starting at university), according to mode, topic and voice used.
- CONCLUSION -
Chapter 11: Critical commentary on methodological issues arising from the study.
Figure 1.1:
19
1.8. PERSONAL COMMENTS ON THE THESIS
- a point where they came into contact with a new domain of experience - was
education was influenced by having been a mature student myself. During that
whether the combined effect of many individuals making such changes might
have a potentially, albeit small, transformative effect on the social, (including
domain to another. On the one hand, my job focused on the identity of the
20
critical attention to the social or political contexts in which people lived their
lives. On the other hand, as an undergraduate, I developed some critical skills and
simultaneously separated from a world of work that had been highly involving
with other people in the nitty-gritty of their everyday lives. These interests are
own part in it. I was new both to research and to analysing discourse when I
started. So, part of my reflexive interest was the result of trying to orient myself
concerns for the content of this thesis was that it was my anxious retrospective
focus on my own performance as an interviewer that alerted me to how my own
role in the interviews was crucial to the meanings that were constructed in them. I
have incorporated my exploration of my own role in the interviews in Part II.
like to make explicit the following conventions that I have used in writing this
thesis.
Firstly, rather than use an impersonal and apparently objective style, I prefer to
refer to myself in the first person. This is to acknowledge my own participation in
the research scene, (Cameron et al, 1992:26). It obliges me to explicitly own the
21
commentaries I make in this thesis, to construct myself linguistically as the active
responsibility for this text that I write - that I both construct the text, and am
giving a certain set of impressions about myself by the way I have done so,
Secondly, there are a number of ways of naming the people from whom I gathered
the interview texts I analyse as my data set. As far as possible, I refer to them in
the thesis as 'interviewees'. This is a term which is more neutral than 'the
researched', which reiterates their traditionally passive role, or 'informants' or
'respondents' which names them only as information sources. I have also tended
types of research which "make a good deal of space for informants' own priorities
1.9. CONCLUSION
The role of this chapter has been to situate this thesis within the framework
approaching this research, both analytically and personally, and have introduced
In the following chapter, I turn to the interview data. I describe how I collected it,
21a
CHAPTER 2
2.1. INTRODUCTION
2.2. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS
2.2.1. QUALITATIVE VERSUS QUANTITATIVE METHODS
2.2.2. THIS PROJECT - A QUALITATIVE ONE
2.2.3. VALIDITY, GENERALISABILITY AND OBSERVER EFFECTS
2.3. DATA
2.3.1. DATA COLLECTION
2.3.1.1. Initial area of interest
2.3.1.2. Pilot studies
2.3.1.3. Preliminary sampling criteria for main study
2.3.1.4. Summary of data collection procedures
2.3.1.5. Expanded description of data collection procedures
2.3.2. THE DATA SET
2.3.2.1. A change of focus
2.3.2.2. The final data set
2.3.2.3. Biodata for the participants in the final sample
2.3.3. THE DATA AS TRANSCRIPTS
2.4. ETHICAL ISSUES
2.4.1. ETHICS AND INTERVIEWS
2.4.2. ISSUES RAISED BY DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES
2.4.2.1. The unintentional selecting out of certain participants
2.4.2.2. The unintentional selecting in of certain participants
2.4.2.3. Informed consent and changes in research focus
2.4.3. ISSUES RAISED BY MY RELATIONS WITH THE PARTICIPANTS
2.4.3.1. Research on, for or with participants
2.4.3.2. My own conflict over relationships with participants
2.4.4. ISSUES CONCERNING ANONYMITY
2.4.4.1. Reasons for my concern with anonymity
2.4.4.2. Possible ways of resolving the anonymity issue
2.4.4.3. Why I did not check with interviewees once I had changed the focus
of my research
2.4.4.4. The action I took to resolve the issue
2.5. CONCLUSION
2.1. INTRODUCTION
the study, so that the data I collected for one purpose was finally analysed for a
later chapters, where I quote from the interview transcripts, (section 2.3.3.). I also
22
discuss the ethical issues I faced in collecting spoken data through face to face
interactions with people, (section 2.4.), and this forms the basis for my analysis of
power relations in the interviews in Part II.
In very general terms, 'qualitative' research methods are about trying to discover
what people actually do or say; they are about studying the experiences and the
meanings of those being researched. There are major differences between these
and 'quantitative' approaches to research, in underlying philosophies about the
result in a difference in the way theory and the sequences of activities involved in
research are conceptualised: in qualitative approaches, theories and concepts tend
to arise from the process of doing the research, whereas in quantitative approaches
they are taken as the starting point, with the research being a process of testing
hypotheses deduced from the initial theories, (Robson, 1993:20). Robson also
points out, (ibid.). that in the actual practice of 'real world research' this difference
may be more apparent than actual, with, for example, qualitative researchers
usually having some idea of the 'lie of the land', before they start, and many
23
2.2.2. THIS PROJECT - A QUALITATIVE ONE
My own research project falls clearly into the qualitative category, in being an
complexity of the social phenomena under scrutiny - that is, the discursive
through a range of detailed analyses of the data. I do however also make use,
though only minimally, of quantitative data analysis, to establish the frequency of
most of the discursive phenomena that I code in the data. This provides a
EFFECTS
In this section, I lay out my position with respect to the quality of the findings in
this study - that is, my position with respect to validity, generalisability, and
observer effects.
For any piece of research there is a concern with assessing the validity of the
findings. Assessing validity involves establishing that the analysis is about what
it claims to be about. In the qualitative tradition, this does not mean trying to give
'the true' picture, since there are any number of 'versions' possible, without one
being truer than another. In CDA research, Fairclough, (1992:238), points out that
24
that seemed particularly interesting with regard to meaning making processes in
these interviews. Each of the analyses help to expose and make sense of the
therefore be understood as a group similar in more ways than that they met the
selection criteria outlined in sections 2.3.1.3. and 2.3.2.2. below. However, the
sufficiently large numbers for me to make generalisations about the way in which
I have treated at length, (in my discussion of ethical issues in this chapter, section
2.4., and in Chapters 4 and 5), the approach I have taken with regard to 'observer
effects'. Basically, this is to regard my own utterances in the interviews, not as
potential distortions of the data, but as part of the data, the analysis of which is
necessary for understanding how meanings are discursively constructed in the
interviews.
2.3. DATA
In this section, I outline my data collection procedures and describe my data set.
Since my data are a set of transcripts, I also comment on what sort of
25
2.3.1. DATA COLLECTION
detail, so I would like to highlight the most important point about this process
here. This is that the final data set ended up being only a portion of the data I
collected. This was because I realised that to analyse all the data I had collected
was too ambitious a task. I outline the process of coming to this decision in
section 2.3.2.1.
I have summarised the rather complex procedures involved in collecting the data
in Table 2.1., (section 2.3.1.4.).
I did not come to this research project with a fully formed hypothesis to test, but
an area of interest I wished to explore - the discursive construction of new
students' identities. (This area of interest was redefined during the data collection
process, as I explain). I began my collection of data with the following
assumptions:
negotiate access to the new domain of higher education, and are positioned in
various ways by it. They will draw on familiar discourses - both the private ones
of everyday life and their prior experience of other public domain discourses, such
as those associated with employment. They will also draw on the less familiar
discourses of the university domain itself.
2. Mature students, (defined in the university literature as students aged 21 or
over), may have a wider repertoire of discourses with which they are familiar, as a
result of their longer life experience, than traditional age students. Their discourse
26
practices may therefore tend to show a more marked heterogeneity. This was my
original reason for deciding to collect data from older students, as a sub-group of
the whole population of new students.
envisaged collecting the following two levels of data, the analysis of which would
Level 1:
subjected to content analysis, about how mature students themselves felt about
their experience of university at two particular stages of it, (before starting their
degree course, and at the end of their first term of it).
Level 2:
A narrow focus on the discourse practices of about 6 of these students at a
particular site where the spoken discourse practices students bring to university
interface with those used by academic staff members of that domain. The seminar
I did three small scale data collections with groups of mature students, to generate
ideas and interview questions about mature student experience, and to acquaint
27
1. I conducted a group interview with 12 mature students at a college of further
useful insight into one of the routes back into learning that mature students might
take before starting a degree; some of the reasons adults might have for
undertaking study as adults; and what taking on a student identity might mean to
them.
may have had before coming to university which contrast strongly with their
university experience.
When it came to collecting data for the main study, I used the following four
selection criteria.
ensure that they had had life experience outside education as adults.
2 - They should be native speakers of English, as this was a study of discourse
practices.
4 - I wanted my first interviews with new students to be before the start of their
courses, to hear about their initial constructions of the university and their
28
relationship to it. I understood 'before the start of their courses' in two ways.
Firstly, I anticipated being able to interview students living locally in the 3 weeks
before the start of term, and possibly again at the end of Introductory Week.
Secondly, I anticipated not being able to interview students coming from a
distance - and therefore not arriving until the start of term - until Introductory
Week, that is, the week prior to the start of their courses.
There were two stages to my data collection procedures, and this made them
2.1. below. This summary is expanded into a chronological account of the stages
Table 2.1.:
LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2
Beginning of Term 1: 31 initial
Initial interviews participants
Throughout Term 1: 4 of the 31 initial
Seminars + interviews participants
End of Term 1: 11 of the initial The 4 participants
Final interviews participants (above)
Participants in final sample:
All those I had interviewed at the end of term, i.e. 11 from Level 1, (discounting 2), +
the 4 from Level 2.
TOTAL = 13 PARTICIPANTS
Interviews in final data set:
The beginning of Term 1 interviews of these 13 participants.
TOTAL = 16 INTERVIEWS, (3 participants interviewed twice at beginning of term).
29
Table 2.1. shows that I conducted initial interviews with 31 participants at the
these 4 and with 11 of the other initial participants at the end of Term 1. The table
also shows how I drew the final data set of 16 interviews from the two levels of
data.
Lancaster University. I used name, address, age and course information on the
intake of new undergraduate students, supplied by the university, to select a
2. Making contact:
I sent Letter A, (see Appendix 1), one month before the start of Term 1 to half the
students who met these criteria. I also sent Letter A to all students meeting these
criteria who had local addresses, to increase the potential number of participants I
might be able to interview before Introductory Week. This made a total of 109
letters. In this letter, I asked any full-time, British students over 25, who would be
interested in talking to me about their experience of starting a degree course to
contact me.
those who responded, (see Table 2.1.). The remaining 13 were not interviewed
due to loss of contact, or late response to my letter. The interviews were informal
30
university. I interviewed 21 of these students before Introductory Week, (4 of
Week. During the interview, I asked the students whether they would be
interested in helping me further with my research, unless it was already clear that
they did not wish for further contact, or did not after all meet my selection criteria.
Level 1 continued - another informal interview at the end of the Term 1 to talk
collection. This was because I was only looking for 4 to 6 students who would be
willing for Level 2 contact. After consultation with seminar leaders, establishing
my presence was acceptable to other members of the seminar groups, and sorting
out time tabling problems, I obtained Level 2 data from 4 participants, all women,
I sent Letter B, (see Appendix 1), to the remaining students who had indicated
These were conducted at the end of Term 1. I also conducted interviews at the
end of Term 1 with the 4 participants with whom I had had Level 2 contact, (see
Table 2.1.).
31
5. Terminating contact:
With my data collection now complete, I sent Letter C (see Appendix 1) to all 31
students I had interviewed, to thank them for their help, and to clarify
confidentiality issues. I expressed the wish that they should contact me if they
were not happy with my use of the tape-recordings of their interviews for my
research. No one contacted me.
As I have already mentioned, after collecting the data, I decided to analyse only a
portion of it, and to reduce the range of my analytic focus. I account for this
change of plan below, and describe the interviewees in the final sample.
My change of focus developed in the following way. Firstly, through the process
of collecting the data, I had become more interested in the ways that students
themselves talked about their experiences and constructed meanings about their
worlds, than in analysing seminar interactions - for which it had also proved
difficult to get good quality tape-recordings. Secondly, having collected both
Level 1 and Level 2 data, I realised I had too much data to integrate, given the
level of detailed analysis necessary for a Critical Discourse Analysis based
This necessitated a change in the research design of this project. It was a move
was a move towards taking as my data base only one portion of all the data I had
32
collected and analysing it in a cross-sectional way, with the focus on discursive
site, rather than the seminar. In short, my initial interest in mature students'
2.4.2.3.).
The new focus became how interviewees discursively constructed their experience
of higher education in their initial interviews with me. All 31 interviews was still
too large a body of data for detailed discourse analysis. So I decided to take as my
data set the initial interviews of the 15 students I had also interviewed at the end
of term - that is, the 11 participants from Level 1 plus the 4 from Level 2, (see
Table 2.1.). Two interviews were lost from this set, (poor tape quality for one,
misplacing the other), leaving as the final data set the transcripts of the interviews
The final data set thus comprised the initial interviews with 13 participants, (11
women and 2 men). Eight participants were interviewed before Introductory
Week, with three of these interviewed again during it; and five participants were
33
2.3.2.3. Biodata for the participants in the final sample
Key:
Age:
The two groupings, 26-40 or 40 and over were the ones I used in gathering initial
information from the participants.
Marital status:
S = single
D = divorced/separated
M = married or partner
Previous work:
One = one main job
Range = range of jobs
Home = mostly at home
F.E. College:
This refers to whether or not the respondent had undertaken qualifying study at an
FE College before coming to university.
F/T = full-time study
Degree type for which entered at university:
Hum = Humanities degree
Soc Sci = Social Sciences degree
34
These 13 interviewees were those whose interviews comprised the final dat set.
The only information I specifically asked each of them during their interviews was
age group and degree type. Other information shown in the table was inferred.
The table shows that 9 interviewees were under 40, and 4 were over 40. All those
over 40 were starting Humanities degrees. Sharon was the only one under 40
doing a Humanities degree, with the other 8 doing Social Science degrees. During
the course of the interviews it became apparent that all the interviewees had been
university, except Wendy and Mary, who had shown their ability to study through
The marital status information on this chart was either inferred or made explicit
during the course of the interview. Different biographical details seemed relevant
to different interviewees in the context of the interview. However, I include
information about marital status and children here because these are aspects of the
personal relational context and the commitments which the interviewees had to
sustain while undertaking a degree. The only single interviewees were the two
men, Sam and Steve. Of the women, 8 were married, 6 of them with children.
The 3 who were divorced or separated all had children.
Some of the previous work experience of the interviewees could also be inferred
from the interviews. The 'previous work' column in Table 2.2. is not a summary
of all the work experience of the interviewees, only that which was mentioned in
the interviews. This shows that 6 interviewees talked about a range of jobs that
they had done, 5 seemed to have been mostly in one job or on one career path, and
35
These biographical details are elements of the ideational content of the interviews.
They are referred to again along with the other topics of talk which were covered
partially in transcriptions of tape recordings. The result is that there are decisions
to be made about what other features of speech to include, (for example, prosodic
features, such as change of pitch, stress and so on), and what, if any, non-
linguistic features to note, (such as body language), when transcribing. All these
decisions reveal transcription as an interpretative act. The so called raw data
undergoes transformations associated with the turning of speech into written text
before formal analysis ever begins. As Mishler states, (op.cit.:48), points such as
how overlaps in speech are marked, (who is 'interrupting' who), and whether
pauses are just noted or timed, all reveal theoretical assumptions about the nature
36
of speech. Their presence or absence influences the interpretations which can be
Though I have not made the transcripts of the interviews I conducted generally
available, for the reasons I give in section 2.4.4., I wish to discuss what I included
in them in order to briefly highlight transcription as an aspect of data analysis. In
addition, in later chapters, quotations from the interviews are lifted directly from
the transcripts, complete with the notation conventions I mention below. (The
1. Non-verbal features:
In my own transcriptions, I limited the non-verbal features I included to pauses
and laughter. This was because the most detailed level of analysis I did was at the
grammatical level, and I was not concerned with phonetic features of speech.
2. Pauses:
I included pauses, but these were subjectively evaluated only as short hesitations
or longer pauses, (over about 3 seconds). A short hesitation was one which I
3. Back channelling:
(i.e. feedback, for example, Mm, Right, Yes, used to indicate that the hearer has
understood what the speaker has been saying). I found that back channelling was
back channelling by one participant, while the other was speaking, gave a visual
amounted to a large set of data. When I checked her transcriptions I noticed that
37
she included simultaneous back channelling, and I had not done so in mine. I
decided to make the transcriptions more equivalent, across these differing
from the other transcriptionist's work. I took this decision after some reflection,
and on the basis that I was more interested in the 'wholeness' of utterances, and
their internal structure, (that is, in their grammar, discourse representation, themes
and story lines and so on). I note that back channelling, of course, could equally
well have been considered an aspect of what I discuss in Part II, the interpersonal
exhaustive analysis of the discourse of the interviews and this was one of the
features I decided to select out. A more practical reason for doing so was that the
inclusion of back channelling, as I noticed from the other transcriptionist's texts,
made them hard and slow to read. The transcripts appeared, and indeed read, as
4. Practical constraints:
Despite the ways I have described that I reduced the amount of data I used in this
study, the final data set was still a large one. This meant that I did not return to
the original tapes to systematically check the transcription choices more than
once. In retrospect, I would have preferred to listen to the tapes more than this.
Due to the size of the data set, and the time constraints on the production of this
project, I found it easier to take the transcripts as data rather than the tapes -
which, I note, is a general criticism Mishler makes of social science research,
(ibid.).
deciding how much of what I had tape recorded to actually define as the
38
interview. It was not always clear when the interview proper began or ended,
since there was always preliminary and final talk involved in making the
transition out of and back into the 'everyday' world. In order to establish some
equivalence between the interviews, I began all the interview transcriptions at the
point where I turned the tape on. I terminated them after I had established their
to suddenly switch the tape recorder off. I made switching off the tape recorder a
matter that I judged on the spot, but I consistently terminated the transcriptions at
the point I have just described. (I discuss these stages that occurred in the
6. Anonymity:
Finally I note that to protect the anonymity of the participants, I changed all
person names in the transcripts. All place names, (except 'Lancaster University'),
and the names of lecturers at the university have been removed and replaced with
the notation [name]. Ages, number of children, type of past work experience and
academic subjects mentioned have been retained. Though these are
particularising, to change them would remove relevant contextualising
information. (I discuss the issue of anonymity further in section 2.4.4. below).
In this section I discuss the ethical issues I encountered while doing this study. I
reflect on the ethical consequences of what I did, why I did it and how I might
that the ethical issues I encountered are of general significance to social scientists,
39
because interviews are such a common method of collecting data. In addition, my
discussion here sets the scene for my analysis of power relations in Part II.
The ethical issues of most concern to me in this project, and which I discuss here,
spring from the fact that this was my first large-scale piece of research. This
meant there were some things I only learnt in the process of doing the research. In
designed the project, and led to some gaps in it that I only became aware of later.
This resulted in a certain amount of re-shaping work to try and reshape the project
to better accord with my developing ideas, and my increasing experience of the
A general ethical issue that forms a backdrop to the more detailed discussions in
interviewing in more detail in Part II, but with particular respect to ethical issues,
the following point about privacy is important. Homan describes unstructured
interviews as "open methods of invasion [of privacy]", (1991:56). My interviews
were open in the sense that I shared my agenda with the interviewees - I wanted to
know about their initial experiences and perceptions of university, and I told them
so. My intended aim was that they should be free to talk around this theme with
some control on what and how much they said. I also presented myself in a
friendly way, with the intention of putting them at their ease. In retrospect, I think
the informality of my interviews may have had the unintended effect of making
the interviewees less guarded about what they said, or encouraging them to say
more about themselves than they realised. The result for me as researcher, of
course, was that the use of these methods gave me information which I might
otherwise not have received, (see chapter 5, section 5.4.2.). These are weighty
40
issues, which I do not claim to have resolved fully. However, what I do in the
remainder of this chapter is to give as full and honest a picture as possible of the
ethical dilemmas I faced in my research, and the action I took with regard to them.
PROCEDURES
In this section I discuss the ethical issues that I encountered during the data
collection procedures that I have already outlined. In sections 2.4.2.1. and 2.4.2.2.
I discuss certain ways in which I was unwittingly involved in the selection of
participants for my research. In section 2.4.2.3. I discuss the issue of informed
consent.
participants
I did not ask all of the 31 participants who I interviewed during Introductory
nervousness on their part, which I did not seem able to alleviate; using the
interview primarily as a platform to air grievances about the way they perceived
the university was handling their recent arrival; and not taking the interview as
seriously as I was and treating it as 'a laugh'. As a new researcher, I was not well
prepared for responses which showed up these kinds of mismatches between our
assumptions of what research interviews were about. Looking back, I realise that
these participants who made me feel uncomfortable, by which I really mean not in
41
control of the interview situation, or who were clearly uncomfortable themselves,
tended to be those I did not ask if they were interested in further contact. (By
further contact, I mean seminar contact during Term 1 and/or final interviews at
the end of Term 1, see Table 2.1.). This was because I sensed it would be face
With more experience I might have been better prepared beforehand to face these
kinds of situations - not only 'difficult' interviewees, but the subtle way in which
my own choices could affect the shape of the research outcomes. Regrettably, it
was not until much later that I realised that, firstly, such mismatches in the
perspectives of myself and those interviewees who I did not ask for further contact
were potentially very interesting points for analysis; and secondly, the part my
This point follows from the one above. The final sample of 13 participants was
and B. I would simply like to make the observation here that my final sample was
made up of those who were most willing for contact with me at all the stages of
my research. This may imply that these 13 people shared some assumptions with
me about the meanings of my research - for example, that to explore the nature of
42
given me access to different types of research material to have analysed the initial
interviews of the 'difficult' participants who I did not ask for further contact.
Homan goes on to point out that implementing this principle of informed consent
is easier to say than to do, (ibid:73). In this section, I discuss the problem I
encountered with keeping participants informed of my changing research focus.
This problem resulted from the way that exploratory qualitative research does
often involve successive formulations of themes and topics.
I have described my own shift in focus in section 2.3.2.1. During the data
collection period I was as open as possible with all the people from whom I
gathered data about my intentions as far as I knew them at the time. However, it
was not until some time after I had terminated contact with them that I shifted my
research focus. I did not inform them of this, and am still not sure in how detailed
a way it would have been reasonable to do so, since what was involved was a shift
within an academic discipline they knew little about. I describe below the
problems I encountered in keeping, firstly the seminar groups, and secondly the
interviewees, informed of my changing research focus.
I decided to drop the seminar data from my final data set once I realised ethical
issues would extend to the entire seminar group, not just the member of it who
had agreed to the interviews with me. I saw that the ethical issues were going to
43
opposed to the member of it who was the participant in my research, formed a sort
of grey area with respect to their status in my research. I had their consent to tape
record seminar meetings, and I liaised directly with the seminar tutor, but I had no
direct contact with other student members of the groups. The effect of the unclear
relationship I had with the seminar groups was that I found it difficult to keep
them informed of my successive changes in plan. I wrote to the seminar leaders
before the end of the academic year to say that I had decided to use the material I
had gathered from the seminars only as support data, not as linguistic data for
analysis. I left it up to them to inform their groups of this. It was not until the
following academic year that I decided there would not be room in the thesis to
incorporate the seminar data at all. The seminar groups were now disbanded and
so could not be informed of this change, and I was embarrassed to contact the
seminar leaders to tell them, after their willingness to let me observe their
seminars.
The general points I wish to draw out from this are firstly, informed consent is
difficult to obtain for research participants with whom the researcher does not
have direct contact. Secondly, obtaining informed consent once may not be
enough. This is especially the case where there is a shift in research focus.
The shift in my research focus had consequences with respect to the individuals I
data I collected that a suitable focus for the project gradually emerged and, along
with this, the decision to only use selected parts of it. By this time I had
terminated contact with the interviewees and so did not inform them whose data I
44
was going to use and whose I was not. However, no one had responded to Letter
participants adequately informed was part of the inevitable evolution of ideas that
tends to occur in qualitative research.
PARTICIPANTS
In this section, I discuss the issues raised by the type of research relationship I had
with the students from whom I collected data. I start by outlining the useful
respondents: research on, research on and for, and research on, for and with
participants. The first two spring from a positivist, natural science view of
knowledge in which objective and value-free observation is held to be possible.
They point out that this is particularly problematic in social science research
because social reality is not transparently 'there', (ibid:7). In research 'on'
participants, basic ethical considerations are adhered to, with their rights to
privacy and the need to protect them from abuse setting limits on the research. In
research 'on and for' participants, though researchers advocate the interests of the
researched group, it is still they alone who have the power to decide how to use
45
In contrast to these two, the type of research they argue for is 'empowering'
research, (ibid:22). This involves negotiating research agendas, disclosing the
researcher's goals, sharing research findings and negotiating control of them with
participants. It is research 'on, for and with' participants. This foregrounds, rather
data with the positivist assumption that I was gathering material about them, the
interviewees. However, later on I became aware that I was also gathering material
about us, the interviewees and myself, and that there was, inevitably, social
interaction between us in the interviews which affected the data. This made me
reassess the status I was giving to how the interviewees and I interacted, and my
reflections on this eventually led to the analyses in Part II of this thesis. I regard
as regrettable, though not perhaps surprising, that it was not until I actually
engaged with the practicalities of doing social science research - and my PhD
project was my first such endeavour - that assumptions I carried with me, but was
not aware of until then, came to light, about how I viewed my relationship with
The assumption I most particularly became aware of was that researchers should
remain aloof from those they research so as not to affect the data they collect.
This assumption came to light when I was faced by interviewees asking questions
during interviews. I discuss how I found it necessary and desirable to give fairly
46
lengthy responses to interviewees' questions in Chapter 5, (section 5.4.). The
conflict I felt over answering such questions was the result of feeling that my
behaviour in interviews did not match what I had until then taken as the model for
research - that the researcher should remain as disinterested as possible, and that
the ways the interviewees and I related discursively in the interviews - which
includes the issue of interviewee questions - were actually part of the data, the
from the data set. In short, I came to the conclusion that both of us contributed to
how the interviewees discursively constructed meanings about the university in
the interviews, and have incorporated this in my analyses in Part II of the thesis.
By doing this I feel I have done the best I can, retrospectively, to re-shape my use
of the data in a way that better fits my changing conception that social science
research inevitably involves relating to the researched, and that recognition of this
In this section I discuss interviewees' anonymity, and the steps I took to safeguard
it. My particular concern about anonymity was whether what I established at the
outset as the means of anonymising interviewees was still adequate when I later
changed my research focus so as to focus on interviewees' discursive meaning
making practices.
There were four reasons for my concern with anonymity. Firstly, the interviewees
were members of the university which would hold a copy of the finished thesis.
47
conversational style of talking. This may have led to a more acute example of
what would anyway be the case, that interviewees may give away more or
different things about themselves than they intend. This is especially the case
where, as in my interviews, they are encouraged to talk about their own lives in
answer to open ended questions, and on the understanding that whatever they say
the interview texts was in interactive aspects of them, particularly self disclosure,
(chapter 5), and personal experience narratives, (chapters 7 and 8). These features
Anonymity really becomes an issue where there are members of the potential
audience of the PhD thesis who might conceivably recognise the people referred
One way of partially resolving the anonymity issue might have been to show the
transcripts to the interviewees and let them decide if there were any parts of the
interviews that they wished to be deleted. Another way might have been to show
them the final thesis, or the parts of it relating to them. Both these methods rely
on increasing the extent of informed consent, which I have discussed in section
2.4.2.3. I did not take either of these courses of action, for reasons I give below.
With hindsight I think they might have at least partially resolved the issue, though
48
2.4.4.3. Why I did not check with interviewees once I had
changed the focus of my research
Once I had changed my research focus and decided on detailed analysis of the
interview data, I checked with Maria, the respondent who, in my opinion, revealed
most personal information, and she gave her consent for me to use even this
personal information. I did not do this with the other interviewees for several
reasons. Firstly, I wondered whether it might not seem yet another favour I was
They may not have been interested enough in what I was doing to wish to do this.
Secondly, a way to make interviewees aware of what I was going to do with the
data would have been to show them parts of the analysis, but here there would
the interviewees because of the investment I had already made in the data. Each
transcript alone took about 10 hours to transcribe. Each reading of the whole set
analyse and starting preliminary analyses took many more hours. At none of these
points did I really want to give the interviewees the right to prevent me using the
data they had given me. There is a conflict over the ownership of knowledge here.
I realised with regret that once I had invested so much work in it, what was
These difficulties, and the awareness that it was not possible to totally guarantee
49
the data I established with the interviewees, during the interviews, that they agreed
to my using pseudonyms, and I assured them that nobody would use the tapes of
the interviews except me. This was also the case with the transcripts.
Secondly, I decided not to append the transcripts to the written thesis or to make
them available for secondary analysis. I took these decisions as the best solution
the preceding sections. I recognise that secondary analysis might offer new
interpretation of my data might be very different from the one I present in this
cannot be claims about giving 'the true' picture. However, once other researchers
have access to the data, I no longer have control over how it may be used. In
short, I felt it was better to be overcautious where ethical issues were concerned.
2.5. CONCLUSION
In retrospect, I feel I could have resolved some of the considerable anxiety I felt
took more account of the 'on, for and with' approach of Cameron et al, (section
relationship to the researched more explicit at the outset. I would have liked to
ask the interviewees to check the transcripts shortly after the interviews, and to
have been more explicit about the extent to which I could reasonably protect their
anonymity. Regrettably, the complexity of this issue did not become apparent to
me until quite late on in the research process. There was a certain amount of
50
relationships with the researched, were due to my inexperience as a researcher,
However, I consider I have made the best use I can of what I have learned from
these interpersonal aspects of the research process in the following two ways.
Firstly, I have explained what I have learned from engaging in this particular piece
constructed in them.
51
-PART II-
IN THE INTERVIEWS
INTRODUCTION TO PART II
In Part II, I analyse the interviews as social interactions between the interviewees
discursive practices that realise power in different ways. I attempt to expose some
of the complexity of the power relations in the interviews using this distinction.
This exploration is of general interest to social scientists, since my interviews are a
sample of research interviews - the means by which so much social science data is
practices - which realise more equal power relations. I conclude Chapter 3 with an
introductory analysis of how the power balance shifted during different stages of
my interviews. This constitutes a preliminary description of the control I exerted,
as interviewer, on the interview structure.
52
In chapters 4 and 5, I analyse features of the two sets of discursive practices I
asked most questions and did most of the formulating work, the interviewees also
sometimes used these strategies. I suggest that clear cut distinctions between the
extent, and that this is because of the unstructured nature of these interviews
characterising the interviewees' self disclosure, I discuss the self disclosures they
that one way I created rapport was to make disclosures about the experience of
being a mature student - an experience which I shared with the interviewees. This
53
CHAPTER 3
3.1. INTRODUCTION
3.1.1. AIMS OF THIS CHAPTER
3.1.2. ANALYSING SOCIAL INTERACTIONS OF WHICH I WAS A PART
3.2. THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW: A CONVERSATION WITH A PURPOSE
3.2.1. DEFINING THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW
3.2.2. DEFINING MY INTERVIEWS
3.3. THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW: POWER RELATIONS AND DISCOURSE
3.3.1. CONVERSATION IN INTERVIEWS
3.3.2. INSTITUTIONALLY DEFINED DISCURSIVE PRACTICES
3.3.3. COMPLEXITY OF THE POWER RELATIONS IN MY INTERVIEWS
3.4. OVERVIEW OF THE INTERACTIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE INTERVIEWS
3.4.1. STAGE 1: PRELIMINARIES
3.4.1.1. What the interviewer is 'allowed to do
3.4.1.2. The interview agenda
3.4.2. STAGE 2: STARTING THE INTERVIEW PROPER
3.4.3. STAGE 3: THE INTERVIEW PROPER
3.4.4. STAGE 4: WINDING DOWN
3.4.5. STAGE 5: FURTHER CONTACT
3.5. CONCLUSION
3.1. INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I set the scene for the analyses which follow in the rest of Part II
The scene-setting function of this chapter is accomplished in two ways, which also
the relations between participants and the meanings they construct, (section 3.3.).
I describe here the two sets of discursive practices which underpin the analyses of
chapters 4 and 5.
54
I then turn to the data itself, and in section 3.4. outline the stages in the interaction
between the interviewees and myself which occurred in each interview. The scene
appropriate to the concerns of this Part of the thesis. (The whole of chapter 6
To explore the relations of power between myself and the interviewees involved
the interviews I did not plan to use them as linguistic data - I intended them to be
intention to use them as data for the analysis of power relations, and they thus
As I described in chapter 1, (section 1.6.), the lack of attention paid to the effects
of interview settings on the collection and analysis of interview data has been
interviewer and the interviewees - in short, to treat my own interviews not simply
as instruments for data gathering, but as social situations which are themselves a
55
3.2. THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW: A CONVERSATION
WITH A PURPOSE
interviews. The broad definition I have just given highlights that all types of
interviews are discursive events, and in this section I lay out some general
type of conversation in which roles for the participants are clearly prescribed: the
interviewees are sources of data, who conform to the definition of the interview
supplied by the interviewer; while the interviewer elicits what she or he considers
structure, as Robson points out, (op. cit.:231). Fully structured interviews involve
develop.
56
3.2.2. DEFINING MY INTERVIEWS
My own interviews were not highly structured in terms of the definitions I have
perceptions and experiences of university. (This is what the meanings made in the
interviews, and which I analyse in this thesis, were about). I made this purpose
expressed this:
This purpose was fulfilled by my use of six prompt themes, (see Appendix 2), to
express the areas I was interested in within the general field of the interviewees'
initial perceptions of university. These are the "general questions" in the extract
above. I only used these questions if the interviewee had not covered the relevant
topic in the course of her or his talk anyway. In addition, as I also say in the
extract above, I was interested in knowing what was important to them. This
allowed interviewees some room to develop their own concerns, though this was
definitely subordinated to the fact that the interview was ultimately an encounter
when the six areas I was interested in, and anything that the interviewees wished
In this thesis I shall refer to my interviews as 'unstructured', in line with the three
57
somewhat misleading term. As I have pointed out, I did have themes that I wished
to cover and an agenda, albeit a loosely defined one. These imposed a certain
I would also like to make a further point, which is important for the discussions of
the interviews, I had decided I was willing to talk about the fact that I had
appropriate. This was because this experience had influenced the development of
were also aware of this from my first letter to them, (Letter A, Appendix 1).
discussion of the rest of Part II. I argue that, for analytical purposes, the way
elements, because of their highly interpersonal nature; but they also contain
discursive practices which are shaped by their institutional context, (such as
discourse types peculiar to the institutional domain in which the interviews occur).
interviews. In the following two sections, I characterise more fully these two
58
groups of discursive practices and account for their presence in interviews
section.
1985:147), and concerns "feelings, states of mind, private thoughts and personal
have described, it can refer to any domain of experience. (As I said in chapter I,
them for use in the public domain. This results in an appearance of equality which
is not in fact there. Fairclough contrasts this to discourse "which has no underlying
59
instrumental use. However, in the context of an interview, conversation must be
In interviews there are clear power asymmetries resulting from power being vested
asymmetries between the participants can be partly explained by the fact that
interview, and having the right to ask questions, select topics, or in other ways
60
one-way elicitation of information from one participant, (or group of participants),
by the other is an interview's main purpose and results in the unequal distribution
Power asymmetries are inevitably present in all types of discourse. This includes
conversation, as Kress and Hodge point out, (op.cit.:64). However, what I argue
they are chiefly the result of institutionally established roles. The distinction I am
rests on this contrast in the way power is realised in them. Clearly, these are
rather loosely defined theoretical terms. I use them tentatively, but I think they are
useful distinctions for analytical purposes and they make possible a discussion of
INTERVIEWS
I would like to point out here that interviews are widely and variously used in the
public domain, and are now part of the order of discourse of many institutions.
power relations was accentuated by features particular to them which increased the
61
conversational elements in them and thus reduced the presence of overt markers of
I pointed out in section 3.2.2. that though I was the interviewer, and therefore
initial letter to them that I was both a research student and had been a mature
and our sharing of relevant experience offset, to some extent, the power
both by the unstructured nature of the interviews, and the topic of the interviews -
the interviewees' initial perceptions of university - which was about personal
I give here a brief analysis of the interactional stages through which my agenda
was realised, focusing on the power balance in the interviews. As I pointed out at
contextualise those that follow in chapters 4 and 5. The five stages were as
follows:
STAGE 1: Preliminaries
STAGE 2: Starting the interview proper
STAGE 3: The interview proper
STAGE 4: Winding down
STAGE 5: Further contact
62
I include the beginnings and endings of the interviews, where the transitions were
made between the interview and the rest of the interviewees' and my own
everyday life. This is in order to highlight the concerns of this Part of the thesis -
that the interviews were social interactions, not just sites for the collection of
The first stage in each interview was to discuss a number of preliminaries with the
degree course and what Part 1 courses they were interested in doing. I also
checked it was acceptable to them that I tape record and described my
It is worth noting here that, as the interviewer, I was 'allowed' to ask if I could take
notes and run a tape recorder as part of the conventional inequality of the roles in
interviews. For all the interviewees who formed the final sample, (though not for
all those I interviewed), I received permission to do this. This was the case even if
it was temporarily distressing, though Sharon was the only one to suggest this:
Having the power to ask if I could take notes and run a tape recorder are
63
also worth noting that these conventions might already have been common
fitted into a pre-existing frame of reference which they, (or some of them), had
about the power balances that normatively operate in interviews. Connie, (the
only one who did so explicitly), suggested her familiarity with these interview
Int: As regards this taping nobody'll . hear the tape and ah you know
your name won't be associated with it at all I hope that's alright for
confidentiality
Con: Yeah yeah...'cos when I did my project for Women's Studies I
went interviewing men ... [and] I couldn't say who [they were]
(Conniel, 2-16).
I have already pointed out that the purpose of interviews in general, and this
64
Maria was alone among the interviewees in immediately following her agreement
to my agenda with a question of her own. This seemed to obey the rule 'this is a
conversation', where rights to extract information tend to be more equal. The
other interviewees seemed to obey the rule, (at this initial stage anyway), 'this is
not initiating anything. This example highlights the ambiguous status of these
interviewees, and at different stages in the interviews. In the further contact stage,
In the second extract, from my interview with Carol, I compared the interview
research interview Carol was likely to be familiar with as part of her everyday
ease by saying she could not Tail' at it. However, by comparing the interview with
a succeed-fail type encounter, (which she goes on to gloss as not an exam), rather
than, say, 'a chat', I unintentionally foregrounded the inherent power inequalities
of the interview.
Int: I don't have a sort of list it's not a sort of questionnaire kind of
thing it's more a case of just hearing what's important to you about
why you're doing a degree you know
Car: Yes yes yes
Int: And that's something interesting in it's own right so . urn. I you
won't there's no sort of failure you can't fail this interview
[both laugh]
Car: It's not an exam no
Int: No certainly it isn't
Car: Oh dear [ still laughing]
(Carol, 24-33).
This extract also shows that I recognised the power asymmetry inherent in our
roles, in my efforts to downplay it: the hedges by me, (e.g. you know, kind of
65
thing), and my rephrasing of utterances, (e.g. you won't there's no sort offailure),
The preliminaries sometimes led naturally into the interviewees beginning to talk
about their experiences of university or their reasons for doing a degree, so that the
topics of the interview proper were introduced without specific prompting by me.
For example, Wendy's talk about her husband's job led her into talking about why
she wanted to go to university - a topic which was one of the six prompt themes
on my agenda:
Wen: The job was getting to the stage that he just couldn't stay in the
job any longer, hence the reason we find ourselves in this part of the
world
Int: I see so it's a new start
Wen: Completely yes for both of us yeah
Int: Yeah
Wen: And that's why I decided to go to university
(Wendy, 56-62).
This led into a lengthy section of personal history that expanded her final
utterance above. If this did not occur, I would start the interview proper by
Int: Perhaps I can start us off by by asking you erm what made you
decide to do a degree at this point in your life
(Steve, 82-3).
My initiation of the move into the interview proper in this way was, of course, an
66
3.4.3. STAGE 3: THE INTERVIEW PROPER
This section formed the bulk of each interview and consisted of the interviewees'
discuss in detail the topics covered by the interviewees in chapter 6. Here I focus
This section of the interview did not only involve the interviewees meeting the
the genre that I needed to meet too. This stage of the interviews included
observations and back channelling. In particular, I note here that it was necessary
for me to indicate to the interviewees that what they said was interesting and
Int: Well that's great that's all I mean you've been talking about
everything that sort of=
Wen: =Oh good [laughs]
Int: My interests
(Wendy, 554-6).
This was necessary precisely because the interviews involved open ended
questions and were not exams, as Carol pointed out. As loosely structured events
these interviews did not come with overt evaluation criteria - in the way modelled
interviewees said was not just polite. It was a necessary means of compensating
for the lack of built-in methods through which the interviewees could assess how
they were doing. In addition, this illustrates the power asymmetry in the
interviews. My feedback to the interviewees signalled that what the interviewees
67
3.4.4. STAGE 4: WINDING DOWN
Once the interviewees seemed to have covered all the points on my agenda, I
would indicate that I was drawing the interview to a close in the following way:
Int: Well I think we've urn . we've certainly, covered all the kinds of
themes that I've had in the back of my mind that I wanted to mention
I wondered if there was anything of particular interest to you about
doing a degree that we haven't talked about that you wanted to
mention just in closing
(Tania, 390-4).
This shift of topic is again a way in which I maintained control of the interview
interaction, but it also offered an opportunity for the interviewees to initiate a topic
of their own. In Tania's case, as well as in the cases of Mary, Connie (interviewl),
and Anne, (interview2), this led to quite lengthy continuations of the talk.
However, to offer an opening for the interviewees to say what they wanted was
negotiated, and it had an instrumental purpose and was thus not 'conversational'.
The final stage of each interview was a negotiation about further contact. The
power balance in this section of the interview was somewhat altered. This was
because I was now in the position of needing to make a request for further contact,
dominating the talk to give a quite detailed plan of what I then perceived to be the
2.3.1.4.). In some cases this provoked a lot of discussion, for example about
68
interviewees' concerns about the effect of my presence on seminar groups. This is
shown in the following extract from Connie's second interview, (I had mentioned
earlier that I had done Psychology as an undergraduate):
Con: I mean you've done Psychology and people don't react the same
when they know they're being watched do they...having done a bit of
Psychology [myself] this is one of the things they've...talked about
(Connie2, 308-9, 318-21).
3.5: CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have introduced the way I conceptualise the power relations in the
contrasting ways. I began to illustrate this from the data by describing the
different interactional stages of the interviews. This showed that the balance of
power varied from stage to stage in the interviews. From this rather cursory look
69
CHAPTER 4
INTERACTIONAL CONTROL
4.1. INTRODUCTION
4.2. THE ANALYSIS OF QUESTIONS
4.2.1. CODING CATEGORIES
4.2.2. RESULTS: SPREAD OF INTERROGATIVE TYPES ACROSS THE DATA
SET
4.3. QUESTIONS AND INTERACTIONAL CONTROL
4.3.1. INTERVIEWER QUESTIONS: NON-POLAR
4.3.1.1. Non-polar questions give new information
4.3.1.2. The obligation to impart new information
4.3.2. INTERVIEWER QUESTIONS: POLAR
4.3.2.1. Extended rather than minimum responses
4.3.2.2. Polar questions that gave an expected minimum answer
4.3.2.3. Reasons for extended rather than minimal responses
4.3.3. INTERVIEWEE QUESTIONS
4.3.4. QUESTIONS AND TOPIC SHIFTS
4.3.4.1. Abrupt shift of topics
4.3.4.2. Incremental shifts of topic
44. FORMULATION
4.4.1. DEFINITIONS DRAWN FROM CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS
4.4.2. FORMULATION AS A MEANS OF JOINTLY CREATING MEANINGS
4.4.3. FORMULATION AS A MEANS OF INTERACTIONAL CONTROL
4.4.3.1. Formulations by the interviewer
4.4.3.2. Formulations by the interviewees
4.5. CONCLUSION
4.1. INTRODUCTION
chapter 3, (section 3.3.). As I explained there, I use this term to denote those
last chapter, in section 3.4. In this chapter, I analyse two discursive features for
what they can reveal about interactional control in the interviews. In sections 4.2.
and 4.3. my focus is on questions, and in section 4.4. on formulation.
70
My reasons for this focus are as follows. Firstly, the use of questions by the
interviewer are a definitive discursive feature of interviews, (though not the only
realises the unequal relations of power in interviews. However, what I point out in
this chapter is that though most questions were asked by me, as the interviewer,
the interviewees also asked questions. This shows up the complexity of the power
relations that actually occurred in the interviews. Thirdly, the complexity of these
interestingly has the dual function of interactional control and aiding the joint
construction of meaning.
Other discursive features relevant for an analysis of interactional control, but not
covered here, are back channelling, interruptions, modality markers and aspects of
the turn-taking structure apart from questions. (See chapter 2, section 2.3.3. for a
of expressing power relations in the interview context: power resides with the
interviewer partly because she has the right to ask questions and so develop the
interaction around her own agenda. In this chapter I limit myself to questions,
rather than expanding the analysis to include the turn-taking structure. This would
undoubtedly have been relevant to interactional control and issues of power, but
the size of the data set, and the necessity of making this analysis fit within one
71
I also limit myself to the analysis of questions that take the grammatical form of
which are utterance categories, are not always realised by interrogative mood
structures in the grammar. Mood structures are part of the interpersonal function
of language, because they realise interactional aspects of the clause, (Downing and
Locke, 1992:165). When the clause is used to exchange information it takes the
situations, it is sometimes the case that utterances which seek information take the
syntactic form of declaratives. These are not included in the analysis in this
Though this is not a direct interrogative, there is a yes/no clause, (beginning with
whether...), to which Anne responds This sort of indirection was a way in which I
relations of power between participants, (section 4.3.). I mark this switch from
72
focusing on grammatical type to focusing on utterance category, by identifying the
phenomena from this point on as questions rather than interrogatives.
In coding interrogatives in the data set, the main distinction I make is between
1. Polar interrogatives:
Polar interrogatives ask for a yes or no answer, that is, polarity only, for example:
2. Non-polar interrogatives:
In non-polar interrogatives the type of information requested, but not the terms of
the content, is contained in the wh- word of the interrogative,. In the following
example, Maria asked me to give her information she did not have:
the question. In the following example, Steve picked as his answer one of the
alternatives I offered in my question:
-73
Int: Would [the difficulty of mixing with younger students] be mainly
socially or also in sort of seminars
Ste: Socially mainly
(Steve, 395-7).
4. Embedded interrogatives:
There were some cases where non-polar interrogatives were embedded in polar
ones. In this case there are two interrogatives - the polarity of the main clause,
and the content of the subordinated non-polar clause. Context and speaker
intention give one or other of these more importance, (Downing and Locke,
information about the courses the interviewees were thinking of doing, for
example:
Int: And you're going to do do you know what Part One courses you
want to do . yet
Car: Well um I put down I haven't got the book with me now urn.
natural Man in the Natural World
(Carol 54-7).
5. Tag questions:
I also counted tag questions, though they take the form of a declarative with a
74
In my count of the interrogatives in the data set, I did not count as separate
instances several attempts to formulate a single question. I also did not count
interrogatives which were internal to stories told by the interviewees and thus not
directly related to the interview interaction - for example, where direct discourse
was used to represent interactions the interviewee had with a third party, as in the
Con: In fact one woman that I know she rang me up on Monday night
and said have you got anything from the university yet and I says it
came second post today
(Conniel, 54-6).
resulted in the range of types in the data set that I give in Table 4.1. below.
75
Table 4.1.:
Table showing number and type of interrogatives asked by interviewees and
interviewer
Key:
Polar alt. = Polar alternative interrogative
Embedded = Embedded interrogative
Intee = Interviewee
Inter = Interviewer
Table 4.1. gives a visual summary of the frequency and type of interrogatives
discussion of the table follows, after which I will focus in more depth on
I ask 354, (81%), of all the interrogatives in the interviews. The interviewees,
taken together, asked 83, (19%), of them. All the interviewees except Tania asked
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at least one interrogative, with Connie in her first interview asking the most, 19 of
her second interview I asked only 4. This was because by her second interview I
had already fulfilled some of my agenda. In addition, she was very excited to talk
about her experience of Introductory Week, which I let her do. This pattern of
fewer interrogatives in her second interview was true for each of the three
interviewees I interviewed twice - the table shows this for both Anne and Sharon
as well as Connie. The table also shows that, in total, I asked many more polar
and non-polar interrogatives, (144 and 136 respectively), than alternative or tag
questions, (25 and 47 respectively).
The table also shows that I asked more questions than the interviewee in each
interview. The difference between the number of questions asked by me and the
interviewee in each interview is considerable, except in Connie's first interview.
Here the total number of questions we ask is almost the same, but 19 out of
Connie's 30 questions are tag questions, as I have said. The example I gave in
section 4.2.1. to illustrate tag questions came from this interview with Connie and
shows well how she tended to use them: they seemed to function as a way of
ensuring sh2 was retaining my agreement with what she was saying. They
typically remained part of the flow of her talk, with no pauses to indicate that they
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4.3. QUESTIONS AND INTERACTIONAL CONTROL
To briefly review the findings shown in Table 4.1.: with respect to the asking of
certainly true that I asked most, though not all, of them, (81% across all the
In this section I discuss questions as a means of interactional control, and thus link
them to the concerns of this Part of the thesis - power relations and the
my own use of questions, (sections 4.3.1. and 4.3.2.), focusing on effects of using
polar and non-polar types of interrogatives. I then look at the interviewees' use of
interactional control by looking not just at the question type, (polar, non-polar),
but also at the prior talk and the responses associated with them.
Table 4.1. shows that 136 of my questions, (39% of all my questions), were non-
polar questions. There are two issues I would like to raise about these, with
respect to interactional control, which are elaborated in the following two sections.
I would like to make two points here. My first point is that non-polar questions
necessarily involve information being given which is not present in the terms of
the question, as in the following example:
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1. Int: Why have you become interested in education
1. Ste: 'Cos I hate. disliked my job...
(Steve, 93-5).
As I had a rather open-ended agenda for the interviews, (see chapter 3, section
3.2.2.), I wanted to elicit responses that were rich in new information, rather than
just inviting yes or no answers. Non-polar questions were thus very useful for me
- since they pointed forward into as yet unshared aspects of the field of the
interviewee's experience.
information rich but brief. What I wanted was not only responses rich in new
information, but extended responses, in order to discover more about the meanings
above by asking a further non-polar question, (my turn marked 2, below). The
Steve gave another information rich but brief answer, (turn 2), which was
elaborated, in turn 3, by a reformulation of the pit as colliery - an incidentally
turn only amounted to a minimal response, Steve then returned, in turn 4, to the
topic of my first question, (why have you become interested in education), and
elaborated on this in an extensive turn of 15 lines.
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This illustrates my second point - that, with regard to relations of power, non-polar
questions do not constrain the content of an answer in the way that polar questions
do by asking for a yes/no answer to a given option. So, what Steve said about the
topic I introduced was under his control. Interviewees may have had (some)
information the interviewees had given. They were built on the past utterances of
the interviewee, in order to find out more about what she or he had thus far said.
This was in line with my open ended agenda, in which one of my concerns was to
discover what was interesting to the interviewees.
interviewee by the interviewer), mean that there are obligations for the interviewee
to respond on the topics set by the interviewer. The example from Steve's
interview given in the previous section, also highlights that even a minimal
response from me, (Mm), might have to be taken by Steve as a prompt for more
information. The point I wish to make here is that the obligation to give new
questions, though that may be a clear case where it occurs. One way of
understanding the lengthy answer Steve gave about the background to his interest
in education is that I may have given him some cue interpretable as Would you tell
me more about that? The information eliciting purposes of the interview genre
increase the likelihood that verbal or non-verbal behaviour which can be construed
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However, several interviewees did express that they enjoyed the opportunity to
talk about themselves. For example, Maria said, with some pleasure:
Mia: All that talking about me I haven't done that for a long time
(Maria, 456).
61% of my questions were polar, (including alternative polar and tag questions).
tag questions), the terms of the answer are given in the question. Since I had a
61% of my questions were polar. However, my analysis showed that a great many
of my polar questions resulted in extended answers, rather than just the necessary
minimum polar one. In cases where I asked two questions as two different 'takes'
on the same topic this is perhaps to be expected. In the following example, which
received an extended reply, I asked Penny a non-polar followed by a polar
question:
Int: And what 's made you decide to come and do a degree II mean
was it any of those particular job experiences that made you decide
Pen: I think it was to backtrack a bit what will probably put all this
into perspective psi...
(Penny, 13-6).
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However, even where I only ask a polar question, extended answers were
frequently given. This is illustrated in the following two examples, in which both
Carol and Sharon give a minimum answer, (Yes), but follow it with a lengthy
The point I would like to make here is that it is likely interviewees so frequently
gave extended answers to polar questions because they were following the
guidelines of my stated agenda - that I want to hear about what university meant to
answer
There were very few cases of polar answers receiving simply a yes or no answer.
The following example is the clearest instance of where a polar question was
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given a polar answer, (Mary's first turn below), but even this is elaborated, (her
second and third turns). The pronoun that in my first turn is an anaphoric
reference to observations I had been making about Mary's relative status as a nurse
and as an undergraduate student:
1. Int: Do you have any feelings about that. or thoughts about that
1. Mar: No
2. Int: ( )
2. Mar: I haven't really thought about it
3. Int: No
3. Mar: At all
4. Int: Yeah yeah
4. Mar: I . I suppose I've thought more about. erm . er . my relation
to erm . a normal age student
5. Int: Yes what are your thoughts about that
(Mary, 292-301).
My question, (turn 1), clearly did not link up with Mary's own perceptions of her
relative status. I had spent most of the previous 19 lines building an argument
about parallels between her roles in nursing and higher education. For example:
perceptions of the topic, and I did not find a way out of this, (my turns 2, 3 and 4).
Mary offered something she could talk to in her fourth turn. This was a complex
discursive position for her to be in, which is perhaps illustrated by her hesitations
in this topic-offering turn. Her offer was face saving for us both. It is suggestive
for re-establishing the flow of talk. It also meant that she exerted temporary
control of the interaction as I agreed to her suggested shift of topic, (Yes in my
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turn 5). Though this also acted as a statement of permission - yes you may talk
about that. My control of the interaction is further re-established when I ask her
the non-polar question what are your thoughts about that. The point I wish to
make is that considerable discursive work surrounded Mary's minimum response
interview - in which the aim is the elicitation of personal information from the
I have already suggested, (section 4.3.2.1.), one reason for interviewees extended
rather than minimal responses to polar questions. This was that responses might
result from a recognition by the interviewees that my unstructured interviews, with
their open ended agenda, required quite expansive information giving on their
part, a requirement which they took the opportunity of even polar questions to
meet.
A second reason is that certain polar question expect more than a yes or no answer
anyway, and this would be a reason for giving an elaborated answer. For
example:
This expectation of more than a minimal response was particularly clear in the
following situation in the interviews. A particular concern I had at the time of the
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interviews was to discover whether the interviewees thought university would
change them in any significant way. In the interviews where I broached this topic
in the form of a question, it was necessarily as a polar question and frequently led
to lengthy responses. In the following example, this question led Tania to talk at
length about potential difficulties in juggling home and university commitments,
parts of which are given below:
Int: Do you think it will change you in any significant way coming to
university
Tan: I don't know...if it'll change me I must say there's only one thing
that worries me about it and that's the relationship with my
husband...he's been really supportive...I can't see me changing but I
can see sort of having to adapt family and university might be a bit
difficult
(Tania, 153-74).
This exemplifies the fact that where topics of interest to the interviewee were
broached - and asking whether university would change the interviewee seemed
often to be one such topic - it may not have mattered whether they were broached
as polar or non-polar questions.
It was not only I who asked questions. Interviewees asked 19% of them. They
terms of the 'institutionally defined' discursive practices which are my focus in this
chapter. I have so far discussed my questions, as the interviewer. I understand
'conversational' discursive practices which were also present in the interviews, and
which realised more equal power relations, (see chapter 3, section 3.3.3.).
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However, as I go on to show in this section, interviewees use of questions was
limited.
Their questions fell into one of four categories. The first three categories were
about their own experience and could be grouped according to the following
1. Self reflexive:
2. Practical:
3. Seeking confirmation:
(Sometimes an answer was not allowed for in this category, and the questions
were often in tag question form):
Car: I thought I'd take a GCSE. GCSE isn't it. erm English you
know . I thought that'll start me off...
(Carol, 120-1).
there was, in addition to these three categories mentioned above, a fourth category.
These were questions which shifted attention from the interviewees' experiences,
(the focus of the three categories above), onto my experience. Six interviewees
asked such questions. The function of these questions was to elicit information
from me about my comparable experience to theirs as a mature student or my
86
research so far. These are the most interesting interviewee questions with respect
to interactional control. I suggest that the shift onto my experience was made
roles: they were moments when the interviewees briefly controlled the interview
interaction.
interview. Sam had been expressing his concern to know whether his B units at
The questions in his first turn are of the 'self reflexive' type outlined above, but I
responded to them by saying I had a similar concern when I was at F.E. college. I
also made reference to general experience, using the second person pronoun and a
tag question, (you just don't know do you how you're going to fit...). The telling
about my own experience, (which I discuss further in chapter 5, section 5.4.), and
the tag question may have acted as cues that it was acceptable for Sam to ask me
questions about my experience, as he does in his second and third turns. In these
87
I had decided before conducting the interviews that to share information about my
instance, it was my identification with the strong contrast of positions that Sam
expressed, (have I no chance or am I alright, turn 1), that led me to share my own
similar feelings, (I felt just the same, turn 1). Nevertheless, in terms of
became the participant from whom personal information was being elicited. I then
had to reverse the temporary switch of roles and re-establish myself in my role as
interviewer. The following extract, which continues directly from the previous
one, covers this switch:
Int: ...but in fact I found that the psychology. I was well prepared by
having doing the A level . but partly I was so anxious that I'd . you.
know I'd really overworked on the A level and done far more on it
than I need to have done and I think that that's another thing that
mature students often tend to say . you know the- . they do feel
anxious ... [they] may. perhaps you know over work or feel they
overwork erm . in order to sort of. I don't know. feel like they're.
they're alright . you know that they're doing well enough . yes . yes -
yes . what were the other things . we've talked about most the things
erm - I had in mind really - oh one other thing ...one of my particular
interests in my research is about. power relations erm . and. for
example. the power relations between you know there's academic
institutions . very prestigious. and students like you and me you know
who come into it and have to sort of learn to play the game and . you
know, do we want. do we want to play the game and how much do we
and that kind of thing and I wondered if you had any thoughts about
that, at all
Sam: I've no worries on that score ...
(Sam, 227-45).
reviewing how our talk so far had met my agenda for the interview, (we've talked
88
about most of the things I had in mind...); this leads in turn to a shift to another
topic on my agenda, (oh one other thing...). These were deliberate and conscious
means for reclaiming the control of the interaction and refocusing it on Sam's
experience.
over managing this small reorganisation of the power dynamics, is that the new
topic I asked Sam about, (ironically enough), concerned power relations in the
university setting. In articulating the interest I had in this topic, I put myself on
the same side as Sam, against prestigious academia, (there's academic institutions
very prestigious and students like you and me...) Retrospectively, I interpret my
own discursive behaviour at this point as, at one and the same time, reclaiming
control of the interaction and attempting to downplay it.
As I have already said I had a rather open ended agenda for the interviews - I was
both interested in what the interviewees found important about their experience of
university thus far, but I also had six themes within this general field that I wanted
to ensure were covered, (see Appendix 2). My analysis of the interviews showed
that I used two main strategies for controlling topics. These are interesting with
respect to my concerns in this chapter with interactional control.
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4.3.4.1. Abrupt shift of topics
The roles of asymmetrical power in interviews mean that fairly abrupt shifts of
topic can be initiated by the interviewer as more powerful participant. These are a
Int: Yes yes it does take a while yeah I think we'll be able to phase
[our consciousness of the tape recording] out ( ) well how do you feel
generally at this point about starting
Sha: Oh excited
(Sharonl , 29-31).
In addition, I would shift the talk to a new topic if one of the six themes I was
interested in did not get covered in the course of interviewees' talk, for example,
(see italics):
Wen: There is a lot of. I've got to work at. but I know that. that
weakness [for skim reading articles] is there so . I know that's
something I have to work at
Int: Yeah. yeah. are there any things that you . at this point.
anticipate as being. sort of more difficult ...
(Wendy, 283-6).
This example shows that I made an abrupt shift to a new topic after only a brief
utterance in order to shift topics, rather than initiating new topics 'out of the blue'.
90
The shift to the topic of power relations in Sam's interview, which I discussed in
the previous section, is an example of this. In this extract, the topic shifting
activity, (I wondered if you had any thoughts about that. at all), does not take the
form of a direct interrogative, but an indirect one, of the sort I mentioned at the
beginning of section 4.2. However, this example is quite typical of howl dealt
with the need to make changes of topic, in that I pointed out the possible relevance
of the new topic to Sam, (as it was not something he had hitherto expressed as
relevant to him), and invited his response to it. In short, I created a bridging
context for the new topic to lessen its abruptness. Retrospectively, I interpret the
I often used questions in this way, to direct and develop a prior topic through
incremental changes to a new topic. In the following example, Anne had been
talking about her concern about the social side of fitting in at university as an
older student with children. I picked up on her use of the word conflict and asked
for clarification about the relationship between it and what she had already said
Ann: ...it [the concern] just sets a little bit of a conflict going somehow
it
Int: Is the conflict about where you're going to fit in
Ann: Mm ... mm • mm I think so
(Annel, 112-7).
Her following elaboration on fitting in led me, 47 lines later, to gloss her feelings
about it as those very real worries, and to use this as the basis for asking two
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Int: I mean - you know given those . very real . worries . which are
not the worries you expected to have
Ann: Mm
Int: I think that's very interesting. erm what made you decide to go
through with this whole process. why do a degree
(Armel, 164-8).
My preference for such gradual rather than abrupt shifts in topic downplayed the
considered relevant to the one in hand, (Fairclough, 1992:155), and what is talked
encouraged them to say more about themselves than if the interviews had been
more highly structured, (and the 'institutionally defined' discursive practices thus
more pronounced).
4.4. FORMULATION
grammatical level in the way that interrogatives can be. Consequently, I have not
interactional control.
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4.4.1. DEFINITIONS DRAWN FROM CONVERSATIONAL
ANALYSIS
conversation, a point where the talk itself becomes the topic which is described or
selectively preserving, deleting and transforming some or all of the talk so far,
for the participants to check that the interpretations of what they have been talking
about are held in common. I illustrate this in the following example. The
quotation is the tail end of a list of jobs Penny had been telling me she had done.
formulation:
My turn is a formulation that deletes the specificity of the list of jobs, but
preserves the concept that there were a number of them. This transforms Penny's
original lengthy utterance, only part of which is quoted, into a summary of what I
think the main point is - that Penny has done a range of things, a formulation
which Penny seems to agree with by her second turn affirmative.
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4.4.2. FORMULATION AS A MEANS OF JOINTLY CREATING
MEANINGS
check that the interpretations of what they have been talking about are agreed
upon. Heritage and Watson point out that formulating, by giving the gist or
without the need to recycle whole sections of the talk itself. They argue that it is
the abilityto do this, rather than to just repeat what has been said verbatim, that
that I was understanding the meanings the interviewees were constructing in their
utterances. In the following example, I used the clause it sounds like to herald the
formulation that follows. I observed, retrospectively, that this was a frequent
Int: It sounds like it. erm . it feels a bit scary trying to know what are
the right sort of criteria that make an essay an essay rather than a
report
(Wendy, 312-4).
Though it was I who did so much of the formulating, all these summaries of talk
gloss on the talk thus far by one participant still entailed the agreement of the
Tan: At the moment I'm really not thinking too far ahead...I wanted
to do Social Work eventually but now I mean there's probation work
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open to me and ... there's all sorts of things I'm really not sure at the
moment [what job I'll aim for]
Int: So you're sort of holding it open and seeing how the degree goes
and what sort of stimulates you and
Tan: That's right
(Tania, 18-29).
Here, my gloss of what Tania had been saying, was confirmed by her, (that's
right).
points out that an interview develops a specific internal discourse history, shaped
by the exchanges between the participants. By this he means that repeated acts of
meanings from which to proceed. He points out that even in interviews with fixed
formulating work that occurs in them. Agreement or disagreement with, and re-
(op.cit.:122), points out that this is because it is a type of metadiscourse, that is, it
95
4.4.3.1. Formulations by the interviewer
The general aim of interviews - the elicitation of information from one participant
by the other - means that a strong focus of formulating activity will be the
did most of the formulating. This meant that it was my formulations which tended
to become the accepted versions of the meanings generated thus far, and it was I
who thus controlled the ongoing organisation and direction of the interview talk.
It was frequently true that interviewees readily agreed with my formulations, (as
in the example from Tania above). In the rarer occasions where this did not occur,
even if I got it wrong to start with. The following example illustrates this. In it I
hazarded a guess, based on what Connie had so far said, that she had decided
against doing the diploma. Connie corrected this formulation by explaining what
the situation was, (her first turn), and then affirmed my second formulation that
the diploma was a back up option, (our second turns):
The point I wish to make is that once agreement was reached, even if it took some
negotiating, it tended to be an agreement with my formulation of the talk. This
meant that what was accepted as the basis for subsequent turns were my versions,
(transformations, preservations and deletions), of what had been said thus far.
96
4.4.3.2. Formulations by the interviewees
there was a switch of roles - so that I was the one who was giving personal
power for the formulator, whatever her more global power position was in the
In the first pair, the formulations are each summaries of the other's experience as it
had been stated immediately prior to the quote. I did the formulating in the first
example, and Pam did the formulating in the second, (see italics):
Example 1:
Sar: I'd got to come to that point of realisation myself where I felt yes
I can do it I can do it
Int: Proved it
Sar: I've proved it I can and that has given me a sense of worth
(Sara, 152-5)
Example 2:
Int: ...when I arrived [at Lancaster university] I changed my
wardrobe fairly drastically in order to sort of not stand out
Pam . [laugh] Blend in like
Int: Though why I wanted to blend in...I'm not quite sure
(Pam, 202-5).
What I wish to point out about this pair are the similarities between the
'. interviewee, the response pattern was the same - a formulation by one of the first
97
participant's talk, which was reiterated by the first participant in her second turn,
both Sara in the first example, and I in the second, led to a local pattern of
formulating behaviour which in both cases temporarily overrode the more global
In the second pair, the formulations, (in italics), by summarising what had been
said thus far, acted as orienting statements prior to the asking of a question. In
both cases this was introduced by the conjunction so. In the first example I did the
Example 1:
Int: You've talked about being very excited about [the degree] so I
wonder you know what your what your hopes are that you will gain
or achieve
Sha: I don't know I don't like to look too far into the future I've no
idea what sort of job...I think it will improve my life
(Sharon!, 116-22).
Example 2:
Mar: So you've explained to me sort of why you're interested [in
mature students' experiences] a little bit. so . so how are you going to
pull it through . you're doing initial interviews
Int: Yes . well my plan is...
(Mary, 515-7).
In these examples the formulation by one participant was closely juxtaposed to the
that this contiguity put whichever of the participants who was using this
combination of interactional control features in a powerful position. For the
section 4.3.3.). For myself, as interviewer, it was the more usual position - one
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4.5. CONCLUSION
- and this is what I have explored in this chapter. I have discussed this complexity
features were not the sole prerogative of the interviewer despite their potential for
interactional control. I have accounted for this use of both features by both
use these discursive features was sanctioned by the nature of the genre, but that
interviews.
in chapter 5.
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CHAPTER 5
SELF DISCLOSURE
5.1 INTRODUCTION
5.1.1. DEFINING SELF-DISCLOSURE
5.1.2. FUNCTIONS OF SELF DISCLOSURE
5.1.3. SELF DISCLOSURE IN MY INTERVIEWS: AN ASPECT OF THE POWER
RELATIONS
5.2. CHARACTERISING SELF DISCLOSURE IN THE INTERVIEW DATA
5.2.1. REASONS FOR NOT QUANTIFYING SELF DISCLOSURE
5.2.1 I. Drawing in a range of topics
5.2.1.2. The elaboration of earlier self disclosure
5.2.1.3. Linguistic markers of self disclosure
5.2.1.4. Characterising self disclosure on several parameters
5.2.2. DEPTH
5.2.2.1. Importance of the disclosure to the interviewee
5.2.2.2. Individual differences
5.2.3. VALENCY
5.2.4. EXPLICIT SELF REFERENCE
5.2.5. DESCRIPTIVE AND EVALUATIVE SELF DISCLOSURE
5.3. POWER RELATIONS AND THE INTERVIEWEES USE OF SELF DISCLOSURE
5.3.1. SELF DISCLOSURE IN A PUBLIC DOMAIN CONTEXT
5.3.2. VOLUNTARY AND ELICITED SELF-DISCLOSURE
5.3 2.1. Directly elicited self disclosure
5.3.2.2. Textually determined' self disclosure
5.3 23. Voluntary self disclosure
5.3 2.4. The role of the recipient of self disclosure
5.4. POWER RELATIONS AND THE INTERVIEWER'S USE OF SELF DISCLOSURE
5.4.1. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ABOUT INTERVIEWER SELF
DISCLOSURE
5.4.1 I. Self disclosures about my research interests
5 4.1 2. Complexities in my role as interviewer
5.4.2. RAPPORT . INSTRUMENTAL USE OF CONVERSATION AND
'GENUINENESS'
54.2.1. The instrumentality of rapport
5.4.2 2. Rapport and 'genuineness'
5.4.2.3. Effects of the reciprocity norm
5.5. CONCLUSION
5.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter concludes Part II of the thesis, and in it I continue my focus on how
power and interpersonal meanings in the interviews are realised by the two
100
This chapter needs to be understood as an exploratory discussion of self
(1990), points out that though there are many studies of self disclosure they have
concerned with how self disclosures are managed within turns in conversation - a
linguistic focus appropriate for my purposes here. Berger and Bradac, (1982),
linguistic strategy which individuals use for gaining knowledge about other people
conversation and applying it to my own research interviews, on the basis that these
made more specific in the following ways, which I shall return to in sections 5.2.2.
101
to 5.2.5. Firstly, Holtgraves, (op.cit.:192), suggests that self-disclosure can be
either explicit or implicit self referential talk. Secondly, he also suggests it can
describe external facts and experiences, and/or evaluate internal states. Thirdly,
Berger and Bradac, (op.cit.:88), suggest four dimensions on which every instance
intimacy. They also point out that participants in a conversation must judge how
much self-disclosure is appropriate for that situation, (with the general 'rule' being
should be honest and authentic against needs for politeness. With new
acquaintances, they suggest that the rules are to disclose positively valenced, non-
intimate information.
what has been a common finding in research, namely the "norm of reciprocity",
(Cozby, 1973:81). This term denotes the tendency for one self-disclosure to lead
In addition to its affiliative function, self disclosure also leads to the acquisition of
102
interviews. (I return to this in section 5.4.2.). In particular when conversational
discursive practices get transposed into the public domain, the knowledge
Both I and the interviewees made self disclosures. I divide my discussion of the
presence of self disclosure in the interviews into two - focusing first on the
5.2.). Then, in section 5.3. I discuss their self disclosure in relation to the
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5.2. CHARACTERISING SELF DISCLOSURE IN THE
INTERVIEW DATA
In this section I give my reasons for not quantifying self disclosure, (section
DISCLOSURE
phenomenon. There were two reasons why this was difficult with the
interviews was endemic: in line with the interview agenda, which demanded self
referential talk, the interviewees spent a lot of time giving 'personal information'
of one kind or another. Almost all of their talk could be understood as self
disclosing. Self disclosure as a feature of my talk was less of a problem as regards
characterise my own self disclosure in section 5.4. Secondly, self disclosure is not
topics, (section 5.2.1.1.), and the elaboration of previously given self disclosures
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5.2.1.1. Drawing in a range of topics
The following example is part of an extended account that Sara gave, in which she
information. In one sense, the whole of this account could be called a single
about a range of aspects of her life. I suggest the following four, which I have
used to number the text. The letters represent specific topic amplifications within
these divisions. Topic (1) was about the timing of doing a degree. She returned to
it towards the end of the extract, (lb and lc), and tied it in to topic (4), her
children. Topic (2) was about influences on her to change careers, and topic (3),
(1) Now I really started thinking about coming to. doing a degree a
few years ago
(2) when one or two people at the school I work at suggest that I think
about teaching.
(2.a) in fact one particular teacher said to me had I ever thought about
teaching and I said well I had I hadn't.
(3) I was a nurse originally
(3.a) I was a nurse midwife
(3.b) so that's my profession . professional background
(2.b) and teaching was always something I thought about if I didn't
like nursing.
(3.c) and I did a short time in nursing and then I got my ( )
(4) I've got four children.
(4.a) and was taken up obviously with bringing them up and I ( ) to
look after them
(4.b) I didn't go out to work when they were little
(4.c) and anyway the youngest is now seven and the eldest fourteen
(1.b) so I have begun to think about this time last year Spring last year
(1.c) that it's time for me to think about what I wanted to do now the
children are all safely in school...
(Sara, 16-27).
105
This account occurred at the beginning of the interview, which meant that all this
was new information about Sara for me. However, Sara returned to the topics of
them in amount or depth, and tying them to yet other aspects of her experience,
(see section 5.2.2.1.). This intertwining and relating of one topic to another made
it difficult to decide how such sections of text could be quantified in terms of their
later. For example, Pam disclosed that she had felt selfish about deciding to come
Pam: It was very much erm . a conscious decision . II was very aware
of the fact that. something inside me would now make everybody else
take second seat and I . I felt selfish at first erm but now I don't. I've
got past that
(Pam, 97-9).
Later in the interview, this is referred to again, and elaborated: her feeling of
selfishness is given a reason, (...and that's why..), and contrasted to the bafflement
some of her acquaintances felt about what she would do with her degree
afterwards:
106
In cases where earlier self disclosures were later elaborated it was difficult to
decide in what way the later one should be counted as a new or different self
disclosure.
it was realised discursively in the interviews. Nor could self disclosure in the
is worth noting that three linguistic markers were frequently associated with self
1. Hesitation phenomena:
markers were not only associated with self disclosure, of course, but a more
personal information. This suggests that talk thus marked may have been
forethought. In the first example from Pam's interview given in section 5.2.1.2.,
2. Metalinguistic markers:
There were also a range of metalinguistic clauses which explicitly presented what
was said as coming from the heart and being self disclosing. Whether these
markers of honesty - which is one of Berger and Bradac's dimensions of self
disclosure - were indications of what the interviewees really thought and felt, is of
107
Example 1:
Pen: I am I am absolutely amazed and very very impressed by what
some people have done to get [a place at university] it makes me feel
quite small actually because to be honest it was easy for me...
(Penny, 126-8).
Example 2:
Wen: The only taste of erm formal education! have had since I left
school erm was that I did a year's evening classes...and to be quite
frank with you I hated it...
(Wendy, 197-9).
There were also many verbs of thought or affect that marked evaluative self
disclosures, for example the verbs amazed and impressed in the example above by
I did not quantify self disclosure because of the difficulties I have discussed in
distinguishing between instances. In trying to find a way to structure my
exploration of the phenomenon in the data, I then postulated that the interviewees'
self disclosure might be analysed as a cline. This was because I felt intuitively
that interviewees varied in the depth at which they revealed themselves - both
different interviewees and the same interviewee at different times. Using a cline,
some of their talk could be understood as more and some less deeply revealing,
even if quantification was not possible. In practice, however, depth was difficult
108
to assess. There are a number of reasons for this. One was that I did not have
interviews. Another reason, and the one I go on to discuss in the next section, is
that depth of self disclosure is not simply a matter of one thing, such as subject
matter.
interviews. The four parameters which I will discuss, and which I listed in section
disclosure is received by the listener, all affect the character of self disclosure
5.2.2. DEPTH
Holtgraves (1990:193), points out that intimacy or depth is not easy to define.
This is because depth is not so much a property of topics, with particular topics
being intrinsically more intimate than others, but of the way in which topics are
talked about, whether they are personalised or trivialised. He argues that depth of
product of the interactional conditions developed in the prior talk, such as the
109
Judging depth of self disclosure in my interviews was partly a matter of noticing
depth: the importance of the self disclosure to the interviewee and individual
differences.
As I have said, without feedback from the interviewees it was difficult to know
gave from Sara's interview in section 5.2.1.1. illustrates this. One of the things
Sar: ...[a degree] has been something I've wanted to do for a while
(Sara, 14).
This is a disclosure that doing a degree was a long standing wish, but the
importance of this wish to Sara became much clearer only near the end of the
interview, when she reiterated her initial disclosure and elaborated it:
110
This led into a lengthy account of her experience of being 'written off at school.
No doubt many of interviewees self disclosures had such histories behind them,
over which they made decisions about how much or when to divulge.
Here I note that there seemed to be individual differences in the depth at which
Malloy, 1988, citing Snyder). 'High self monitors' are said to pay more attention
than 'low self monitors' to external cues in the social situation as a guide to
interviewees to share more about personal aspects of their lives might be the result
5.2.3. VALENCY
positive. This is in keeping with what Berger and Bradac suggest is the norm for
was disclosed. Sam's extract below was negatively valenced about school, but
111
you were going to fail
(Sam. 174-5).
by Sam's use of the pronoun 'you' instead of 'I', when the context suggested he was
referring to his own experience. Some other examples of negatively valenced self
(as distinct from the long term importance of past educational experience or
Sam: [The university have] allowed me to bring the car up now but
by the time I got the I only found out last Thursday which I wasn't
very happy about...you know it's quite short notice
(Sam, 27-33).
There were also quite a lot of negatively valenced references to sitting exams or
Car: I don't feel too happy with exams at the moment having not
done any you know apart from last year and I don't feel er under
stress I don't work too well you know in the exam situation
(Carol, 87-90).
difficult to discern in these cases than in the case of explicit self disclosure. In my
112
experiences, which I discuss in more detail in chapter 10, could be understood as
implicit self disclosures. Interviewees might well have been saying something
their own - though I agree with Holtgraves that in cases of such indirect self
I discuss this using the following example. In the first extract, Connie started with
events that made her feel that way, (lack of time to decide on her Part 1 courses
Con: ...in fact do you know it's really annoyed me because...all this
stuff [about course choices] came on Monday ...well have you got time
do you know I've got to have it back there by Friday...
(Connie 1, 26-32).
Con: One woman I know she rang me up on Monday night and said
have you had anything from the university yet...she says how am I
going to do this I'm still working full time and she's got to have it in
for Friday...
(Connie 1, 54-9).
I suggest that the similarity of topic links these two extracts as self-disclosures -
the first is explicitly about Connie's feelings and circumstances, but the second
suggesting it didn't only happen to her. The difficulty of knowing how to interpret
references to other people's experience means that I focus on explicit self
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5.2.5. DESCRIPTIVE AND EVALUATIVE SELF DISCLOSURE
interviews, and which I mentioned in section 5.1.1., was the extent to which it was
following example, Steve gave factual information about an event in his life,
Ste: ...last year I was made redundant and that. I've had in the back
of my mind. on watching Open University programmes . I would like
to do that and . the year before I was made redundant I. I sent away
for leaflets for open University. but I didn't quite take the jump then.
and when I got my redundancy last year. I decided er well. I'll give it
a go
(Steve, 85-9).
opinions. In the following example, Wendy described how she felt when she first
Wen: I felt very small I don't know whether it's the actual buildings
or what and it's you felt very sort of I felt very vulnerable as if I stuck
out like a sore thumb
(Wendy, 423-5).
In much of the self disclosure in the interviews description and evaluation was
closely intertwined. This is apparent in Steve's extract above, which expressed
what he thought as well as external events. Self disclosures often revealed a lot of
facts about the self that were additional to a minimally adequate answer to a
114
question or prompt, as the following example shows. Carol began her answer to
my question with a minimally adequate answer (it just sort of happened). But this
was followed by 38 lines of elaboration, the first part of which is given below.
This gave factual detail about her F.E. course, (for example, it was a beginners
course, in French and nearby). It also included other factual information about
her, for example that she had children, (more than one):
This extract also shows how descriptive self disclosures coexist with evaluative
information, Carol expressed her feelings about the F.E. courses, (nervousness and
school, (she didn't consider that she had done very much at school, perhaps
main aim is to discuss it in terms of the interview power relations. As I said at the
115
where present, are seen as invested in individuals. In 'institutionally defined'
What I explore in the rest of this chapter is the changed functions of self
practices are appropriated by the public domain, as they are in interviews. In this
section I discuss interviewee self disclosure in this regard, and in section 5.4., my
own self disclosures, as the interviewer. The most important point for this section
the nature of the interview genre, because an interview is for the one-way
elicitation of information.
There are several overlapping features of the interviews which help to account for
the presence of self disclosure. Firstly, it is a requirement of the interview genre
requirement for self disclosure was increased by the personal experience topic of
my interviews - the interviewees' initial perceptions of university. Thirdly, these
because such interviews are not forwarded solely by highly structured and
116
The point I wish to make, and which is relevant to social scientific research more
interviews, which are events occurring in the public domain, their personal
and private domain chat becomes blurred: the use of conversational practices
2.4.1.).
with the amount of personal information they see fit. It is interesting to speculate
about their use of the pronoun 'we' or 'you' instead of 'I', (which I mentioned in
section 5.2.3.). This marked some interviewee self disclosure and may have been
a way in which they objectified what they were revealing, or created ambiguities
over who the participants actually were, and thus distanced themselves from their
self disclosures. The widespread presence of interviews in the public domain is
likely to have educated the general public about them, (see, for example, chapter
3, section 3.4.5.), which may limit their invasive potential to some extent.
encouraged to do so by me, are points of concern with regard to ethics, even while
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5.3.2. VOLUNTARY AND ELICITED SELF-DISCLOSURE
The second point I would like to make about the interviewees self disclosure, in
terms of the power relations in the interviews, concerns the definition I gave in
section 5.1.1., that self disclosure was voluntary. The interviewees disclosed
personal information but, as I have said, the interviews were not private
be voluntary. They were situations where I, as interviewer, had the right to ask
interviewees had some control over the quantity of their self disclosures, and I
have discussed this issue with regard to answering questions, in chapter 4,
(sections 4.3.1. and 4.3.2.). However, they did not have a choice about whether to
disclose information about themselves. This was a prior decision they took when,
based on the information I gave them about the interviews in Letter A, they
decided to talk to me. The self disclosure by the interviewees therefore cannot be
disclosure occurs, and cites research showing that it is frequently the case that self
argue that this applies to the interactive context of an interview, because of the
conversational discursive practices in them, as well as to private domain contexts
of self disclosure.
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Holtgraves, (ibid.:195, citing Coupland), refers to three interactional conditions in
The first two of these conditions are those under which most of the self-disclosure
in the interviews occurred. I discuss all three in turn in sections 5.3.2.1. to 5.3.2.3.
below, and conclude with a discussion of the role of the recipient in section
5.3.2.4.
self-disclosure:
It is interesting to note that Sharon's first clause in her answer, (oh I don't know),
could be understood as a disclosure that she actually did not know why she was
question. She then went on to disclose social reasons for her anticipation. Faced
119
with a direct elicitation such as this in an interview situation - that is, where the
interviewee's role is to respond to questions - there are few other options for her
Self disclosures may be 'textually determined', that is, the talk so far makes a self-
gave self disclosures as examples of a point they were trying to make illustrate
this. In the following extract, Pam talked about her theory of being part of a
minority group as a mature student. It was relevant for her to exemplify what she
meant by this with a self disclosure about the thought she had at the entrance to
the university:
Pam: my main theory is that I'm part of a minority group ...you know
I was sort of racing through at the entrance [to the university] and I
thought I've seen one person in a skirt ...all my working life I've been
in suits and I can't turn up at university in a suit...
(Pam, 168-72).
Another sense in which self disclosures may be textually determined is where one
participant has already disclosed something. It is then more likely that the other
will do so also, in keeping with the reciprocity norm. I discuss this in section
5.4.2.3.
Thirdly, self-disclosure may be voluntary, in the sense of being 'out of the blue',
with no contextual obligation, though Holtgraves points out this is less co=on
was built into the agenda of the interviews voluntariness in them was only a
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matter of degree of self-disclosure. The unstructured nature of the interviews did
mean that interviewees could develop topics they were interested in talking about.
The example from Sara's interview about why she came to university, (given in
section 5.2.1.1. and 5.2.2.1.), illustrates this, and this could perhaps be understood
Self disclosure implicitly demands a response. Holtgraves points out that the
recipient of a disclosure can encourage further self-disclosure by asking for
In my second turn, I asked Sam, via several unfinished clauses, to elaborate on his
interest in the political side of Sociology, and my repetition of his word relate was
1. Sam: Well I'm more interested in you know the political side er
stratification side that sort of thing I think I can more relate to that
1. Int: Yes
2. Sam: Through working outside you know
2. Int: Yes yes you do feel in what ways would that erm do you feel
that's going to relate
3. Sam: Well I think there definitely is an us and them situation at
work ..
(Sam, 102-7).
In the next example, I positively evaluate more explicitly what Anne had disclosed
about her perception of university, (I like the idea...). It is interesting that she then
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university life - the way the university enforced its rules, the first part of which is
The recipient can also discourage further self-disclosure by changing topic. The
three turns below contained an attempt to shift the topic to whether she would like
to meet me again. The first and last of my turns also contained positive feedback
As the recipient of her self disclosures, I gave her contradictory cues - both
positive evaluations, (for example, I'm very glad, turn 1; that's good, turn 3), and
attempts to discourage further self-disclosure by changing topic. I suggest Connie
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responded to my positive evaluation and that it was this that led to her continued
disclosures.
In this section I discuss my own self disclosure. The agenda for the interviews
was the elicitation of information about the interviewees' initial experiences and
pervaded by interviewees' self references - this was what the interviews were
about. So, a clear precedent was set, by the agenda itself, for interviewees to
Unlike the interviewees' talk, a great deal of my talk did not involve the disclosure
a smaller scale, I also made self disclosures. I discuss this here - focusing, as I
aim instead to comment critically on how and why I think I made self disclosures.
I had conscious reasons for some of them at the time of the interviews, while the
discussion of my own self disclosure has the value of being an insider's view of an
In the following sections I offer several reasons for the fact that I made self
disclosures in the interviews. This takes the form of some preliminary
123
Though these reasons infiltrate each other in the data, I shall deal with them
In the interviews I made self disclosures about my research. The reason for this
was that I wished to be open about what my research interests were, rather than
were talking about, as in the following extract from Anne's first interview:
contact' stage of the interviews where I asked if the interviewees would like to
maintain contact with me, either through further interviews or via my participation
in their seminars. These disclosures were generally descriptive - laying out the
options for further participation. The following example is the first part of this
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them through a seminar...the other set of people I want to follow
through would be on a more casual basis it would be interviewing
them rather like this...
(Tania, 471-80).
I suggested in chapter 3, (section 3.4.5.), that there was a shift in the power
balance in the 'further contact stage of the interviews. This was the stage where I
staying involved in the research project. The same need to elicit information was
present, of course, throughout the interviews, but what I point to here is that at this
stage of the interviews I was conscious of being in the less powerful position of
seminar option. This was because I was unsure about its viability. I also felt
apologetic about how complex it was to explain to the interviewees. With Anne,
Int: ...the seminar thing which is you know rather involved and is
already giving me an incredible headache [laugh]
Ann: [laugh]
(Anne2, 353-5).
I found asking the interviewees if they were willing for further contact stressful,
(for example, I made three attempts in my first turn in the extract below from
Sara's interview to broach the topic). If all the interviewees said no I thought, at
the time, that I would not be able to continue my research. My perception at that
In the interviews with Pam and Sara, I expressed my relief at their willingness to
continue in a way that does not match the traditional interviewer role of aloofness,
125
embarrassing for that reason, but I think they occurred because the unstructured
nature of the interview, and the build up of self disclosures that had occurred in
- that is, one oriented to my private feelings. Here is the example from Sara's
interview:
It was only in retrospect that I became aware that, as the participant with the more
powerful role at most stages of the interview, it might have been difficult for
interviewees to say no to my request, had they wished to. However, none of the
13 interviewees did and I note that Sara was able to make a statement of provisos
complex. On the one hand, I had the power, which the interviewees did not, to set
the agenda, ask questions, introduce and terminate topics. On the other hand, I
myself.
126
However, yet another reason for my use of self disclosure was that I was a new
conducting the interviews that, with as many preparations as I was able to make,
both practical and in reading about interview techniques, there was going to be a
great range of 'techniques' available to me upon which I could draw, and thus
experiences.
In addition to the reasons I have already mentioned self disclosure was a way in
There were two ways in particular in which I intentionally made self disclosures in
order to build rapport. These are as follows. One way was by sharing aspects of
studied, as in the first example below, and how I felt about it, as in the second
example:
Example 1:
Int: I did my first degree in psychology for similar reasons [to you
you know
(Sam, 127).
Example 2:
Ann: I think [university is] something that I was missed out on
Int: Mm yes I felt the same
(Annel, 189-90).
127
Another way I developed rapport was through the disclosure of opinions. As I
interviewee, where:
128
"a balance must be struck between the warmth required to generate
'rapport' and the detachment necessary to see the interviewee as an object
under surveillance", (op.cit.:33).
She points out that this positions interviewees ambiguously as both data sources
requirements
"for both 'neutrality' and 'rapport' may at the same time both conceal and
incorporate the pervasive hierarchical structure of relationships in society",
(Mishler, 1986:31).
In her own research, Oakley describes how she found it impossible to remain
she herself had undergone, who asked her many questions about her own
experience of motherhood during interview, and with whom she had several
Like Oakley, I had shared with my interviewees the set of experiences which were
the topic of the interviews, that is, being a mature undergraduate student, and like
was conducting the interviews that the interviewees' sharing of their experiences
of being mature students did not flourish in a situation where I remained aloof,
and in all the interviews I made at least one comment about 'how it was for me' as
a mature student. This was an instrumental use of conversation, but I would like
In using the term 'genuineness' in the heading to this section, I am referring to its
129
relationships in my previous job running seminars on personal growth. I suggest
interpersonal relationships. The result was that I used self disclosure to be honest
in this Rogerian way. On the one hand, this was a way of genuinely
acknowledging to the interviewees that I was not just an interviewer, but also 'like
research-relevant information.
In closing, I would like to point out that there were effects of the 'reciprocity
in private conversation would suggest. I give some examples of this here. In the
first example, Penny's disclosure of her opinion about other mature students, (her
first and second turns), was followed by a brief one by me, (my second turn
1. Pen: Some people have really put so much into getting [to
university] that it it is it is awe-inspiring
1. Int: Yes it is isn't it
2. Pen: It makes me feel very very humble it really does
2. Int: Yeah yes I feel the same [both laugh]
(Penny, 129-32).
In the second example a disclosure by Steve also led to one by me. Prior to this
extract, I had asked Steve what Part One courses he was intending to take, and he
130
mentioned Psychology. He went on to say that Psychology was what he was
really interested in, but he thought Politics might be easier. The extract below
starts with Steve summing up this disclosure, (his first turn). I follow his self
disclosure with one of my own, with the intention of developing rapport, since this
was right at the beginning of the interview: The first part is given in my second
In both these examples, interviewees' self disclosure led to one by me. In the next
something important to her, the hardest thing about coming to university, which
she went on to explain at length. The extract starts with the end of my self
undergraduate might change views of the self and it built on a prior disclosure by
Penny:
131
In practice it was difficult to judge whether there were causal links between
an effect of the reciprocity norm. The example I have just given from Penny's
interview seems to show this. I was not fully aware of this effect at the time. My
elements of my own experience, I note that I was setting a standard for the sort of
In addition, the tendency for reciprocation meant that self disclosure had an
both learned more about the other. However, insofar as my self disclosures
the time, but I note, retrospectively, that this was an instrumental function of my
5.5. CONCLUSION
between the interviewees and myself. I have noted how the purpose of interviews,
133
- PART III -
DRAWING ON EXPERIENCE:
construct meanings. In general terms this focus for Part III is about how the
interviewees drew on various domains of experience, both their own and other
I explore two strategies they used to do this - how they told stories and other types
of narrative about aspects of their lives, (chapters 7 and 8), and how they
five domains of experience the interviewees talked about. The analysis of these
overview of what they said under the umbrella agenda I set for the interviews -
'tell me about your initial experiences of university'. I describe these topics in
some detail, and use them again in chapters 7 and 10, to enrich the analyses of the
In chapters 7 and 8, I focus on narratives told by the interviewees - the way they
constructed meanings about the university by drawing on other times and other
domains of their experience, (the five topic categories discussed in chapter 6). I
134
focus on narratives in two different ways. In chapter 7, I analyse narratives by
type, in all the interviews. The types of narrative are distinguished by their use of
past, present or future time in relation to the 'present moment' of the interview. In
possible to do this sort of analysis for the entire data set as it was so large. So this
analysis leads to different kinds of insights from chapter 7, insights about how one
by using narratives.
In chapters 9 and 10, I move from the analysis of narratives to the analysis of
representing the discourse of others in their own talk gave those voices varying
representation are realised grammatically, and I also point to how the represented
intertextuality.
that this use of other voices was a strategy the interviewees used to understand the
types of expertise about it. I discuss the points of view these instances realised in
135
CHAPTER 6
6.1. INTRODUCTION
6.2. METHOD OF CODING TOPICS OF THE INTERVIEWEES TALK
6.2.1. INTRODUCING THE METHOD
6.2.2. TOPICS PRESUMED PRESENT IN THE DATA
6.2.3. THE TOPIC CATEGORIES WHICH EMERGED FROM THE DATA
6.2.4. PROBLEMS WITH THE METHOD
6.2.4.1. The close juxtaposition of topics
6.2.4.2. Using the topic categories to enhance other analyses in Part III
6.2.5. HIGHER ORDER ABSTRACTIONS IN THE DATA
6.2.5.1. A time dimension: past, present and future
6.2.5.2. Public and private domains dimension
6.3. TOPIC CATEGORY: EMPLOYMENT
6.3.1. COMPARISONS BETWEEN EMPLOYMENT AND UNIVERSITY
6.3.2. INFLUENCES OF PRIOR EMPLOYMENT ON DOING A DEGREE
6.3.2.1. Building on past work experience
6.3.2.2. Dissatisfaction with work
6.3.3. INTERVIEWEES' DEGREE IN RELATION TO FUTURE EMPLOYMENT
6.3.3.1. Career orientation
6.3.3.2. Future work not main reason for degree
6.4. TOPIC CATEGORY: EDUCATION
6.4.1. COMPARISONS OF UNIVERSITY AND PAST EDUCATIONAL
EXPERIENCES
6.4.2. INFLUENCES OF FURTHER EDUCATION EXPERIENCE ON DOING A
DEGREE
6.4.2.1. F E. College developed interest in coming to university
6.4.2.2. F E. qualifications a necessary prerequisite for university
6.4.3. INITIAL EXPERIENCES OF UNIVERSITY
6 4.3.1. Comparisons with traditional a ge students
6.4.3.2 Perceptions of academic aspects of university life
6.5. TOPIC CATEGORY: OTHER PEOPLE'S EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE
6.5.1. MEMBERS OF THE EDUCATIONAL DOMAIN
6.5.1.1. University students
6.5.1.2. F.E. students
6.5 1.3. Teaching staff
6.5.2 MEMBERS OF THE EMPLOYMENT DOMAIN
6.5.3. MEMBERS OF INTERVIEWEES' FAMILIES
6.5.4. GENERAL FEEDBACK ABOUT DOING A DEGREE
66. TOPIC CATEGORY: HOME LIFE
6.6.1. ORGANISATIONAL ISSUES RESULTING FROM STARTING A DEGREE
6.6.2. FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS AND DOING A DEGREE
6.6.2.1. Emotional support for interviewee from family
6.6.2.2. Family pressures on the interviewee
6.6.2.3. Interviewees' feelings of guilt or selfishness
6.6 2.4. Interviewees' children and doin g a degree
6.7. TOPIC CATEGORY: SENSE OF SELF
6.7.1. PERSONAL FULFILMENT REASONS FOR DOING A DEGREE
6 7.1.1. Wish to learn
6.7.1.2. Self discovery and personal change
6.7.2. FITTING IN AT THE UNIVERSITY
6.7.3. THE ISSUE OF SELF CONFIDENCE
6.7.3.1. Confidence develops with experience
6.7.3.2. Ambivalent feelings
6.7.3.3. Rising to the challenge
6.7.3 4. Realising intellectual capabilities
6.8. CONCLUSION
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6.1. INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the data set, in a way
relevant to the aims of this part of the thesis, as Chapter 3, (section 3.4.), provided
The overview I provide in this chapter takes the form of an analysis of the topics
the interviewees talked about. It is interesting in and of itself to note the range of
topics the interviewees talked about in responding to my agenda to tell about their
initial experiences of university. It also sets the scene for the discourse analyses
that follow in the rest of Part III, which explore two ways in which the
narratives, and representing the discourse of others. In short, this chapter is about
what those domains of experience are, and chapters 7 to 10 are about how the
In this chapter, I briefly review methods of coding qualitative data, (section 6.2.).
This includes how I developed the categories for the analysis in this chapter,
(section 6.2.2.), what those categories are, (section 6.2.3.), and a discussion of
discuss relationships between the categories which emerged from the data that
allow them to be grouped at a more abstract level. The remainder of the chapter,
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6.2. METHOD OF CODING TOPICS OF THE
INTERVIEWEES' TALK
abstraction to code the topics of the interviewees' talk. As one of the main
purposes of this topic analysis was a scene setting one, in order to contextualise
the analyses of the rest of Part III, I considered it justifiable to do a fairly coarse-
grained analysis. This was a viable approach for such a large data set.
The topics of the interviewees' talk are unlike the other phenomena I analyse in
this thesis in not being essentially discursive. All the codings of the interview data
in this thesis are of some type of 'content' of the data, but here my focus is on the
ideational content, the topics the interviewees talked about. In this chapter I do
not pick out of the data all instances of a particular discursive feature such as
common in qualitative research across the social sciences. The topics that
emerged were various domains of the interviewees' experience which they drew
on in the interviews. Interviewer utterances were not included in this analysis, the
interaction between interviewer and interviewee being the topic of Part II.
(Goetz and LeCompte, 1984:169). Data do not speak for themselves or have
138
inherent properties, and any categorisations of data places an interpretative grid on
them.
My agenda for the interviews was to elicit the interviewees' perceptions about
ensured that certain themes were covered in the interviews, (listed in Appendix 2).
university, which led to the development of these themes, later became refocused
these themes realised the theoretical concerns that I considered important at the
List 1:
interviews
interviewees.
It follows that the data would contain interviewees' responses to these issues.
Clearly, when it came to developing topic categories at least some of the data
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6.2.3. THE TOPIC CATEGORIES WHICH EMERGED FROM
THE DATA
At a practical level, categorising data means sorting the data into units,
establishing the bases for distinguishing between units and deciding which ones
are associated with each other and can thus be grouped together. This involves
deciding what properties these data units share and how they differ from units
outside the category. Core properties can then be used to develop definitions of
the category, and of sub-groupings within it, (Goetz and LeCompte, op.cit.:170).
dominant and repeating themes, which I noted. I then sorted, (collated and
distinguished between), these themes, using as the organising principle the distinct
social domains the interviewees' talk seemed to revolve around. The categories I
List 2:
Emergent categories
2 - Education: talk about their own education, in the past, and currently at
the university
4 - home life
140
considered as significant because they reflected the theoretical concerns I brought
to the interviews as I gave them in List 1. They are given in Figure 6.1. below.
general point I note that these are categories of experience: the social domains the
the sub-groups within the categories capture more specific aspects of the
interviewees' talk about each of the five main categories. The large range of life
experiences which the categories cover suggest that the interviewees believed their
experience of university had widespread effects on, and implications for, their
lives.
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COMPARISONS BETWEEN
EMPLOYMENT + UNIVERSITY
Building on past work
EMPLOYMENT INFLUENCE OF PRIOR EMPLOYMENT
ON DOING DEGREE Disatisfaction with work
Career
DEGREE + FUTURE EMPLOYMENT
Future work not reason
for degree
COMPARISONS OF UNIVERSITY +
PAST EDUCATION
F.E. College developed
INFLUENCE OF F.E. COLLEGE interest in university
EDUCATION
- EXPERIENCE ON DEGREE F.E. qualifications necessary
University students
MEMBERS OF EDUCATIONAL
F.E. College students
DOMAIN
Teaching staff
MEMBERS OF EMPLOYMENT
EDUCATION'
DOMAIN
OTHER
PEOPLES
EXPERIENCE MEMBERS OF INTERVIEWEES'
FAMILIES
ORGANISATIONAL ISSUES
HOME LIFE Emotional support
Family pressures
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
Feelings of guilt
Interviewees children
Wish to learn
PERSONAL FULFILMENT
REASONS FOR DEGREE Self discovery
SENSE OF SELF
FITTING IN AT UNIVERSITY
Develops with experience
Ambivalent feelings
SELF CONFIDENCE
Rising to the challenge
Realising intellectual
capabilities
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6.2.4. PROBLEMS WITH THE METHOD
In this section I discuss the two difficulties I encountered in using this approach.
Deciding what was the dominant topic in any stretch of text was not always
was a characteristic of the data that made coding the topics of the interviewees'
talk difficult. For example, Penny closely related a number of aspects of her
Pen: I've done English before I know I can cope with it I know
I've got a safe alternative major if Culture and Communication
doesn't work out Theatre Studies is the is the what if. it's the
bit of me that I haven't perhaps. um explored but would like to
. um that was very much triggered off by working on the
[news]paper
(Penny, 325-8).
In this extract, Penny drew together several aspects of her life experience in order
to answer a question I put to her about why she had decided to do Theatre Studies
as a minor subject. She not only referred to her current education at the
university, (the courses), but also related this to previous educational experience
of having done English before. She also referred to previous employment with a
local newspaper, where she covered Arts related events, and to an unexplored part
of herself.
143
6.2.4.2. Using the topic categories to enhance other analyses
in Part III
I would like to make three points about using the categories I developed to
enhance the analyses in chapters 7 and 10, (on narrative and discourse
the data and picking out dominant themes, which I organised into the 5 main
topics and their subsidiaries. In chapters 7 and 10, I focus on sections of the actual
interview texts. So there is a difference in level and type of analysis here: this
by scanning the interviews for their ideational content; chapters 7 and 10 are
Secondly, in chapters 7 and 10, the units of analysis differ in size from each other:
would like to point out is that, since, as I have said, the interviewees closely
interwove topics, any one stretch of text might be assigned to a different category
in each of these chapters: a narrative of twenty lines, for example, might overall
out that in those chapters I only use the five main categories to establish the topics
of narratives and discourse representation, and have not included the sub-
categories.
The difficulties I have mentioned here are part of the inevitable consequence of
144
interviewees. It also highlights the fact that not all the analyses in this project are
1.2.), the analyses are intersecting 'takes' on the interview event. They are not
There is an interplay between the categories given in Figure 6.1. and two more
A pervasive feature of the data was that the topics the interviewees talked about
often had an explicit time dimension. (I also discuss this in chapter 7, section
past and future employment, and the 'education' category, distinctions between
past and current education. The example from Pam's interview below, illustrates
how the 'home life' category contained references to how some interviewees'
marital relationships worked in the past, and set them alongside concerns about
how they might work now the interviewee was starting a degree:
Pam: For the first time it it's me who's going out into a a world
that has nothing to do with him. whereas before my husband
changed careers . when he was twenty seven and I was right
behind him helping him
(Pam, 257-9).
The italics here foreground the comparison Pam established between the current
career change which would affect both Pam and her husband - her going out into
the world of the university, and a past career change - that of her husband.
145
6.2.5.2. Public and private domains dimension
The time dimension I have just been discussing emerged from the data. However,
I also note that each of the five categories fell into one of two super-ordinate
or to the private domain. These super-ordinate categories did not emerge from the
data, that is, they did not appear to be salient distinctions made by the
make too much of a dichotomy between public and private domain experience, for
the reasons I give in Chapter 1, (sections 1.5.1. and 1.5.2.). Using the example of
'education' are public domain activities, and 'home life' and 'the personal' are
private domain ones. 'Other peoples' experience of university' spans both the
public and the private domain. This is because references the interviewees made
to the experiences of people met in the public domains of work or education were
The remainder of the chapter consists of discussion of the five topic categories. I
use extracts from the data in order to illustrate the content of each of the
categories, and in order not to drift too far into generalised interpretations of what
the interviewees said. In trying to characterise such a large data set in this way,
specificity of the experiences the interviewees talked about. I discuss each of the
146
topic categories given in Figure 6.1. in turn. Their order of presentation can be
seen at a glance in the chapter outline on the first page of this chapter.
Typographical note: short extracts from the interviews remain part of the body of
the text. They are in quotation marks and line number references to the transcripts
are given after them. As I have used quotations particularly intensively in this
chapter and intend them to be read for their ideational content, these quotations do
not contain transcription notation. Larger extracts are inset and retain
experiences of paid work. The work of raising children and managing a home -
work which was given importance by eight of the eleven women, because it would
category.
Mary, Wendy, Steve and Sam all referred to the full-time jobs they had had
immediately prior to returning to full time education. Sharon, Tania, Penny, Pam,
Sara, Anne and Connie had all done jobs, (put-time, voluntary or short term), but
paid work seemed to play a less prominent role in their decision to come to
The topic of employment was talked about by the interviewees in ways captured
147
doing a degree, (section 6.3.2.), and the degree in relation to future employment,
(section 6.3.3.).
UNIVERSITY
Mary, Steve and Sam all favourably compared university to work. For example,
Mary acknowledged some similarities between nursing and the university - they
were both "administrative structures" and male dominated, (166). However, while
she recognised that nursing was "largely a female profession", (160), she
students there who were women, because it was in the university's interest "for the
students to come out with good degrees ... so you can't discriminate against 51%
of them can you?", (177-9). University was perceived as a place where she hoped
to be able to "be much more expressive than you can when you're going to work ...
in every aspect of your behaviour", (141-5). She contrasted this to her experience
Steve contrasted his job and university in terms of intellectual stimulation. His
job in coal mining meant "sitting about then using your hands and very little brain
work and you get this feeling that you're stagnating somewhat", (135-6). His hope
148
Wen: Maybe sometimes when the staff get on to a certain level
that they don't have a realisation of what goes on actually in
the outside world. erm • now ( ) but er.. you know if people
had actually. looked into what I had achieved and how I'd
actually gone about it studied my background . then that
situation wouldn't have actually arisen ... maybe [university
staff] are so caught up with the academic world that they forget
that there is actually industry and . you know. sort of a
struggle in the world outside and people who are trying to
achieve things professional qualifications as opposed to
academic ones and I find that quite sad really
(Wendy, 502-14)
She contrasted this experience, which she accounted for as "just unlucky", (517),
with the prompt offer she was given by her boss to do an MSc in training, though
she turned this down because she wanted to broaden her career options and
because she wanted to "expand her education", (70), by doing a university degree.
experience.
wanted their degree both to build on their past work experience and to develop
Wen: The last ten years [of employment] have been very much
people oriented . so it would be silly you know to throw the
whole lot away . you know all that experience that I've backed
149
up because. if I'm going to then go out in three year's time and
start looking for another job then I'm going to have to couple
qualifications with experience
(Wendy, 116-20).
Secondly, and in sharp contrast, for Pam, Penny, Sharon and Sam dissatisfaction
with the type of work they were doing was one of the reasons they took on a
degree full-time. For example, Pam's boredom with her job at a building society
was the catalyst for her to start F.E. college courses and then a degree:
Pam: I finally got fed up with the the building society I thought I'm
bored with this there's got to be more to it than this and it just sort of
went on from there
(Pam, 66-8).
Pen: I can't just go from one job to [another] ... I was really taken up
short by realising I was nearly thirty and I'd never planned anything
(Penny, 372-8).
In addition, for Steve there was an external job-related factor. Though he was
dissatisfied with his job, being made redundant was the catalyst for hh-n to " glve it
a go" at university, (89).
150
6.3.3.1. Career orientation
In addition to Wendy and Tania, (see section 6.3.2.1.), who wanted their degree to
build on their past employment experience and move them towards a career, Anne
and Sara also expressed strong career reasons for doing a degree. For example,
Sara's main reason for doing a degree was to become a teacher. This would be a
second career for her as she was already a qualified nurse. At the end of her
degree she would "have a useful qualification that will get me into a career I really
Other interviewees talked explicitly about how the actual experience of doing the
degree took precedence over following a particular career pattern. For example,
Sam said:
And Carol felt it was unlikely, at fifty six, that she would get a job after her
degree.
training and their experience of university thus far. The topic of education was
151
(section 6.4.1.), academic influences of their further education experience on
doing a degree, (section 6.4.2.), and their initial experiences as university students,
(section 6.4.3.).
changed those of her friends who went to university straight from school, which
she did not. She was also disappointed that university seemed not to be "the final
stage at all, this is just another stage along the way", (2:117), from school.
Wendy's only formal education since leaving school was evening classes for a
work-related qualification in personnel management. She did not like the teaching
style, "the lecturer was up at the front and writing up on the board and you just
copied [it] down", (207-8), and thought university would be different: "the crux
seems to be that you have to do a lot of the work and finding out yourself which
All the interviewees, except Mary and Wendy, had done F.E. college or Access
Steve and Sam used this experience to make comparisons. For example, Sam
152
do well as long as you're prepared to do a little bit of work
which to me were. you know were a complete contrast and
a welcome change as well to what I went through at school
(Sam, 173-8).
The experience of doing F.E. college or Access courses was not only talked about
For Maria, Pam, Sharon, Connie, Steve, Sam, and Carol the decision to come to
university was a sort of evolution, developing out of enjoyment and interest in the
subjects they were doing at F.E. college. For example, Carol's decision to do a
Car: I didn't set out with the intention, oh I'd like to do a degree ...
that wasn't in my mind at all . I've [justl taken it from step to step and
done my best at everything
(Carol, 140-2).
Anne and Tania, who both wished to pursue particular careers on the basis of
153
Tan: Three years ago I went up to the University and sort of
said oh all keen you know and II want to do social work ... and
they sort of said well you know yeah that sounds great but what
sort of qualifications have you got well I didn't have anything
at all [laugh] so that was a bit naive and then I had to go back
to college and do a . stage B's and so I can go this year
(Tania, 85-90).
The overall topic of each interview was the interviewee's initial perceptions of
interviewees said about the university which are not captured in other categories.
themselves and younger students. Anne and Pam both said they were part of a
minority group as mature students. Mary suggested older students were "a bit of
an abnormality", (307), and Connie that it was "a bit like them and us", (2:222).
Comments by Tania, Connie, Anne and Steve point up some of the concerns
interviewees had about being a mature student. For example, Steve was
concerned about not being able to mix with eighteen year olds; for him "all these
bright kids come straight from school", (188), looked so much more confident
than he was, though he knew this was unlikely actually to be the case.
while "young people sort of tend to take it as a matter of course", (161). And
154
Connie felt advantaged to have already studied Psychology at F.E. college, as she
pointed out it was not a subject not always available for traditional age students at
school.
Anne and Wendy felt that a degree was about becoming a "broadly educated
additional general point: she was disappointed in Introductory Week to find that
she would "not go into any [subject] quite as deeply as I'd expected to", (2:66).
Sara, Tania, and Connie all made positive comments about the university lecturers
who had interviewed them. Maria did not anticipate any problems in relating to
teaching staff, partly because she knew some of them already from extra-mural
courses. Connie, however, while she felt comfortable with F.E. college tutors did
However, some of the experiences of Introductory Week that she described in her
second interview suggested she found them more approachable than she
155
Con: There was even one it was [lecturer's name] and you
know he looks like a mad professor ... but I mean he was totally
different he wasn't he wasn't quite so you know sort of
flamboyant as some of the others but ... we could all go and get
a free cup of coffee and then he had a big tin of biscuits and
handed it round ... it was lovely to be in that sort of atmosphere
where you could have this
(Connie2, 56-68).
Connie, Penny and Steve also pointed out that lectures were a new thing for them,
and it was going to be a case of "we'll tell you when we've done one", (Penny,
451), when it came to how they would cope. Steve acknowledged that while
would follow on from teaching methods he had become familiar with at F.E.
college:
Maria, Carol and Tania mentioned that coping with exams was a worry; and
Nine interviewees gave reasons for choosing particular disciplines. Sara, Wendy
and Tania all had career reasons for their choice of disciplines. For Connie, Carol,
Sharon, Mary, Penny, Steve and Sam an interest in a particular subject was the
main reason for their choice of discipline. For example, the work experience of
both Steve and Sam had led to an interest in politics which they wished to develop
at university.
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6.5. TOPIC CATEGORY: OTHER PEOPLE'S
EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE
A pervasive feature of the interviews is the way all the interviewees drew on other
like. In this category, the focus is on other people's experience, as opposed to the
interviewees' own experience. In other words, this category captures those parts
of the data where other peoples' experience of education became the topic of the
interviewees talk. In Chapters 9 and 10, I explore how drawing on other people's
I have divided this topic category into sub-categories on the basis of the social
roles occupied by these other people. This results in the following sub-categories
families, (section 6.5.3.), and general feedback about doing a degree, (section
6.5.4.).
This sub-category includes university and F.E. college students, and teaching staff
Tania, Wendy and Connie referred to the experience of friends who had been to
university, with Connie making the most extensive references. What their friends
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said was mostly advisory. For example, Connie reported the experience of a
friend of hers:
In addition, Tania, Connie and Wendy gave comments from friends about course
choices; Wendy and Connie gave friends' comments about how preconceived
ideas before starting the degree might be erroneous; and Tania and Connie gave
friends' warnings about feeling isolated at the beginning. Tania, for example,
Tan: A friend of mine told me just recently he' he's doing Psychology
and ...he was saying be prepared for the first year because he warned
me that it is very lonely and you don't get to know people. because
you know you're in different groups
(Tania, 259-62).
All the interviewees had just completed F.E. courses except Mary and Wendy.
Tania, Sharon, Sara and Connie referred to experiences they shared with other
F.E. college students: either that F.E. college was a stimulating shared experience,
or that the shared experience of F.E. college continued with friends from college at
158
working together and we're going to try and design a project
on death and burial mounds
(Sharon2, 30-3).
There were also references to the relevant experience of teaching staff, that is, to
their experience of what university was like and the advice they gave as a result.
Sara and Connie referred to F.E. college teaching staff in this way. For example,
Connie referred to how her F.E. college teachers described university and the
Con: Our teachers ... said in the first year they reckon that a
degree is very much like what you get at school you sit there
and you take notes . you know it's a traditional style of teaching
but [they] said the second year it's more group discussion and
more you know everybody interacting and things and they said
that's when. us [college] students will come into our own.
because we've got used to having this
(Conniel, 457-63).
Connie, unlike the other interviewees, also reported the advice and help given to
her by university teaching staff during Introductory Week. For example, "the
thing they've been putting across to you more than anything is use us ... we're here
mature students and "all of them said that as a mature student you get so much
159
more out of [university]", (164-5). In a slightly different way, Sam contrasted his
[who] could quite easily do what I've done but ... [they are] from
working class backgrounds ... and they're married and settled down
with children, [so] there's no way that they'll ever escape that now, but
they've got the ability to do it ... they just haven't got the opportunities
(Sam, 112-20).
Six interviewees referred to members of their families who seem to have modelled
further or higher education study for them. Steve and his sister started F.E.
college courses together. Connie's sister had done a degree, and she referred both
to her sister's experience of doing it and to the advice her sister gave her: doing a
degree changes you, and one discovers what one is good at as one goes along.
Penny's father went to university but dropped out and then returned later, which is,
as she pointed out, similar to her own experience of trying university at eighteen,
leaving and then returning later. Anne's elder brother went on to university from
school, though she had to go out to work once she had finished school because of
a death in the family. Maria and Sara both had partners who were doing masters
degrees, and for Maria it was seeing all her family studying that made her decide
to study too:
Mary and Sharon both stated that they were the first people in their families to go
to university.
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6.5.4. GENERAL FEEDBACK ABOUT DOING A DEGREE
people, what they had heard as hearsay about the experience of doing a degree.
Tan: I've heard of other people who haven't had support [from their
families] I've thought you know it must be very difficult to do it
without support... I keep hearing a lot of people say a lot of people
stop after the first year or a lot of people find it more difficult than
[they anticipated]
(Tania, 383-5, 402-4).
Anne had heard that 50% of student marriages break up in the second year.
had a good reputation; while Sharon had heard that students don't have to work
The feedback interviewees reported from their families is covered in section 6.6.2.
This category contains the references interviewees made to their home life - to
their families and to the running of their homes. For the eleven women
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what Pam called the "serious adventure", (145), of coming to university. These
interviewees all talked about having home commitments: eight of them were
married, six with children; and three were single parents. All of them were
concerned with having to juggle the demands of two different worlds. The two
sub-categories that emerged from the data showed that these demands were
STARTING A DEGREE
Connie, Wendy, Sara, Anne and Pam expressed concerns about having to organise
two very different worlds. Pam, for example, verbalised a common feeling when
she said:
describe below.
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6.6.2.1. Emotional support for interviewee from family
Carol, Penny, Sara, Pam, Tania and Maria specifically mentioned that they felt
supported by their partners. However, Pam and Maria felt there was an
Pam: In theory it's all going to work out and he's behind me a
hundred percent. I haven't got any problems but I think he might
have in adjusting to this wife who's got friends [of her own]
(Pam, 284-6).
With regard to other members of the family, Sharon said her family were "totally
over the moon about it, they've given me so much support", (1:174-5), while Mary
said her parents were "pleased but they think it's a bit weird ... they don't really
understand why I'm doing it or what I'll get out of it", (600-5).
concerned about the strain doing a degree will put on their marriages. For
I know that I have set myself quite a big hurdle with that my
husband is a non academic ... he is being very understanding
and I'm putting a lot of strain on him ... we have discussed the
possibility that our relationship might not survive this
(Penny, 232-62).
Tania, Pam and Maria also anticipated a certain amount of marital friction.
163
Anne and Wendy talked about other sorts of family pressures. Carol, for example,
had already seen her children through school, and she did not feel a conflict with
home demands, but Anne, whose children were much younger, did. She said:
A number of the women interviewees expressed that they had felt selfish about
doing a degree. This was stated as being related to changing from a prior focus on
other people to a focus on themselves. Mary said "I think particularly for a
woman it's quite hard to be selfish, you get used to doing things for other people
all of the time", (62-3). Carol and Pam both felt they had now resolved this
164
6.6.2.4. Interviewees' children and doing a degree
For Sharon, Sara and Mary doing a degree would enable them to help or pass on
something to their children. For example, Mary said, "I have a little girl and ... I
found myself wanting to be a better role model for her", (64-6). Pam, Carol, Tania
and Maria all commented that their children were now old enough for them not to
feel they need spend all their time looking after them. This was a factor in why
in the following ways, which I discuss below. Interviewees often gave personal
fulfilment reasons for doing a degree, (section 6.7.1.). Some also expressed
concerns about fitting in at the university, (section 6.7.2.), and all of them
Doing a degree out of a general wish to learn or seeing it as a catalyst for some
sort of personal change seemed to be important for most interviewees. Wendy and
Anne focused more on career reasons for doing a degree, (see section 6.3.3.1.), but
all the others specifically mentioned one of the following two types of personal
fulfilment reasons.
165
6.7.1.1. Wish to learn
The desire for knowledge was expressed in a number of ways. For Tania, Pam
and Steve part of the reason for doing a degree was because "I just want to learn
and enjoy learning", (Pam, 231-2). Mary and Carol both said the degree was "just
areas, was important for Sharon, Penny and Connie. Connie expressed it like this:
. Con: When you can quote things... and you really know what you're
talking about well . you know people can't argue with that
(Conniel, 393-5).
Carol, Mary and Sam talked about the degree broadening their minds.
example, Maria wanted to "see if I can actually achieve what I think I know I can
achieve", (62-3). She also mentioned that her year at F.E. college to gain her pre-
regain "a lost person", (443). Connie too, perceived the degree in relation to a
Con: [It's] almost like you're finding out who you really are
you know and ... you're going to do something that . you know
has been there whizzing around for a long time and now you've
suddenly found a way of channelling it you know and at the
same time it's well like yeah I think it is because of sort of being
kept down and I've suddenly come up. and you know and I'm
I'm I keep laughing and saying I'm a late starter
(Conniel, 584-9).
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6.7.2. FITTING IN AT THE UNIVERSITY
Steve, Anne, Connie, Sharon and Penny all expressed concerns about fitting in.
Steve, for example, compared his work situation to his hopes of university:
Ste: Right from . where I was down the mine last year. I didn't
feel I fitted in that sort of life style ... down the mine ninety
percent you're sitting there doing nothing . waiting for
something breaking down and then you're jumping up and
running about fixing it. so I'm sitting down the pit reading
history books and the like and you want to turn round and
discuss things ... and all they're interested in is . what's on the
television . are you going out drinking ... not fitting into that.
pit environment. I'm trying to find environment that I will fit
into to . hopefully it'll be the university
(Steve, 283-97).
Anne described the difficulties of fitting in as related both to her home and her
university lives:
In contrast to Anne, Sharon, Penny and Connie felt very excited during
Introductory Week - in her second interview, Connie put it as "I felt like I
An interesting aspect of fitting in that emerged from the data was the concern
Sharon, Tania, Maria, Pam and Connie expressed in what it was appropriate to
wear as 'students'. Tania described how she told some friends about this dilemma:
167
Tan: I said [to them] oh yeah I'm really excited but I'm really nervous
with it and they said well yeah of course you'd be nervous and I said
no no I'm more nervous about what to wear than anything else [laugh]
... I don't want to be mutton dressed as lamb
(Tania, 427-30).
Self confidence was an issue mentioned by all the interviewees. Many expressed
a mixture of confidence and lack of it. For some, the F.E. college had been crucial
Carol, Sara, Anne, Connie and Steve seemed to see confidence developing as their
successive stages of his education as an adult, but negative comparisons were still
easy to make:
Sam, Maria, Mary and Pam expressed a conflict over the question of confidence.
Pam expressed this as, "I've convinced myself that I wouldn't be at university if I
168
wasn't good enough to be here ... [but] I think a lot of mature students especially in
my age group do have this sort of lack of self confidence", (318-22). I return to
Connie, Wendy, Maria and Sara all expressed their confidence in terms of rising
to some sort of challenge: in her first interview, Connie described this as "the
mountain's there so you want to climb it", (1:226); and Sara described it as a
Pam, Maria, Tania and Connie talked about confidence in terms of realising their
intellectual capabilities. For example, Tania said, "the first time I realised for
myself that I'm not stupid, that's nice, that's a nice feeling", (131). And like Tania,
Connie realised at F.E. College that "I'd got it in me", (1, 202).
6.8. CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have illustrated in some detail the topics the interviewees talked
about in their interviews. I pointed out that these topics ranged widely over a
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number of domains of the interviewees' experience, which suggests the
I note that this summary of the ideational content of the interviewees' talk is
and at the level of 'describing' the categories, in sections 6.3. to 6.7. However, I
feel it is useful to have offered some summary of the interviewees' talk because
the data set is so large, and this summary provides a context for the narrowly
follow.
of texts, to remember that these texts come from real people at a time of upheaval
and change in their lives. In this chapter I have sought to recapture some of the
personal and individual ways in which the interviewees worded their worlds by
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CHAPTER 7
7.1. INTRODUCTION
7.1.1. REASONS FOR ANALYSING INTERVIEWEES' NARRATIVES
7.1.2. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER
7.2. DEFINING NARRATIVE FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS CHAPTER
7.2.1. DEFINITION OF NARRATIVE
7.2.2. POLANYI'S TYPOLOGY OF NARRATIVES
7.3. CODING THE NARRATIVES IN THE DATA: CRITERIA
7.3.1. TYPE OF NARRATIVE
7.3.1.1. 'Concurrent generic narratives'
7.3.1.2. 'Stories'
7.3.1.3. 'Plans'
7.3.1.4. 'Hypothetical narratives'
7.3.2. TOPICS OF NARRATIVES
7.3.3. ADDITIONAL CRITERIA
7.3.3.1. Indications of length
7.3.3.2. Other
7.4. RESULTS
7.4.1. OVERVIEW OF THE NARRATIVES CODED BY TYPE AND TOPIC
ACROSS THE DATA SET
7.4.2. CONCURRENT GENERIC NARRATIVES
7.4.3. STORIES
7.4.3.1. Stories about the interviewees' education
7 4 3.2. Stories about other people's educational experience
7.4.3.3. Stories about sense of self
7 4 3.4. Stories about employment
7.4.3.5. Stories about home life
7.4.4. PLANS
7.5. THE CASE OF HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES
7.5.1. NARRATIVES ABOUT POSSIBLE FUTURES
7.5.2. HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT EMPLOYMENT
7.5.3. HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT EDUCATION
7.5.3.1. Academic work
7 5.3 2. The university institution
7.5.4. HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT HOME LIFE
7.5.5. HYPOTHETICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT SENSE OF SELF
7.6. CONCLUSION
7.1. INTRODUCTION
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about becoming undergraduates. In this chapter, I explore a common feature of
the data, namely, that the interviewees drew on experience to tell various types of
'story' and other narratives in the process of talking about their initial experiences
of university.
ideational content, which comes from one of the five domains of experience I
experience, home life, and sense of self); and how narratives are tellings about
that narratives are a common way in which people give information about their
lives and express meanings about their experience. This occurs even in
interviews:
He notes that interviewee responses often involve narratives. He also notes that
interviews, since here "people are invited to speak with their own voice", (ibid.),
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analyse, (ibid:67). The frequency with which narratives occurred in my own
A second reason is that there are links between my analyses of narratives in this
chapter and the next, and the concerns of Part II with interpersonal meanings and
discourse. I suggest here that one such conversational element was the use of
narratives by the interviewees because they had "some room to speak", as Mishler
says. I note, however, that there are other ways I could have explored interviewee
narratives which would have related them more closely to the concerns of Part II -
such as effects of the interview context, for example, the effect of interviewer
focused on this. Nor have I focused on the fact that I, as the interviewer, also gave
certain personal experience narratives. These were 'plans' for the next stage of my
research, given in the 'further contact' part of the interviews; and a few 'stories'
'Self disclosure', the topic of chapter 5, and 'narratives' are overlapping constructs:
all the narratives of personal experience which I analyse were self disclosing,
though not all self disclosure in the interviews had a narrative structure. My third
narratives to explore what other times and domains of experience the interviewees
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7.1.2. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER
holistic way:
"people are both living their stories in an ongoing experiential text and
telling their stories in words as they reflect upon life and explain
themselves to others", (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990:2).
was difficult to decide how to analyse these narratives, because of the range of
to use in a data set as large a mine. I have been concerned about the lack of
narratives in chapter 8.
underpin the analysis in this chapter in section 7.2., and describe my coding
procedures in section 7.3. This is a simple classification system based on the two
features of narrative I have already mentioned, time, (past, present or future), and
features of the narratives in the data coded by this method, in section 7.4. I look at
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interviewees' use of 'hypothetical narratives' about the future as an especially
CHAPTER
able to impose a simple classification of narrative types on the data and thus
The fundamental definition of narratives that I work with is that narratives are a
which occur on some time line. A narrative is "a perceived sequence of non-
and the organisation or connection of the events is such that consequences of the
oral narratives of everyday life. I draw on Polanyi's work because she foregrounds
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Her aim was to explore the "American world view", (op.cit.:1), via a detailed
to the informal interviews I conducted, though she proceeds using a clause level
Labovian analysis not suitable for the large number of narratives in my data set.
I detail here the different types of narrative she distinguishes, as these form the
basis of my coding criteria for narratives in this chapter, (see section 7.3.). She
She uses two features to distinguish between types of narrative. Firstly, she uses
the relation of the time of the telling of the narrative, (in the case of my data, the
interview), to the time of the narrative world. Secondly, she uses a distinction
between cases where the "events" in the narrative world are unique and specific
instances, and events which would always occur at a particular moment, (which
Applying these criteria, she uses the terms stories and reports for past time
narratives because they refer to a narrative world which is in the past relative to
the time of telling. They also both recount a series of specific events which
occurred in that narrative world. She distinguishes between stories, (which are her
focus), and reports by suggesting that the responsibility for justifying a story's
tellability, (that is, establishing what point is being made by it), rests with the
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narrator. It is the narrator who foregrounds some events and backgrounds others,
in line with the point she or he is making - in other words, it is the narrator who is
responsible for making the relevance of the story clear to the addressee, for
evaluating it and so "constraining the interlocutors to infer the same point from the
contrast, justifying the tellability of a report rests with the addressee, since,
Th6 other narratives she distinguishes are as follows. Plans are future time
narratives about specific events. Generic narratives can refer to a past, present or
future time world, and do not tell about unique events, but about what would or
will always occur at such and such a moment. Negative narratives describe
specific events that did not, do not or will not occur. In simultaneous narratives
the time of the specific events being narrated runs concurrently with the time of
In this section I outline how I coded the narratives in the data set using Polanyi's
took to be narrative according to the basic definition I gave in section 7.2.1. - that
along a time line. I coded narratives by type, using Polanyi's time and
the narratives on the basis of their content, using the five topic categories I
developed in chapter 6. I discuss these coding criteria in the following sections.
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7.3.1. TYPE OF NARRATIVE
The size of the data set made developing coding criteria for distinguishing
between types of narrative difficult. I have used the two features of time of telling
types. I have not used the detailed grammatical criteria she uses to develop an
"adequate paraphrase" of each of the narratives she analyses. Instead, the four
types of narrative I include in this analysis were distinguished from each other on
the basis of what appeared to be the main time line, relative to the interview, that
is, past, concurrent, or future time, as judged by the content of the narrative, verb
tense and other grammatical markers such as time adverbs, (then, now, tomorrow,
etc.).
In this analysis, I code stories, (past time narratives of specific events), and two
types of future narratives of specific events, definite plans, and more speculative
future narratives, which I have called hypothetical narratives. I also code generic
narratives about events in the ongoing present, and I have called these concurrent
generic narratives.
Of the other types of narrative which Polanyi mentions, simultaneous and negative
narratives did not occur in the interviews, nor did past or future generic
narratives. I did not include reports in the analysis, though this was a common
way in which interviewees gave information. There were two reasons for this.
Firstly, reporting was pervasive throughout the interviews, which made it difficult
to delimit. Secondly, reports say less about what the narrator judges as tellable
about past events since they tend to be elicited by the addressee, as I pointed out in
section 7.2.2. However, I note that it was sometimes difficult to tell interviewee
178
discussed in chapters 4 and 5. I discuss how I resolved these cases in section
7.3.3.
These are narratives which run concurrently with the time of telling - in this case,
the interview context. However, unlike simultaneous narratives, they are about
Ann: ...what is my identity now. it's er it's very strange. for example
. um at the bank all of a sudden you're a student and you get student
facilities in one way or another and they seem to see it. as something
that's worthy of a little bit of status at the bank. and yet you'll go
somewhere else and they'll say oh a student. oh well erm that's fairly
low on our status. list and you sort of wonder all of a sudden who you
are. are you . er worthy of more or less status you know . where where
do you stand
(Anne1:43-50).
In this narrative, Anne described her sense of herself, her identity, in terms of how
'the bank' and unspecified other people were currently viewing her student status.
While the reference to the bank must have been based on a specific past event or
series of events, the narrative, insofar as it was about her identity, was about an
because they referred to ongoing events, rather than specific events enclosed in
some past or future world of experience. However, I have retained this category,
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interviewees regarded as 'baggage' they would be taking with them through their
7.3.1.2. 'Stories'
Wendy gave the start of quite a long story, (32 lines), about why she was doing a
degree. She herself glossed this as a story - a great long story. The part of it
given below is an 'abstract', (Labov, 1972), that gave the story's resolution - how
Wen: When I was eighteen erm . well I left school when I seventeen
( ) but all my friends went off to colleges and universities and I had a
place lined up in a college in [name of town] to do Dietetics erm . and
it's a great long story but I ended up getting offered a job in a post
office
(Wendy, 126-9).
This story unfolded as a sequence of related events about how she "made steady
progress upwards", (134), until she "couldn't really get any further", (144), in the
Post Office.
7.3.1.3. 'Plans'
example, Sharon talked about what she explicitly called a plan, (what we're
Sha: ...we're going to try and design a project on death and burial
mounds...I'm doing How Green was Queen Victoria but I think we're
basically going to be ignoring that topic we're just you know we've
talked to [name] the guy that runs the course and he thinks it's quite
interesting what we're planning because we we want to go right from
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Neanderthal ...man right through virtually the present day...I think
we'll do quite good on it
(Sharon2, 32-44).
Narratives about specific future events which have a more tentative quality I have
but there seemed to be an interesting distinction in the data between definite plans
that interviewees had already clearly thought out, for example, about their further
careers; and imagining the future, expressing possible narratives, for example,
about the university and their place in it. In the following extract, Sam talked
The topic categories I use here are those I developed in chapter 6. (I discussed in
chapter 6, section 6.2.4., the difficulties of using the topic analysis to enhance this
into five categories: talk about their employment, their education, other people's
educational experience, their home life and their sense of themselves. These
topics distinguish the domains of experience under which I code the narratives in
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7.3.3. ADDITIONAL CRITERIA
The coding of narratives using the criteria I have just laid out was not always easy.
The length of narratives varied considerably, and it was not always easy to judge
on the basis of a shift from the interview context to another time-and-topic 'world'
of experience. The ends of narratives were assessed on the basis of a return to the
there were narratives embedded in one another, the original topic was often
brought back into clear focus in some sort of coda or conclusion at this point. It
was not always easy to decide where a narrative terminated. Sometimes it seemed
wisest to take the next utterance by me as the end of a narrative, on the basis of the
This was not of course an infallible rule, as some of my utterances could also be
7.3.3.2. Other
Some of the longer narratives had smaller narratives embedded in them. I did not
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If I still remained unclear about whether a stretch of text could be coded as a
narrative, after applying all the criteria listed in section 7.3., I did not include it in
the analysis.
7.4. RESULTS
the methods I have outlined. I focus on how the four types of narrative were used
to realise types of 'content', (the domains of experience realised in the five topic
categories).
Table 7.1. below functions as an heuristic for this commentary on the narratives.
talked about in the different types of narrative they used. I then offer a more
in section 7.5.
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Table 7.1.:
Narratives in the data set, coded by type and topic
TYPE TOPIC
EMPL. EDUC. OTHER HOME SELF TOTAL
CONC. 0 2 5 6 6 19
STORY 8 46 11 8 24 97
PLAN 3 4 1 0 0 8
HYPO. 4 16 1 7 7 35
TOTAL 15 68 18 21 37 159
Key:
Narrative type: Topic/domain of experience:
Conc. - Concurrent generic narratives Empl. - Employment
Story Educ. - Education
Plan Other - Other people's educational
Hypo. - Hypothetical narratives experience
Home - Home life
Self - Sense of self
The table shows, not surprisingly, given that my overall aim in the interviews was
to find out about the interviewees' initial perceptions of university, that education
was the commonest topic of narratives. It was the topic of 68 narratives. The type
of narrative most commonly used was story - there were 97 stories. Stories were
most often told about the interviewees' education, (46 stories, which covered F.E.
college, school, and their experience to date of the university). This was followed
by stories about the interviewees' sense of themselves and identity, (24 stories).
Interestingly, there were very few plans. Those that were given tended to be about
their degree, (4 plans in the education topic category). No one expressed definite
plans about their home life or sense of self. The future was presented more
what the interviewees hoped would be the case. There were considerably more of
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these in the education category than in any other category, and these were about
looking in turn at each type of narrative and examining them in relation to their
content, (the topic categories). The examples from the data are extracts from the
As I pointed out in section 7.3.1.1., one of the things that is interesting about the
experience that the interviewees perceived they would carry with them in an
ongoing way through their degree. Concurrent generic narratives were most often
about the home life and sense of self categories, which I will discuss first.
Maria, Pam, Penny, Sharon and Tania all gave concurrent narratives about their
home lives. These expressed different aspects of that 'world' of experience which
the interviewees perceived as being ongoing. Penny, Tania and Maria perceived
there might be ongoing difficulties with their spouses. For example, Maria felt her
husband was "fighting me all the way", (Maria, 212). Sharon and Tania both gave
examples of how they felt supported by their families, while Pam talked about the
ongoing need to organise her two worlds of experience, her life at the university
and her home life," so that yes the washing does get done", (Pam, 346).
Anne, Carol, Connie, Maria and Sharon all gave concurrent narratives about the
sense of self that they were carrying with them as they started their degree, (as in
the example from Anne's first interview given in section 7.3.1.2.). Sharon, for
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example, talked about the club she went to, where she could meet her friends,
which:
This seemed to be an important source of social contact and support for her in a
Connie told most narratives, (four out of the five instances), about other people's
own experience. She gave concurrent narratives about friends of hers who were
currently doing a degree, and who had told her what sort of experience they were
Con: Rolf said to me last week he says he says he's like a kid in a
sweet shop he says he wants to try out everything before he decides
[what subjects to specialise in]
(Connie 1, 702-3).
These occurred in her first interview, conducted just before she had started her
own degree and seemed to form an important source of information for her about
The two concurrent narratives about education, by Pam and Sharon, were both
about how, so far in their experience of the university, they were walking about
the campus feeling a little aimless. The concurrent narrative employment cell was
empty as the interviewees who had been employed had given up their jobs now
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7.4.3. STORIES
One reason why the stories in the data were interesting is that they reflected what
context, regarding their past experience. Stories were the commonest type of
narrative used by the interviewees, and for this reason, I divide my discussion of
them into sections 7.4.3.1. to 7.4.3.5. below, according to topic. About half of the
stories were about the interviewees' education, and a quarter about their sense of
self. These seemed to be the topics about which the interviewees considered they
had most tellable things to say. All the interviewees told stories, but some told
more than others. Connie and Tania were the most prolific story-tellers, both of
them focusing on the education and sense of self domains of experience. (In
chapter 81 look in depth at a few stories Connie told about both these domains).
The commonest topic of stories was education, (46 stories). All the interviewees
information by the interviewees, given that the purpose of the interview was to
elicit their initial impressions of university, that is, their current educational
experience. Such stories were often given to fill in information about their
educational history and included stones about the interviewees' school, F.E.
Sam and Tania told stories about their schooling. This was not a positive
educational experience for either of them, though Tania described how she had "a
thoroughly good time", but this was "because I was messing around all the time I
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didn't do any work", (125-6). Carol, Connie, Maria, Sam and Steve all told stories
about their experiences of F.E. College. These were about the courses they had
done or the positive social experience it was for them, both of which they
university.
In addition there were stories about the university itself. These focused on two
aspects of the interviewees' experience of the university to date. Firstly, there was
the process of applying. For example, the following extract is part of a story
Connie told about the lecturer who interviewed her at the university, who she
Con: I really liked him 'cos . you know he asked me why I wanted to
do Women's Studies you know and I was telling him one of my great
aunts was a suffragette and he said oh keep up the good work I
thought oh I like you you know you're on my wavelength
(Conniel, 479-82).
This extract also contains a the story-within-a-story she had told the lecturer about
her great aunt. Secondly, there were stories about the experience of Introductory
Week. The following is an extract from a story Sharon told about trying to make
Sha: [the bar] was jam packed full and I was sort of thrown I thought
I can't go in there on my own...[I] stood fumbling by the bar thinking
what am I going to do now 'cos I don't know anybody but there was a
group of girls at a table and I just went up and said do you mind ill
sit with you
(Sharon2, 78-84).
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7.4.3.2. Stories about other people's educational experience
Anne, Connie, Mary and Sam between them told 11 stories about other people's
educational experience. For example, Connie told stories about the experiences of
friends of hers at both F.E. college and university. Mary and Anne also both told
stories about other people's experience of university. For example, Anne told the
following story about her brother, which is brief enough to give in its entirety:
Ann: His wife was saying to him what do you want to do those
subjects for . what are you when you've finished that and he just said
old [laugh]
(Annel, 471-2).
Such stories were often illustrative, drawing on other people's experience to make
a point about the interviewee's own experience. This example from Anne's
interview was an illustration of a point she made about wanting, and other people
expecting her, to know what she "was going to be at the end of it", (474). She
wanted something "a little more concrete", (463), than just a general education at
There were 24 stories about sense of self, told by 10 of the interviewees. These
stories were about developments in the interviewees' sense of self - often in their
confidence. For example, Sara told a story about how her unhappy schooling
meant she had to "struggle with myself for years", (288), to believe in her abilities,
and Connie told about how encouraging she found it at F.E. college:
Con: Nobody's ever told me I'm capable of doing it...it was only when
I did the Psychology B unit the first year [at F.E. College] that I
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realised I'd got it in me. and I can't tell you what a confidence
booster that was
(Connie 1,199-203).
Stories about the interviewees' sense of self also described influential insights
they had had. For example, Penny told a story about the influence on her choice
discriminated against as a woman. The following extract is the end of the story,
The eight stories about past employment were told by Pam, Penny, Sam, Tania
and Wendy. Almost all these stories came fairly early in the interview and
some of their employment history. The stories told how it came about that the
interviewees were now undertaking a degree - and they were 'tellable' in the
interviews for that reason. For example, Tania gave quite a long story about her
employment history, (lines 52 to 83), which started off with "what happened
was...", (52). Through this story she explained how coming to university "actually
all started", (56), by evaluating aspects of her work experience, and how those
experiences developed her wish to come to university. Some of these are given
below. The different work experiences and some of Tania's evaluations of them
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[I] ...I worked self employed as an artist. but. I don't know I just
went off it...
[2] ...and then I started volunteer work...and I really loved it. and I
got such good references...
[3] ..the other people I was working with you know they were all sort
of. teachers or social workers anyway. and I thought well goodness
what am I nothing sort of thing...
[4] ...[my] youngest [child] just went to school last year so I thought
I'm going to do something for myself now...
(Tania, 54-6, 63-4, 76-80).
Anne, Carol, Connie, Maria, Pam and Tania told stories about their home life.
These covered interviewees' relations with partners and children. For example,
Anne, Carol and Tania told stories about how their children influenced their
decision to do a degree. Tania said her children were "dead chuffed", (199), when
she passed her qualifying F.E. College exams, and went running up the road to tell
everybody. For Carol, coming to university "all just fell into place when I had the
7.4.4. PLANS
Plans were interesting because they indicated what the interviewees felt they could
be fairly definite about at the start of their degree, regarding their short and long
term futures. They were the type of narrative used least by the interviewees, a
As I have already said, interviewees did not give plans about their home life or
sense of themselves. These had the status of more tentative hypothetical
Plans were expressed by Anne, Connie, Sara, Sharon, Tania and Wendy. Some of
these were short term plans about starting at the university. The example in
191
section 7.3.1.3., by Sharon is an example of this. Connie gave a graphic account
of plans it was suggested she make by a friend who had already experienced
university:
Con: She says I'd have your eyes tested as well this summer 'cos she
says you know you've got a job to see you know the um overhead
projectors and that you know she says . you know that sort of thing is
a very . intimidating really you know it's so vast [at the university]
whereas we've been used to a nice homely little group [of students at
F.E. college]
(Conniel, 520-4).
This was from her first interview, before she had experienced university lectures
herself and suggests how different she expected university to be from F.E. college,
and how important the experience and advice of friends was in making plans of
action.
The longer term plans were aims concerning future employment, or the degree in
relation to it. For example, Wendy planned a broad-based degree because her
husband's field of work was so specialised he could only take a limited range of
jobs:
These plans, like the hypothetical narratives I discuss in the section below, were
revealing about the interviewees perceptions of the university, when they had not
yet had the chance to verify or reject their perceptions on the basis of experience.
So, the two extracts given above are suggestive of what Connie and Wendy were
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taking to be the case, and therefore planning around: for example, that lectures
would be crowded and overhead projections hard to see, and that Psychology was
were narratives of possibility, (they lacked the definiteness of plans). They were
also a type of narrative, widely used by the interviewees, which I had not
anticipated finding. They realised perceptions and beliefs the interviewees' had
about their futures at a point where these were not yet modified by much
experience. At the time of the interviews the interviewees had had very little
experience of the university, (no more than the process of applying, and the
interviewees imagined a future for themselves. They are also interesting with
regard to interviewees' presuppositions, that is, what they took for granted, or
assumed might be the case, about the topics of employment, education, home life
All the interviewees, except Sara, told hypothetical narratives about at least one of
the domains of experience captured by the topic categories. Steve and Anne used
this strategy the most, (6 and 5 instances respectively), and in the most domains of
experience, (3 each).
In this section I make the general point that these hypothetical narratives were
193
would was used to refer to hypothetical events, but this was not the only modality
marker. Noticeably, there were often realisations of low probability modality, that
is, expressions of possibility and speculation rather than certainty about the events
they talked about. The modal auxiliary might was used in this regard. There
were also a range of lexical verbs which similarly expressed low probability:
hope, imagine, think, suppose, wonder. In addition, there were also various modal
The interviewees' use of low probability modality suggests how difficult it was for
them to be definite about how their lives were going to be affected by starting a
degree - though, as I said in chapter 6, (section 6.2.3.), the broad range of domains
of experience they mentioned indicates that they anticipated the effects of doing a
In sections 7.5.2. to 7.5.5 below, I use selected examples from the topic categories
looked at in detail. It is where Anne imagined what it might be like for eighteen
expressed high hopes about careers - Sharon, for example saying she "imagines
[Religious Studies] not being perfect for many jobs", (120) . Steve graphically
expressed his perception that what he would like to do was an unrealisable ideal:
194
Ste: In a Utopian world in which God ( ) came down and said what
do you want to be . I would like to have been a researcher... for TV or
radio...that's where I hope to be going... [but] I don't think I will . I
think it would have to be a case of God coming down . and [saying]
where do you want to go... (I'm just going to rely on Careers there)
which isn't. (I'll) . no doubt. end up with just being pushed.
somewhere. like it ended up with us at sixteen being pushed
somewhere . where I don't particularly want to go...
(Steve, 500-13).
In this extract, what Steve hoped for, (lexical verb expressing low probability
modality), was contrasted to what he had no doubt about, (an adverbial expressing
certainty, that is, high probability). This use of modal certainty is less categorical
his view that he would indeed end up being pushed where he did not want to go,
degree would depend on unnamed forces larger than himself, (perhaps including
the Careers Service at the university), which it would take the intervention of yet
another force larger than himself, God, to prevent. Grammatically, and perhaps
quite realistically in life, he constructed himself as the one 'affected' by an
unnamed 'agent', when it came to future employment: he had been in the past and
It is not surprising, given the agenda of the interviews, that the topic category of
education was the one most used for hypothetical narratives. All of them were
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7.5.3.1. Academic work
Carol, Wendy and Penny all told narratives about their perceptions of the
academic work they would do at the university. In the extracts from Penny's and
ways, (dealing with concepts, really understanding academic texts). For them,
and not just in these extracts, perceptions about university as a place for
Wen: What I'd like to see develop and broaden [is] erm you know
that I can . perhaps take a paper or. a chapter and actually sit down
and really sort of understand it
(Wendy, 275-7).
The other hypothetical narratives in the education category were about perceptions
contained. Steve described what he called two myths, (234), because he lacked
experience about what university was actually like. In describing them as myths,
he made explicit his belief that university would not be, or not be wholly, like
these perceptions. One of these was a perception of the university based on the
television programme 'The Young Ones', where students "just drink and clown
about not going to lectures", (227). This is very different from the perceptions of
Wendy and Penny just mentioned, though his other myth was more like them:
being at university was about being taken "to a well of wisdom".
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Anne described expectations she had about university life, which at the time of the
interview, that is, at the end of Introductory Week, she was no longer sure would
be met:
Ann: I really thought that . once I'd started up here . I'd be getting
into sort of my teeth into a subject in depth...! think I still I'm feeling
that. the university want you to be a broadly educated person. rather
than an expert at something at the end of it...they want you to be. a
certain sort of person rather than. coming here. for the education
(Anne2, 60-1, 94-100).
What Anne had been taking for granted was that she would be able to get her teeth
into a subject in depth, become an expert, that university was for the education, as
Penny and Wendy also suggested by their focus on intellectual development.
Instead, her initial experience during Introductory Week caused her to modify
these assumptions about the university to they want you to be a certain sort of
person. These implications for her identity, not just her education, were
something she went on to talk about later.
the university when he contrasted it to his work experience, where there was
An assumption about the university in this example is that it is a place where work
does secure one's place, unlike his employment situation where hard work was no
guarantee of security. Another is that university is out to educate people, a
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different view of university from the one expressed by Anne above, that they want
you to be a certain sort of person rather than coming here for the education.
As I pointed out in section 7.4.1., interviewees did not give plans about their
home life or sense of self, but they did tell hypothetical narratives about these
topics. A number of the interviewees expressed that they were "trying to juggle
twa different worlds", (Penny, 226). Hypothetical narratives about home life
tended to reflect this with the focus being the interviewees' hopes and concerns
about their children or partners. Mary hypothesised about becoming a "better role
This carries the assumption that there were indeed broadening possibilities about
coming to university, (as I suggested Penny and Wendy also expressed, in the
pervious section), and that these could have widespread and positive effects not
just for her, but also for her daughter. Penny, Connie and Pam all made
projections about how their partners might respond to them doing a degree. For
Pam: I might turn round and say well tonight tomorrow night there's
something on and I won't be home till nine o'clock. and I am just
wondering how this is going to go down
(Pam: 287-9).
This suggests that Pam believed her going to university might have potentially
disruptive effects on her relationship with her husband. Something similar is also
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suggested by Anne and Tania, who both talked about having to deal with
Anne, Steve and Maria told hypothetical narratives about developing self
something hoped for but not certain. For Anne, there was an assumption that
confidence was a part of the package she hoped to receive at university, something
she recognised as necessary for the kind of job she was using her degree as a
means to reach:
7.6. CONCLUSION
linked their current experience at the university with other times and other
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narratives provides a context for the more detailed and in-depth analysis of a small
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CHAPTER 8
8.1. INTRODUCTION
8.1.1. THE TEXT FOR ANALYSIS
8.1.2. OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTER
8.2. THE TEXTUAL' FUNCTION: DISCUSSION OF LABOV'S METHOD OF NARRATIVE
ANALYSIS
8.2.1. LABOV'S STRUCTURE OF NARRATIVES
8.2.1.1. 'Narrative clauses'
8.2.1.2. 'Free clauses'
8.2.2. APPLYING THE LABOVIAN METHOD
8.2.3. THE TEN STORIES
8.2.4. TEXTUAL FEATURES OF THE STORIES
8.3. THE 'INTERPERSONAL' FUNCTION: MEANINGS ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER-
INTERVIEWEE RELATIONSHIP
8.3.1. THE OTHER ELEMENTS: EVALUATION, ABSTRACT, ORIENTATION,
CODA
8.3.2. SEMANTIC LINKS BETWEEN STORIES
8.3.3. THE ORIENTATION OF NARRATIVES TO TWO CONTEXTS
8.4. THE 'IDEATIONAL FUNCTION: REPRESENTING A FAMILIAR WORLD
8.4.2. PERIPHERALISING THE ACADEMIC
8.4.3. TALKING ABOUT TALK
8.4.4. PROCESS TYPES
8.4.4.1. Mental and verbal processes: feeling and saying
8.4.4.2. Material processes: human participants do everyday things
8.4.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF REPRESENTING THE FAMILIAR
8.5. CONCLUSION
8.1 INTRODUCTION
The interview I have chosen is the first part of Connie's second interview. I refer
to this text, which is the analytical focus of this chapter, as 'Connie's text', and I
give my reasons for this choice of text in section 8.1.1. below. In this chapter I
show that Cormie's text is densely packed with narratives and I argue that these
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narratives consistently represent the world of the university in a particular way:
they focus almost exclusively on its familiar, informal, everyday life aspects.
My reasons for choosing to analyse Connie's text are as follows. This second
interview with Connie was conducted on the last day of Introductory Week. It
thus captured Connie's discursively constructed meanings about her first week at
the university. In addition, while conducting the two interviews with Connie, I
came up against three 'problems' which were not features of any of the other
interviews. I later identified them as follows. The first was that Connie's talk
often seemed a bewildering tangle of anecdotal material. The second was that I
found it hard to 'get the floor' and ask her about what interested me, (the themes
contained in List 1, chapter 6, section 6.2.2.). The third problem was that while
she certainly talked about what my agenda was for the interviews, that is, her
initial experiences of university, she seemed to say surprisingly little about the
university itself
that made me attempt a detailed analysis of part of one of her interviews, in order
what seemed problematic was likely to yield interesting insights, (see chapter 2,
section 2.4.2.1.). These three problems are addressed in sections 8.2. to 8.4. of
I would like to point out that the arguments I put forward in this chapter refer only
to the part of Connie's second interview which I analyse. However, it is the case
that story telling was endemic throughout both her interviews, so that much of
what I say here has some general applicability to the rest of her two interviews.
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(The coding of Connie's interviews for the quantitative analysis in chapter 7, see
section 7.4.3., indicated that she told more 'stories' in each of her interviews than
In this chapter, unlike the other analyses in this thesis, I comment on meaning
making in only one of the interviews. My reason for this is that it is a way of
doing the kind of detailed linguistic analysis that it is impossible to do for the
whole of this large data set, and that it leads to different kinds of insights about
In sections 8.2. to 8.4. I pay attention, in turn, to each of the three types of
meaning which Halliday, (1985), distinguishes and argues that any text realises in
for this chapter. He uses these three types of meaning as a framework for
as follows.
In section 8.2., I discuss 'textual' meanings because I explore how the narratives in
the data are organised, using Labov's (1972) method of narrative analysis.
(op.cit.), points out, though Labov devotes a lot of attention to how narrators
evaluate or express the point of their narratives, his primary concern is with how
narratives map reality by reproducing the temporal relations occurring between the
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actual events being narrated. That is, his focus is on the connections between
discuss 'interpersonal' meanings in section 8.3. - that is, meanings which realise
the role relationships between speaker and hearer. (This connects these narratives
to the interpersonal focus of Part II). In section 8.4. I discuss how the narratives
realised 'ideational' meanings, that is, representations of the world. I argue here
that. Connie selectively represented only familiar aspects of her experience of the
university.
Connie's text, on which this analysis is based, is given at the end of the chapter,
personal experience. All the narratives that I analysed in my data were also about
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Thirdly, I note that I use Labov's approach for a different purpose than he does.
The focus of his approach is the internal structure of stories. My own aim in using
his approach is for the limited purpose of distinguishing between the stories in
Connie's text. This is how I answer the first of the 'problems' with the text that I
be understood as a text densely packed with stories. This Labovian analysis forms
the basis for exploring the stories' 'interpersonal' and 'ideational' meanings in
sections 8.3. and 8.4.
In section 8.2.1. below, I describe the structural elements of stories which Labov
Labov, (op.cit.:363), argues that stories can contain up to six structural elements:
of the narrative; the result of, or resolution to, the complicating action; and a coda
which signals the story's conclusion. Typically, this is the sequence in which
these elements appear but orientation and evaluation clauses may occur at various
and its resolution where present, which consist of 'narrative clauses', are the
essential ones. I explain how Labov defines 'narrative clauses' in the following
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8.2.1.1. 'Narrative clauses'
A story is, minimally, a sequence of at least two independent clauses, the order of
which in the text matches the temporal ordering of the events being narrated,
(Labov, op.cit.:360). These are 'narrative clauses', between which there is always
text, (Mishler, op.cit.:79). They carry the complicating action element of the story
in the order in which it actually occurred. In the following extract from Connie's
text, the underlined clauses are independent clauses and form a mini-narrative, (in
the way that Labov describes, op.cit.:361). This sequence cannot be changed and
Oh I was talking to this woman and there was this terrible queue to
get out of the Great Hall it went round and round and round there
was three queues of it in fact I was clever I cleared off and went and
got a sandwich and then came back to get out and you know everyone
was envying me these sandwiches but I thought well you could have
done it anyway you know because it was about two o'clock when I got
out
(lines 39-45).
Labov makes a basic distinction between 'narrative' and 'free' clauses. 'Free'
clauses are not essential to stories but are frequently present. They can be located
in various parts of the text without disrupting the narrative sequence, (ibid.). For
example, the clause I was clever in the extract above is a free clause and could
have been placed at the end of the narrative sequence of underlined clauses as a
retrospective comment on them, without changing the order of events or the basic
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'Free' clauses have a number of functions. In terms of the six structural elements
of stories which Labov defines, they may be used to evaluate the action carried in
'narrative' clauses. This is the case in the example I was clever from the extract
above: Connie here evaluated her own behaviour, which is what the complicating
action and its resolution was about. Free clauses also give orienting information
In order to fulfil the limited aim of distinguishing between the stories in Connie's
text, I applied Labov's method as follows. I picked out narrative clauses, that is,
those carrying complicating action and its resolution. I defined narrative clauses,
inflexible order. I added to this Polanyi's definition, since she follows Labov's
approach, by further specifying narrative clauses as ones which told about "active,
affirmative, punctual, non iterative, completive" events, which were in the simple
of the text into 6 main stories, which existed almost back-to-back, with 4 more
stories embedded in them, (see the underlined clauses in Connie's text, section
8.6.). This was my main purpose for using Labov's method, but in sections 8.2.4.
and 8.3.1. below, I discuss some interesting features of the stories which also
I start by pointing out that I only coded the 6 stories in Connie's text for the
quantitative analysis in chapter 7. (I did not code the embedded stories, as I
explained in chapter 7, section 7.3.3.2.). Of the 6 main stories, stories 2 and 3 fell
into the 'sense of self category, and the others into the 'education' category.
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I summarise the propositional content of the 10 stories here. This will give a
general sense of what they are about, while the specific complicating action
carried by the narrative clauses can be read off from Connie's text, (section 8.6.,
Story 1:
Connie was terrified, but she went to the University on the bus with her friend(s),
(on the first day of Introductory Week), and within about fifteen minutes she felt
so happy.
Story la:
The husband of one of these friends had come to see her off at the bus stop.
Story 2:
Dave was fed up with Connie: she said she felt so excited, (during Introductory
Week), and that it was like Christmas, but he said that Boxing Day was still to
come, (when she would come back down to earth?).
Story 3:
Connie and Dave went out. She told him she had been laughing and joking to
strangers during Introductory Week, as she used to do before she got married and
had her daughter. She felt as if that (humorous) part of her had reappeared during
Introductory Week.
Story 3a:
Dave had not wanted to go out, but Connie thought "sod this!"
Story 3b:
There was a big queue in the Great Hall, so Connie cleverly went and got a
sandwich. She came back to the queue and did not get through it until two
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Story 4:
One of the lecturers had been saying things such as the Culture and
Communication course was about sex and spitting, which had made everyone
laugh.
Story 4a:
Connie said she loved the lecturer. Friends (?) said "Oh nor, but she said she did
Story 5:
One of Connie's photographs had her eyes shut on it. (During registration) a
lecturer asked her if that was how she would look in lectures. Connie said no, she
Story 6:
Connie and others had to go for a talk with a lecturer. He gave free cups of coffee,
and also biscuits, and Connie asked if she could keep the biscuit tin. She felt it
In this section, I discuss three features of the stories in Connie's text, which are
interesting from the point of view of the textual function of language. They are
also interesting with respect to the first 'problem' I gave in section 8.1.1. - that
Connie's text seemed a bewildering mass of anecdotal material - as these points all
interpretation of Connie's text that I give in section 8.6. - that is, that it contained
the 6 stories summarised above and 4 more small ones embedded in them. (The
(op.cit.:73), points out, deciding whether there is a single story or a story with
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related sub-plots, or a cluster of separate stories is a matter of the analyst's
interpretation). I suggest this difficulty in interpreting the text was a result of how
closely packed these stories were. Labov's approach seemed to me a useful one
for unpicking their complexity and seeing an organisation in what at first appeared
Secondly, I note that a particular characteristic of Connie's text was her repetition
of narrative clauses at points where she wished to add more detail. She did this
twice, in Story 1, (lines 13-14, repeated and elaborated in lines 15-17), and Story
originally spoken text in the process of its production: the signs of planning that
are not present in written texts are still present here. The fact that these
Thirdly, I note that most of Cormie's stories revolved around talk: the narrative
progression realised in the narrative clauses was that someone said something to
someone else at a specific moment in time. I refer to this again in section 8.4.3.
Here I point out that narrative clauses which were also reporting clauses did not on
their own convey the content enclosed in the act of speaking - which was what
these stories were about. The narrative reporting clauses only captured the fact
that these were stories about talk. I note in this regard that Polanyi treats reported
discourse on the main story line as narrative propositions, and the relevant
reporting clauses as narrative clauses, (op.cit.:38).
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8.3. THE 'INTERPERSONAL' FUNCTION: MEANINGS
In this section I discuss the second 'problem' I outlined in section 8.1.1., namely,
the difficulty I had in breaking into the flow of Connie's talk, of getting and
narrative analysis. My reason for this is that though his six structural elements are
related to the textual function of language, I argue that they also throw light on
interpersonal meanings in Connie's text. They help explain how Connie remained
the dominant speaker in the text. This is the topic of section 8.3.1., and concludes
the clause, (op.cit.:371), while evaluation that is carried in free clauses he calls
'external'. These free clauses may remain embedded within the narrative in
various ways. Alternatively, the narrator may direct a point to the audience, for
example, "and it was funny", (story 3, line 33), which is interesting with regard to
stories. As Mishler points out, Labov pays little attention to the effect on stories
of the interview context in which they are told. He backgrounds the effect of the
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interviewer on the production of interviewee stories by "painting her or him out of
It is interesting to note that none of the stories had abstracts, that is, initial
summaries of the whole story, except the first clause of story 2, "oh Dave's fed up
with me", (line 21). This could be understood as a summary of the story, as
informing the listener about how story 2 should be understood: that what Dave
and Connie said to each other should elaborate the meaning 'Dave was fed up with
clause in the story; it also evaluated his behaviour. This example supports what I
found more generally to be true in Connie's text, that free clauses sometimes
But with regard to interpersonal meanings, there are two points I would like to
make in relation to abstracts. Firstly, the lack of initial abstracts made the
the context of the stories for the listener. Orientational information identifies
"time, place, persons, and their activity, or the situation", (Labov, op.cit.:364).
stories, other than Connie herself, seemed to cluster at the beginnings of story 1,
(one or two people who shared her feelings), story 2, (Dave), and stories 4, 5 and
stories 1, 3 and 6. For example, during story 1, Connie added more information
about the situation of the story - the bus journey - to locate exactly when it was on
this journey that she realised that 'it was all happening': it was at the point in the
journey "when we was coming up the hill into the University", (line 14-5).
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Secondly, abstracts, along with codas, set boundaries around a story. They
introduce and terminate it, and as such act as opportunities for a change of
concluded, that there is nothing more to say in answer to the question 'then what
happened?', (Labov, ibid:366). It can show the effects of the story events on the
narrator, (ibid:365), as for example at the end of story 4, "we were killing
ourselves laughing", (line 71). As well as doing this, the concluding lines to story
2, "well I haven't got to Boxing Day yet", (lines 25-6), also brought both Connie
and me back to the interview present, and this made the speaker change in the next
line possible. As this last example illustrates, codas form a bridge back to the
However, in Connie's text there were frequently semantic links between the stories
which offset the closure signalled by codas. I suggest these, and the lack of
abstracts, created a continuity between the stories which made it difficult for me to
get the floor more often, a point I discuss in the following section.
In Connie's text each story is semantically linked to the next. Between story 1 and
story 2 there was the cluster of references to emotions, "happy", "boring" and "fed
up", (lines 18-21). At the beginning of Story 3, Connie continued to talk about
dialogues between her and Dave, ("...I was telling him", line 33), and a dialogue
had been the focus of story 2. The link between story 3 and story 4 was an
explicit comparison of two categories of people, students and lecturers, (lines 55-
7) . This marked a shift in the topic of the subsequent stories from Connie's peers
about the behaviour of lecturers. The unfinished clause "one or two of the
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lecturers were really", (line 72), was a clause which formed a semantic bridge
linking the two stories. Story 5 was linked to story 6 by a shift of focus from one
lecturer to another, "oh yeah there was even one", (line 81).
The embedded stories were also semantically related to the immediately preceding
section of the main story in which they were embedded. It was as if Connie's
memory had been jogged into telling a brief tangential story at these points. So,
for example, embedded story la, about Connie's friend's husband coming to see
her off on the bus, is an expansion of the following point in the sequence of
Monday", (line 9). The jogged memory interpretation is supported by her use of
pauses, which preceded, and her use of exclamatory "oh", which initiated, two of
the four embedded stories, (stories la and 3b). This jogging of memory was also a
way in which the main stories were linked to each other: pauses preceded the start
of main stories 5 and 6, and use of "oh" initiated main stories 2,4 and 6.
The impression of an unbroken chain of interrelated events was not only achieved
by the links between stories, but also by the use of conjunctions, which organised
clause relations within the individual stories. 'And' is much the commonest
conjunction and helped to create an impression of a constantly extending and
40 times with the conjunction 'and'. The adversative 'but' was used 11 times,
for example the turn changes between Connie and Dave in story 2, (lines 22 and
24). 'Because' was the most frequently used hypotactic conjunction, (7 times), and
again helped to create the impression of unfolding events, by marking causal links
between them.
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These means of linking story to story, and linking clause to clause within them,
created an impression of great density in Connie's text, and made it difficult for
me to interrupt her talk. Polanyi, (op.cit.:32), points out that in conversation the
end of a clause can be interpreted as the possible end of a turn and an opportunity
for a change of speaker. When a story is told this norm is suspended, because
story, (see section 8.2.1.1.). In Connie's stories, the semantic links between stories
meant that each story was not clearly distinguished as a discrete unit with a
beginning and an ending. This meant there was not a clear entry point for a
change of speaker so that the "recipients [could] respond to the story in some way
which indicate[d] acceptance of the fact that it was told", (ibid.). Instead, the
narrative units were linked semantically, and this made breaking into the chain of
stories difficult.
Finally and briefly, I would like to point out that narratives are oriented to two
contexts - to the events they recount, and to the context in which the narratives are
told, (Bauman, 1986:2). In the case of Connie's stories, both contexts - the events
the University, were unfamiliar ones. In section 8.4. I discuss how Connie
Here, I wish to focus on the ways she oriented her talk to the interview context by
discussing some non-narrative sections of it. There are only a few of these, which
again helps to account for why it was difficult for me to get and hold the floor.
There are non-narrative sections of the text which are not explicitly oriented to the
interview context. These are the bridging clauses between story 1 and 2, (line 19),
215
between story 3 and 4, (line 55), and between story 4 and 5, (line 79). I referred to
these in my discussion of links between stories, (section 8.3.2.), and they are not
However, there are three features of Connie's text which are particularly oriented
to the interview context, because they refer, not to the narrative worlds she
frequent use of comment clauses - variants on you know are used 23 times in this
short extract from the interview. These clauses are shifts out of the narrative
world and refer to the narrator and audience as participants in a shared social
comprehension of what she was saying, and as a small demand for my continued
attention. Another feature were the two occasions where Connie briefly
suspended her narrative, in order to direct her talk explicitly to me as her audience.
These are line 63, "I don't know whether I'd better tell you", and line 83, "I don't
know if you know him", (that is, the lecturer who is the topic of story 6).
Finally, there were three occasions in Connie's text where there was a shift of
speaker from Connie to me. These occasions were brief turns by me as the
interviewer, in each of which I tried to direct the flow of talk. In line 27 I tried to
clarify the meaning of Boxing Day. In line 30 I re-formulated the feelings Connie
had been describing. In line 66 I tried to direct the talk onto clarifying what
courses Connie had decided to do. I note that in each case, Connie quickly
returned to the Introductory Week context of her stories, by telling a new story or
continuing with one she was already telling. As I have said, this apparent
section 8.4. below, made it difficult for me to get the floor and ask her about what
interested me concerning her experience.
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8.4. THE 'IDEATIONAL' FUNCTION: REPRESENTING A
FAMILIAR WORLD
In this section I focus on the ideational content of the stories in Connie's text, that
is, what Connie represented of the world in them. I analyse aspects of the
mentioned in section 8.1.1., I argue that Connie drew on a familiar everyday life
model of the world in her stories and made sense of the unfamiliar experience of
Stories construct reality in particular ways because the narrator selects aspects of
the continuous flow of experience and organises them into a sequence of discrete
action, but then resolved into a state of equilibrium again. Hodge and Kress,
part, by the values and beliefs about the world held by the narrator. A story tends
What I argue in section 8.4. is that the stories in Connie's text projected a triumph
of personal, private domain values with which she was well acquainted, and
institution. This can be seen, for example, in how the stories tended to end with a
state of affairs that was a restatement of what was familiar to Connie. So, for
example, Story 1 ended with Connie feeling that she belonged; Story 3 ended on a
very personal note, with the recovery of a fun-loving part of her; and Story 6
concluded with "it was lovely to be in that sort of atmosphere where you could
have this", (lines 95-6), the atmosphere referred to seeming to imply one of
friendly informality. Stories 4 and 5 also ended on a jokey and informal note.
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In sections 8.4.1. to 8.4.4. below, I explore in more detail how the stories in
The stories in Connie's text represented a great deal about aspects of her
journey, coping with a queue, laughing at jokes - rather than representing events
that where she did mention events unique to Introductory Week, she
ones. For example, story 6 contained very little about the specified event as a
(what she and the lecturer said to each other). Even her brief acknowledgement of
its academic element was transformed into colloquial form, "a talk". This is in
contrast to the information booklet, which describes the event impersonally and in
terms of its academic function as "contact with major study departments", (p 13).
series of imperatives:
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"Go to the first desk and give your name...complete...the registration
form...go to the table of the department responsible for your proposed
major degree scheme", (p 15).
become student members of the university institution. Connie's stories were all
about Introductory Week, but they had very few references to the week's
"interviews with personal tutors", "talks about major study areas" and "registration
for Part I courses", (p 9-11), all of which are compulsory events. Her only
references to them were oblique: being talked into doing a particular course, (in
story 4), being in the Great Hall, (stories 3b and 5), and the Wednesday talk, (story
6). The last two refer to what would be called Registration and Major Study Area
talks respectively in official documents, though this is not explicit in the text.
the events she recounted were represented in terms of the talk that occurred in
them. For example, when she described her decision to do Culture and
Communication, she elaborated by saying "I got talked into it", (line 65). She also
used the mental process verb 'to think' as a verbal process in a reporting clause,
(lines 36 and 44), which accentuated the pervasiveness of talk - even thoughts
were constructed as talk. The "me I used to be" was also a person who was
characterised as someone who used to talk in a certain way, "I'd just come out with
something and everybody'd start laughing", (lines 52-3). She also selected
departmental officers will discuss with you your proposed major course and your
219
choice of Part I subjects", p15). She also referred to the talks about major study
areas, the verbal interactive nature of which she reiterated in her own account as,
Process types are part of a text's transitivity structure, and express the text's
ideational meanings, that is, the view of the world being represented in the text,
(Halliday, 1985:101). I argue that the process types which Connie used in her
stories helped to realise an ordinary life view of the world, where the feeling,
Most of the mental processes in Connie's account were of the 'affection' sub-type,
with the verb 'to feel' being the most commonly used, (six times). In fact,
funny", "happy" - with most reference to pleasant emotions, for example, the
In her use of verbal processes there was massive repetition of the verb 'to say', (it
appeared 27 times), especially in reporting clauses. Six of her stories, (2, 3, 4, 4a,
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8.4.4.2. Material processes: human participants do everyday
things
Mental and verbal processes typically have human 'senser' and 'sayer' participants,
(ibid:108), as they do in this text. But in this text it was also the case that almost
all the material processes had human actors. 40 out of the 44 material processes
had human actors, and in 27 cases the human actor(s) were first person singular or
plural pronouns which referred to, or included, Connie. The text's orientation to
people, and to Connie in particular, was partly established by all these human
sensers, sayers and actors. It was also established by her use of the active voice
almost entirely. The world of Introductory Week that she represented was full of
certain types of human activity: the focus was on individuals, not the institution,
who were feeling, saying and doing things, acting on the world, but acting on it as
individuals.
Material processes in the active voice with human actors also only represented
'doings', a lot of them about travel or movement, for example: "going", "went up",
"got off', in Story 1; "cleared off', "got out", in Story 3b; "go", "get", "take",
life practicality, which was not specific to its academic and institutional purposes.
It is also worth noting that the stories in Connie's text represented only certain
with stories 1 to 3 involving peers of one sort or another - friends, her boyfriend
Dave, and other students; and stories 4 to 6 each focusing on the activity of a
lecturer. She used quite a wide range of categories for the human participants in
221
note that only "student" and "lecturer" are categories that are specific to
institutional roles people filled in Introductory Week at the university. In
addition, only the lecturer category was amplified, and this was done by appealing
to stereotypes: the simile, "like a mad professor", (line 82), acted as a baseline for
86) than this one, and one or two, perhaps unlike this one, were a "bit fuddy
events and the foregrounding of familiar aspects of Introductory Week was how
What did not fit the model was either selected out of her stories altogether,
domain values held, was that Connie did not need to change her values in order to
perceive herself as a student. It also meant she was not able to negotiate with, or
challenge, the institutional values of the University because she did not perceive
them. By the time of a follow up interview I had with Connie at the end of Term
1 she was expressing considerable disillusion with the University, which may
have been the effect of the gradual imposition on her of these institutional values:
"I felt like I was being taken over as though I was trying to be
changed into an academic somehow and I don't want to be . I might be
going up there and I might be doing it but I don't want to become a
bookworm or a boffin or anything I still want to be me and I felt as
though I was being taken over"
(Connie, follow up interview).
222
The quote is suggestive of both how she came to feel positioned by institutional
values, taken over by them and the threat this seemed to her sense of self. It was
the initial affirmation of this which had made her so happy in Introductory Week:
for example, "I felt like I belonged there", (line 18), "I feel I've been given a big
present", (line 24). So, Connie's representation of the University as a place where
private domain values of the personal and interpersonal were acceptable was both
enabling, because it made her feel glad to be there, and constraining, because it
masked the institutional values that she later felt tried to position her as a kind of
what extent she was responding to the University's appropriation of everyday life
activities and discourses, (see chapter 1, section 1.5.1.). I suggest the boundary
between the public domain of the University and the private domain of (Connie's)
everyday life is not clear cut. Introductory Week, as a time and place where these
8.5. CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have explored the 10 stories in Connie's text in some detail, and in
so doing have provided a contrasting 'take' on the narratives in the data set to the
particular had recourse to, as the stories in her text have shown.
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8.6. CONNIE'S TEXT
Connie's text is given in full below, with the transcript notation. I present the text
in a way which draws attention to the fact that it contains ten stories. I do this by
insetting the main and embedded stories, and underlining the narrative clauses
within them. Stories 1 to 6 are headed as such in italics, and inset. Stories
embedded in these stories are also headed, (a and b), and are inset further. All
stories in the text are in bold type. Text which I have taken to be non-narrative, is
'You know' comment clauses occurring within stories are not separated out from
them, because the visual representation of the text would become too complex if
they were. However, I note that they are not really clauses relating to the narrative
world, but to the interview context, so they are given in plain type.
1 Story I :
2 CON: It was lovely to know people up there already but um . there was
3 one or two all had the same feeling 'cos you know I was absolutely
4 terrified and . oh even a week last Tuesday I was all for packing it in I
5 wasn't going you know and d'you know I went up with my friend on
6 the bus because they've started this new bus it's smashing it's only half
7 an hour up there and it's limited stop it doesn't even go in the bus
8 station which is smashing but urn . oh there was three of us went up
9 together on Monday afternoon and er
10 Embedded story la:
11 . oh yeah 'cos one of them her husband came and stood with
her at the bus stop you know to see her off you know
13 we were all absolutely you know. got off the bus went up the steps
14 and my legs turned to oh yeah you know when we was coming up the
15 hill into the university I said God it's actually happening and we got
16 off the bus and we come up the steps you know from the underpass
17 and my legs went to jelly and d'you know within about fifteen minutes
18 I felt like I belonged there and I felt so happy
19 I mean it was totally boring yesterday but
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20 Story 2:
21 oh Dave's fed up with me he says I'm he says you're talking so fast
22 and that but I said it's been like this all week and . you know and I
23 said to him last night I said. it's like Christmas [laugh] I said I feel
like I've been given a big present and I'm so excited but he says yeah
25 but there's Boxing Day the day after [laugh] well I haven't got to
26 Boxing Day yet
27 INT: Perhaps Boxing Day will be next Monday when you start
28 CON: Yeah I says or perhaps a couple of weeks you know later when you come
9 9 back down to earth but
30 INT: You feel you feel kind of excited and on a high=
31 CON: =Oh terrible terrible yeah you know
32 Story 3:
33 and it was funny because. I was telling him when we went out
34 Embedded stoty 3a:
35 I made him go out last night he didn't want to but he'd been
36 out the night before so I thought sod this
37 so I said
38 Embedded story 3b:
39 . oh I was talking to this woman and there was this terrible
40 queue to get out of the Great Hall it went round and round and
41 round there was three queues of it in fact I was clever I cleared
of and went and got a sandwich and then came back to get
43 out and you know everyone was envying me these sandwiches
44 but I thought well you could have done it anyway you know
45 because it was about two o'clock when I got out
46 and urn. I was saying to Dave last night I says I've been laughing and
47 joking to people this week that I've never met before or you know or
48 there's perhaps been someone I know from college and then someone
49 that you don't know and . J said er I feel like the me I used to be
50 about fourteen years ago before I ever got married and had my
51 daughter because I used to. people always said. I didn't realise I was
52 being funny you know I'd just come out with something and
53 everybody'd start laughing and that and. I knew that person was still
54 inside me and I feel like it's . come out this week
55 because it hasn't just been. you know the students it's some of the lecturers
56 Story 4:
57 oh there was one lecturer
58 Embedded story 4a:
59 I says oh I love him and they all says oh no and I says I don't
60 mean that way
61 I mean I just feel you know you could feel there was a little twinkle in
62 his eyes and there's things he's been saying
63 I don't know whether I better tell you [laugh] you know and .
64 oh there's little things like that I've decided to do Culture and
65 Communication I got talked into it but I think it's a really good idea
66 INT: Oh have you I was going to ask you about that because I knew you weren't
67 quite sure
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68 CON: Yeah
69 but he said it's all somebody said one bloke says to him what's it all
70 about and he says oh it's about sex and spitting [laugh] we were
71 killing ourselves laughing
72 you know one or two of the lecturers were really
73 Story 5..
74 . like when we was in the Great Hall yesterday one of my photographs
75 it had my eyes shut on it and this lecturer he says he's the one who's
76 going to be teaching me this Culture and Communication he says oh
77 this is the way you'll look in the lectures is it and I says oh no I'll be
78 lying on the floor in lectures [laugh]
79 you know what I mean and. I mean
80 Story 6:
81 . oh yeah there was even one it was [lecturer's name] and he looks like
82 a mad professor you know he's got big bifocals
83 I don't know if you know him
84 bifocals on and that we had to go and have a talk on Wednesday
85 afternoon but I mean he was totally different he wasn't he wasn't quite
86 so you know sort of flamboyant as some of the others but he says do
87 you want a free cup of coffee and he had a man at the machine so we
88 could all go and get a free cup of coffee and then he had a big tin of
89 biscuits and handed it round . oh and when oh yeah he had the tin of
90 biscuits and he said oh I'll take the lid off and halve them and you
91 know take them round to the rest of us and I says oh can I keep the
92 tin then you know and you felt like . you know you could talk like that
93 you know well they've said there are one or two that are a bit fuddy
94 duddy but it was lovely to be in that sort of atmosphere where you
95 could have this
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CHAPTER 9
9.1. INTRODUCTION
9.2. DEFINING DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
9.2.1. A CONTINUUM OF MODES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
9.2.1.1. The Narrative Report of Discourse Acts, (NRDA)
9.2.1.2. indirect Discourse, (ID)
9.2.1.3. Free Indirect Discourse, (FID)
9.2.1.4. Direct Discourse, (DD)
9.2.1.5. Free Direct Discourse, (FDD)
9.2.2. DIFFICULTIES WITH DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN MODES
9.2.2.1. The representation of thought
9.2.2.2. Borderline cases between the modes
9.2.2.3. The free modes: FDD and FID
9.2.3. PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN RECOGNISING INSTANCES OF
DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
9.3. DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION AS AN ASPECT OF INTERTEXTUALITY
9.3.1. THE DIALOGIC RELATION OF REPRESENTING AND REPRESENTED
DISCOURSE
9.3.2. ASSIMILATION AND FAITHFULNESS TO THE ANTERIOR DISCOURSE
9.3.2.1. Representing the university's written literature
9.3.2.2. Representing the interviewee's own voice or the interviewer's voice
9.3 3. 'CONSTRUCTED DISCOURSE'
9.3.4. INTERDISCURSIVITY - DRAWING ON DISCOURSE TYPES
9.4. CONCLUSION
9.1. INTRODUCTION
interviewees' representation of discourse, that is, their talk about talk, (Coulmas,
1986:2). This continues the focus of Part III of the thesis, since in these two
chapters I explore what voices from other domains of their experience the
interviewees drew on and represented during the course of their interviews. These
227
In chapters 9 and 10 I argue that in trying to talk about an experience the
interviewees had not yet had - that of being an undergraduate - they drew on what
other people had to say about it, (and also on internal voices of their own). They
drew both on the familiar voices of friends, family and the work place, and on the
unfamiliar voices they heard emanating from the institution they were about to
enter in the effort to integrate the new experience of starting a degree. The
presence of this multitude of other voices gave their talk a markedly dialogic
did. In chapters 7 and 8, each chapter was a different 'take' on the phenomenon of
examples from the data set. This provides a context for chapter 10, where I do
In both these chapters I use the term 'discourse representation' rather than 'reported
more inclusive than the latter, since writing as well as speech can be represented,
(and is so in the data). It also highlights that the reporting of discourse involves
choices about how to do so: whether to represent only the message, (the
speaker accent, social roles and so on. I shall refer to the discourse that is reported
as the 'represented discourse', (or the 'anterior discourse'); and I shall refer to the
228
interviewees' discourse in the interviews, in which represented discourse is
chapters 9 and 10, illustrating each with examples from the data set. The five
modes of discourse representation which I discuss here are the primary criteria I
use in coding instances of discourse representation in the data set for the analyses
in chapter 10. I note that when it came to coding the data, it was sometimes
difficult to tell which mode of discourse representation was being used. I discuss
REPRESENTATION
They distinguish between the narrative report of speech acts, (NRSA), indirect
speech, (IS), free indirect speech, (FIS), direct speech, (DS), free direct speech,
(FDS), and their counterparts for internal speech, that is, thought. Formally, the
modes for speech and thought can be identified by the same criteria, (ibid:319).
Consequently, I shall refer to speech unless there are particular points to make
the data, (see Table 10.2. in chapter 10, section 10.4). For the reasons I have
229
already pointed out, I prefer the term 'discourse to 'speech', so the abbreviated
Leech and Short set out the modes of discourse representation on a continuum,
/
/
\
\ S
Figure 9.1. shows that reporter interference in, or apparent control of, the
represented discourse moves from most to least through the modes of NRDA, ID,
FID, DD and FDD. The narrative report of action is not a mode of discourse
reported in a way that puts it on a par with other kinds of action", (ibid:324).
interference is greatest, NRDA, and end with the mode where the reporter appears
230
to be least in control of the represented discourse, FDD. I outline how the modes
data set.
In NRDA the reporter is only committed to reporting that a speech act has
occurred, not what or how it was said. The event is seen from her perspective,
(ibid.). In NRDA the represented discourse has the highest degree of assimilation
(1978:258), though I will subsume them both within the NRDA mode. He
distinguishes the simple noting that a speech event has occurred without
specifying the content. In the following example, all that Steve reported was that
Ste: Me and the tutor were more or less having a discussion and that
that gave us a lot of confidence
(Steve, 180-1)
McHale also notes that the topics of conversation may also be present. In the
following example, Tania not only reported that her children had been talking, but
Tan: Now the children are talking about when they leave school and go
to university
(Tania, 147).
This highlights how the modes contain a range of possible manifestations, a point
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9.2.1,2. Indirect Discourse, (ID)
In ID, unlike in NRDA, the voice of the anterior speaker is present in the
However, the reporter does not claim to give the actual words of the anterior
speaker, only to faithfully convey what was stated. This means that, as in NRDA,
the reporter's point of view is brought to the fore, (Coulmas, op.cit.:2). The
and it may still be presumed that the essential meaning of the anterior speaker has
anterior speaker's point of view, and what belongs to the representing discourse of
the reporter and her point of view. In Leech and Short's terms, in ID there is still
speaker's.
It is worth pointing out that while it is probably the case that most of the discourse
represented in my data set did refer to real antecedent speech events, these are not
available, (except in a few cases, see section 9.3.2.). This increased the difficulty
of discerning the extent to which the point of view of the reporter interfered with
changes that are wrought upon DD. The most salient of these with respect to my
data are:
reporting discourse.
2. The shift of personal pronouns from first and second to third person.
232
3. Shift of deictics from 'close' to 'distant'.
4. Back shift of verb tense.
Here is an example from Wendy showing that-clause, back shift of tense and third
person pronoun:
Wen: A lot of them [work colleagues] came out and said that they'd
been mature students
(Wendy, 161-2).
It is also clear that Wendy was putting what her colleagues said into her own
words from the fact that she amalgamated what she had heard from a number of
separate people.
1. It lacks a reporting clause, which 'frees' the reported discourse somewhat from
Leech and Short argue that FID is less than a complete reproduction of the anterior
speech, but more than an indirect form of it. The voice of the reporter is apparent,
but so also are characteristics of the anterior speaker's voice. This means that FID
233
through the presence of a range of features, what they call 'family resemblances',
rather than a single defining feature, (ibid:330). Recognising FID means looking
for indicators that distinguish the voice of the anterior speaker from that of the
There seemed to be very few instances of FID in the data set, though I note that
this might partly have been a problem of recognising their presence. One instance
of FID was the following, where Sara reported the attitude to mature students of
Sar: Their attitude was one that yes they accepted mature students they
weren't oddballs they and they were happy to have them because they
were motivated
(Sara, 60-2).
I suggest that this example is FID because it has the back shift of verb and
associated shifts in pronouns and deictics that indicates that the words are
and oddballs, which seem likely to have been part of the anterior speech event.
DD purports to give verbatim the words the anterior speaker has spoken. The
reporter backgrounds her own voice by adopting the voice and point of view of the
anterior speaker, and saying what she or he said. She "lends" her voice to the
anterior speaker, (Coulmas, op.cit.:2). For example, in the following extract, Pam
234
took on the voice and point of view of her husband towards her when she
being subordinated to the reporting clause with a that conjunction. It also has
pronouns and verb tense which relate to the participants and time of the anterior
speech event rather than the reporting context. This is also illustrated in the
was part of a story about how she almost did not get her university place. In it, the
first and second person pronouns relate to the two participants in the represented
context, (the lecturer and Wendy), as does the tense. Here the tense refers to time
future to that of the reported situation - though it was a time in the past in relation
Wen: I managed to get in touch with Doctor [name] who said oh well
I'll look at your application
(Wendy, 470-2).
FDD is at the opposite end of Leech and Short's cline of reporter interference from
NRDA. Here the reporter has no apparent control over the reported discourse,
since this mode of discourse representation, like FID, has no reporting clause.
Unlike FID the represented discourse is presented as purely the voice of the
anterior speaker, as in the following example:
Pen: When I was working at the newspaper they made such a big
235
deal out of it oh you know she's an ex university student
(Penny, 75-6).
When it came to using these five modes to code the discourse representation in the
data for the analyses in chapter 10, a number of difficulties became apparent. I do
not claim to have resolved these perfectly, but in this section I discuss them in
I suggest that in spoken discourse the problems of distinguishing between the use
of different modes may be particularly acute. The reasons for this have to do with
the fact that spoken discourse has greater "grammatical intricacy", (Halliday,
1989:76), than written discourse - which is what Leech and Short focus on. In
written language, punctuation and the removal of evidence of reworking the text,
Spoken language bears the marks of its planning and these are carried forward in
belonged to. Within each mode there were a range of possible manifestations, as
236
decisions I had to make with regard to less typical instances of discourse
9.2.1.1. to 9.2.1.5.
I encountered a problem in where to create a cut off point on the continuum with
respect to the representation of internal speech. The interviews were invitations for
the interviewees to talk about their perceptions of university and their own
thoughts and feelings were alluded to a lot, most frequently in association with the
mental processes, decide, realise, feel, hope. The main focus for my analyses of
discourse representation in chapter 10 is the representation of other people's
feelings and mental states. The only occasions on which they were included was
where a verb of feeling or mental state was used to report speech, and was
example:
Sar: I'd got to come to that point of realisation myself where I feltyes
Jean do it Jean do it
(Sara, 153).
In this example, Sara seemed to be invoking an internal voice which was saying
Yes I can do it. Habitual states of mind or feeling, no matter who they were
attributed to, and which were usually in the non-progressive present tense, were
of modality. The verb 'think' was used to represent thought, usually in the past
237
Pam: I thought don't be stupid. here I am [laugh]
(Pam, 213).
It was also used to express probability type modality in the present tense, for
Pen: I've got to...deal with two very different roles and and that I
think is going to be the hardest thing
(Penny, 230-1).
examples are different, as made clear by the tag questions that could be added to
each. In the example from Pam's interview, the tag would be didn't I? because
the underlying proposition is about what I thought. In the second example, the tag
would be isn't it?, because the proposition is of the this is so type - an expression
of probability. The probability here is being expressed as 'subjective explicit',
(ibid.). This is because the subjective involvement of the speaker is made explicit
and separated from the representation of the experience, in the clause I think. I
note that it was sometimes difficult to tell whether the use of the verb to think
In this section, I list the decisions I took with regard to borderline instances of
decided not to include. These were all references to discourse events such as
tended to be the course choices they wrote down, (except where the anterior text
238
Secondly, I note that the distinction between NRDA and ID was sometimes
difficult to make. This was really the difficulty of distinguishing between NRDA
which just summarised the anterior speech event. For example, I have categorised
the following as NRDA. It says what the discourse act was about:
But I have categorised the instance a line further on as ID because it seemed likely
that the words represented are the words the anterior speaker used:
Mia: he will call me thick and he will call me and he calls me fat
anyway
(Maria, 360).
each of the modes outlined, and that individual evaluation of instances involved
subjective evaluation.
Another problem in distinguishing between modes was recognising the free modes
the data where there was a reporting clause. FDD was the easier of the two free
modes to perceive. This was due to its (apparent) freedom from the control of the
representing context and the sudden switch of content - the contrastive otherness it
representing discourse.
2:39
9.2.3. PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN RECOGNISING
INSTANCES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
1. Where the same voice was being referred to by repetitions of reporting clauses,
Con: she says we're one up on kids who are coming straight from
school 'cos she said a lot of kids haven't done [Psychology] at A level,
(Conniel, 453-4).
2. Sometimes conversations were reported in the data. Here two voices, one of
them usually the interviewee, were involved. Clearly, in these cases, each
Pam: I said I hope the three years doesn't change me too much I and he
he took it the wrong way he said what do you mean change you 1 1 said
because I won't be the same person at the end of three years as I was at
the beginning I what do you mean
(Pam 251-4).
phrase "change you", (what do you mean change you). I have not counted
embedded discourse representation as separate instances.
240
4. Instances of discourse representation were counted separately if there was a
change of mode, even if the instances were contiguous and by the same voice. For
example,
property texts have of being full of snatches of other texts", (Fairclough, 1992:84).
calls 'manifest intertextuality', that is, where specific other texts, rather than types
of discourse, are drawn into the text.
occurs - having only focused on its grammatical realisations in this chapter thus
far. It was necessary to discuss the grammatical features of the various modes of
discourse representation, as these were the primary criteria for recognising and
coding instances of it in the data, but I turn now to the relationship between
241
9.3.1. THE DIALOGIC RELATION OF REPRESENTING AND
REPRESENTED DISCOURSE
McHale, (op.cit.:281), points out that Bakhtin extends the notion of dialogue
between utterances to all levels of the structure of texts, from the overall structure
the level of discourse representation, the dialogic relations that exist between
utterances are internalised within single utterances. The change of speaker which
deliberately signalling that certain words within her utterance come from another
speaker.
utterances is particularly present: here there are two voices which merge yet also
remain distinct from each other to some extent. One of the ways this active
242
that the meanings of the reporter infiltrate the other speaker's speech, re-
accentuating it to fit her own, (the reporter's), speech situation. The modes of
its assimilation to the representing discourse to some degree, leads to the issue of
discourse representation it is stated that the two main modes of ID and DD must
both faithfully report the anterior discourse, with the exact form of words used
being an additional criterion for DD, (e.g. Leech and Short, 1981:320). However,
Slembrouck argues that analysing the role of the representing discourse should
take precedence over the issue of faithfulness as, even in DD where the
represented discourse has some autonomy, its meaning is always changed when it
is recontextualised. It is now subservient to the representing discourse.
This is because the reporter is in control both of what parts of an anterior speaker's
message she incorporates, and whether or not to include aspects of the social
situation surrounding the anterior discourse. She also selects the mode of
discourse representation in which she will represent the anterior discourse. This
may highlight her control, as in ID, or give the appearance she is not in control, as
and interpretations, which are based on the function of the represented discourse
in the representing context. So, even in DD, the mode purportedly closest to the
anterior discourse, the issue of faithfulness is problematic, because the point of
243
view and purposes of the reporter will be present alongside that of the anterior
speaker.
discourse because I do not have access to the anterior speech events. However,
there were three situations in the data set in which the anterior discourse was
potentially available. These were where the interviewee quoted or paraphrased the
university's written literature, where she referred to what she herself had said
earlier in the interview, or where she referred to what I, as interviewer, had said
Penny, Wendy and Anne all referred to the university's written literature. I
discuss Anne's quote in chapter 10, section 10.6.4.1.). Wendy's quotation was
as follows:
"(If you had to design a course in life skills for the 18+ it might look like
Theatre Studies).",
(Theatre Studies booklet, p11).
244
The extract from her interview given above is a faithful rendition in DD. What is
not clear from her interview, until the Theatre Studies booklet is referred to, is that
what Penny went on to say continued her dialogue with what the booklet said.
Pen: ...it's all the bits about projection and and being able to um
interact with people and and be aware of what's happening in the
situation...but that whole awareness of being in a a group and being
able to being able to get other people to sort of interact to be a
facilitator is the buzz word I suppose isn't it
(Penny, 414-5, 419-21).
This seemed to relate to a section in the booklet immediately prior to the section
I suggest that Penny here was taking meanings in the booklet about
communication skills and continuing her dialogue with the booklet by re-
accentuating those meanings to fit her own speech situation, (the inte‘Nie%), and
assimilating them to her own voice.
themselves had said, or where they referred to what I, as interviewer, had already
said. It has to be noted that where an interviewee said "as I (or you) said earlier",
245
the exact prior text referred to was not always retrievable. This was sometimes
because it was a reference to something said before the interview commenced, and
sometimes because what exactly was being referred to earlier was not made
explicit.
Seven interviewees referred to what they themselves had said to me earlier. The
quote of what she had said earlier in the interview, (line 45):
interview, such as the following, though it was not a verbatim quote of any single
previous utterance:
Five interviewees also represented what I said to them in the interviews. (This is
shown in Table 10.4. in chapter 10, section 10.6.). As with references to their own
earlier utterances, the anterior utterance was not always traceable. Wendy referred
246
As you said earlier you actually have this direction
(Wendy, 167).
and also of some of her own responses to it in which she introduced the concept of
Int: I imagine. erm you know you may. change some of your
aspirations or hopes during the course of the degree... or do you feel
like, you know you pretty much know where you're going to go [in
your degree]
Wen:...I'm quite willing to change. er.. as long as it's I mean it's you
know guiding me in the right direction
(Wendy, 1000-9).
Wendy's attribution of the represented discourse to me, while the anterior speech
appeared to come from utterances by us both, leads to the topic of the next section.
have pointed out, this comparison was not possible for most instances. There
were however some instances where it was either impossible or unlikely that the
247
appropriating the words of others, transforms them, actively creates a new speech
act. She argues that when a speaker constructs events in dialogue it is a strategy
for enlivening her discourse - making it play-like with characters who speak lines
I find Tannen's notion of constructed dialogue a useful one for explaining the
where it is unlikely or impossible that the way they are represented matches an
use the categories defined by Tarmen, (ibid:110-9). DD is the mode which shows
the data because it purports to be verbatim report, and in the following categories
1. Choral voices:
In the following example, what Sharon appeared to have heard from many people
So many people say no the first year it's not towards your degree you
don't have to do that much work
(Sharon2, 107-8).
I suggest the extract from Wendy's interview in the previous section is also an
There were some cases where DD was used to represent what had explicitly not
248
You have nobody coming in to the other side saying don't be silly
you're fine
(Maria, 365).
In the next example, Steve was explicit that this voice has the status of being a
You have all these myths going round in your head...you say you've
done well in your course we're now going to take you to the well of
wisdom
(Steve, 234-6).
though Mary represented the thoughts of her sister as if she had, below:
You can constantly say can you do it and the answer is generally yes
yes
(Maria, 453-4).
5. Reporter error:
unlikely DD is that the reporter herself may make an error in reporting. In the
following example, the pronoun change from we to you was likely to be an error
on the part of Connie, the reporter, rather than a feature of the lecturer's words
249
He says we're not here you're not here for our benefit we're here for
your benefit
(Connie2, 150-1).
between 'manifest intertextuality', where particular other texts are drawn into a
text, and 'interdiscursivity', where types of discourse are drawn into a text.
While this is my main focus in chapters 9 and 10, it is worth mentioning briefly
that there were occasions in the data when interviewees drew on the abstract
voices of other discourse types with which they were familiar, as well as using the
particularised voices of other people. The three clearest instances of this, which I
note below, were where vocabulary associated with discourses from other
Mary seemed to slide into a discourse familiar to her from her job as a nurse,
when she talked about a need to demystify medicine by making its language more
250
accessible. Ironically, in order to do so, she seemed to use several terms from a
Carol appeared to draw into her text vocabulary and concepts she had heard in
Int: what did they say in the counselling classes about that
Carol: ..it's like you know the reflecting back to you of what someone
says and that sort of thing I enjoyed that very much . it's okay it's
what's good for you to have your own space
(Carol 307-10).
In the final extract, Steve himself commented that he might be drawing on the
discourse of his F.E. college Psychology course. He seemed to talk about the
concept of the 'tabula rasa', and did so, I suggest, in the language in which it might
have been explained to him. This is one of very few instances where a
[Learning] life you know a blank piece of paper and you're wrote on
to a certain extent by environment...I don't know if that's erm my
Psychology coming ( )
(Steve, 356-60).
These examples are the clearest instances in the data where there seemed to be a
251
Each contained ways of understanding the world that came from a particular
according to role, that comes from the order of discourse of medicine. 'Having
the notion of the individual as a 'tabula rasa'. This a construction of people which
Steve's well known 'translation' of it, itself still part of the academic psychology
discourse - the way the term might be explained to those new to it.
9.4. CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have introduced discourse representation at two levels - both the
texts in more detail, and discuss how the interviewees drew on the discourse of
students.
252
CHAPTER 10
10.1. INTRODUCTION
10.2. SUMMARY OF ALL INSTANCES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION IN THE DATA
SET
10.3. INSTANCES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION WHICH SPECIFICALLY REALISED
POINTS OF VIEW ON THE INTERVIEWEES' EXPERIENCE
10.3.1. FUNCTIONS OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION IN THE DATA
10.3.2. THE INSTANCES REALISING POINTS OF VIEW
10.3.3. THE REMAINING INSTANCES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION IN
THE DATA
10.4. MODES OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
10.4.1. FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE DIFFERENT MODES OF DISCOURSE
REPRESENTATION
10.4.1.1. Representation of thought
10.4.1.2. Representation of speech
10.4.2. THE RELATIONSHIP OF REPRESENTING AND REPRESENTED
DISCOURSE IN THE DIFFERENT MODES
10.4.2.1. Oppositional dialogues in Direct Discourse, (DD)
10.4.2.2. Reporting clauses
10.4 2.3. Interviewee evaluations of their represented discourse
10 4 2.4. Free Direct Discourse, (FDD)
10.5. TOPICS ADDRESSED USING DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
10.6. WHOSE DISCOURSE WAS REPRESENTED: THE VOICES INTERVIEWEES
DREW ON
10.6 I. THE RANGE OF VOICES DRAWN ON BY THE INTERVIEWEES
10.6.2. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE DOMAIN VOICES
10.6.3. INTERVIEWEES' OWN VOICES
10.6.3 1. Ambivalence realised as internal dialogues
10.6.3.2. Representing single points of view
10 6 3.3. The interviewee as participant in reported conversation
10.6.4. VOICES WITH OFFICIAL EXPERTISE: THE UNIVERSITY
10.6.4.1. A range of specific university voices
10.6.4.2. Hypothetical voice of university authority
10.6.43. Other voices of official expertise: school and college
10.6.5. VOICES WITH INFORMAL EXPERTISE
10.6.6. UNNAMED VOICES
10.6.6.1. People 'in general'
10.6.6.2. Hearsay
10 6.6.3. Obfuscation of agency
10.7. CONCLUSION
253
10.1. INTRODUCTION
discuss the points of view that these instances realised by focusing in turn on their
(section 10.5.), and the voices being drawn on in them, (section 10.6.).
survey of its frequency in the interviews. In Table 10.1. below, I give a summary
of all instances of discourse representation in the data set. The table gives an
indication of the relative frequency of interviewees' use of discourse
representation. It also provides a simple quantitative survey to contextualise the
more focused analyses that follow in the rest of the chapter, (sections 10.4. to
10.6.). The table also anticipates these later analyses by distinguishing those
254
instances of discourse representation which had the function of expressing points
I used the following criteria to code all the instances of discourse representation in
the data set. As I mentioned in chapter 9, (section 9.2.), the primary criterion for
(NRDA, ID, FID, DD or FDD). I also used the additional criteria mentioned in
sections 9.2.2. and 9.2.3. Instances were also coded according to whose voice was
being represented and the topic of the represented discourse. These three features
of the instances of represented discourse - mode, topic and voice - form the bases
Table 10.1. below shows how often each interviewee used discourse
specifically used to represent points of view. I have given the length of each
interview as a rough and ready measure for making comparative statements about
255
Table 10.1.:
Table showing both total number of instances of discourse representation and
Number % of Length
of instances viewpt. of interview
instances
Total Viewpt
An 1 43 26 60 41 min
An2 22 12 55 33 min
Car 29 4 14 22 min
Col 145 44 30 65 min
Co2 112 26 23 31 min
Mia 72 57 79 54 min
Mry 47 24 51 45 min
Pam 57 36 63 42 min
Pen 61 25 41 45 min
Sam 22 8 36 27 min
Sar 41 17 42 26 min
Shl 27 11 41 36 min
Sh2 20 11 55 21 min
Ste 39 24 62 43 min
Tan 63 31 49 38 min
Wen 37 20 54 46 min
Total 837 376 45
Key:
Viewpt. = instances of discourse representation used to represent points of view
on the interviewees' experience
The table makes clear that discourse representation was used a considerable
amount in the interviews, (a total of 837 times), and by all the interviewees.
Secondly, the table shows that the interviewees varied in how much they used
interview was also the longest, (65 mins). However, in her second interview,
256
although it was only about the same length as Anne's second interview, she still
made much greater use of discourse representation, (112 instances), than any other
representation, (72 instances), though this interview was also a relatively long one,
(54 mins). Pam, Penny and Tania were the other interviewees who used discourse
representation over 50 times. Anne and Sharon in their second interviews, and
Sam in his interview, used discourse representation the least, (20-22 instances).
Thirdly, the table shows that discourse representation was specifically used to
represent points of view 376 times. The extent to which interviewees used
discourse representation in this way varied, but for 8 of them it functioned in this
discourse representation, which I analyse according to their mode, topic and voice.
interviewees' experience were interesting because they bore both traces of the
interviewees' beliefs, (since the interviewees controlled what anterior speech they
represented in their talk), and also traces of the anterior speakers' beliefs. It is
this chapter.
257
10.3.1. FUNCTIONS OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION IN
THE DATA
other areas of their lives. I note that this is generally true for all discourse
between varying degrees to which these other perspectives are realised as the
reporter's own, or as belonging to the other voices on whom she draws. So, in ID
for example, the perspective of the other speaker is assimilated into the reporter's
discourse more than in DD, through the grammatical transformations that the
While this is the case in general, I argue that the representation of other
that this resulted in, is a particularly explicit feature of some of the discourse
representation in this data. It reflects the interviewees' position at the start of a
new experience - an experience in which they called on the voices of others to aid
view on the interviewees' experience fell into the following two groups. Firstly,
the interviewees often represented what other people said about their, (the
258
I note that coding these instances of discourse representation required the
experience in one or other of the ways I have just mentioned. The number of these
instances in each interview were given in Table 10.1. above, (section 10.2.). This
meant disregarding - for the purpose of further analysis - the remaining instances
of discourse representation in the data. These instances fell into the following
groups:
1. Many instances of NRDA and NRTA, as these tended not to give views of the
2. Representations of the interviewees' own thought and speech, where these only
interesting aspect of the discourse representation in the data and could have been
used to expand the discussions of narrative in chapters 7 and 8, it was not the
focus of this chapter.
3. Some representations of other people's talk, but only those which did not
259
where other people's speech was represented were included in the analyses that
follow.
In sections 10.4. to 10.6 below, I begin each analysis with a table giving frequency
information about the feature under discussion. I then focus on one or two aspects
of the feature in more detail. I would like to point out that I treat these three
relationship between voice, mode and topic, (see sections 10.6.4. to 10.6.6.).
In this section, I discuss how the interviewees used the different modes of
frequency with which the interviewees used the different modes. In section
10.4.2. I refer back to what I said in chapter 9 in order to discuss the extent of the
the terms I shall use to denote, respectively, the discourse of others which the
260
10.4.1. FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE DIFFERENT MODES
OF DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
Table 10.2. below shows the use each interviewee made of the five modes and
Table 10.2.:
Key:
NRDA/TA Narrative report of discourse acts/thought
ID/IT Indirect discourse/thought
FID/FIT Free indirect discourse/thought
DD/DT Direct discourse/thought
FDD/FDT Free direct discourse/thought
261
The table shows that Maria was the interviewee who used representations of
discourse and thought the most in order to construct points of view on her
experience, (57 times). DD was the most frequently used mode, (136 instances),
with Maria and Connie using it most often. DD and ID were used by all the
interviewees, unlike the other modes. Anne, Mary and Pam were the interviewees
to use the greatest number of different modes, (7 modes each). Carol used the
fewest modes, (only 3), but only 4 of her instances of discourse representation met
the selection criteria. FID was the mode used least, (only by Anne, Sam and
I divide my discussion in the remainder of section 10.4.1. into two, and describe
separately the incidence of the 'thought' and 'speech' modes which Table 10.2.
shows. This is because the thought modes tended to realise points of view the
In the rest of this chapter the speech and thought modes are treated together, as
The thought represented in the interviews was mostly the interviewees' own, with
DT the mode used most frequently, (44 times), and by the most interviewees, (10
interviewees). IT was used half this frequently, (21 times), and by 8 interviewees.
I note that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between where the verb think
was used to represent discourse and where it was used to express modality, (see
chapter 9, section 9.2.2.1.). This was particularly so for interviewees' IT, because
262
However, interviewees did also use the representation of their own thought in very
clear ways, usually DT, to construct points of view on their own experience. The
following example illustrates this. Here, Penny juxtaposed two contrasting views
in DT, which voiced her ambivalent thoughts about doing Theatre Studies, a
Pen: I thought I could opt out [of Theatre Studies] and then I thought
no I've come here. I've got two course I know I'm okay on
(Penny, 358-9).
This is an example of NRTA which summarises the topic of thought, rather than
just states that an internal speech event occurred, (a situation which I suggested
9.2.2.2.).
There were no instances of FIT or FDT, though I note with regard to these free
As with the thought modes, Table 10.2. shows that the mode most used to
represent spoken utterances was the direct one, DD. All interviewees used both
DD and ID, but DD was used almost twice as often, (136 times as compared to 76
times). FDD was also used 55 times, and by all but 3 interviewees. I will discuss
263
these 3 modes in section 10.4.2., in more detail, and so limit myself, in this
I note that FID was only used 3 times, (see the instance from Sara's interview in
chapter 9, section 9.2.1.3.), but that there were 38 instances of NRDA representing
points of view on the interviewees' experience. This is rather high number for a
mode which only represents that a speech event has occurred can be explained in
Sometimes these instances existed with other modes, and in combination with
instances of NRDA, it became clear that they were expressing a point of view on
illustrates this. In it, Maria attributed a speech event to her new friends at F.E.
college - when they rang they rang to speak to me. It is only by reference to the
context that it becomes clear that this represents a point of view these friends were
expressing about Maria:
Mia: ...why I enjoyed last year [at F.E. College] so much was I wasn't
somebody's mother and I wasn't somebody's wife...I was me I was me
in my own right I was back to being Maria and when they rang they
rang to speak to me
(Maria, 84-7).
NRDA is the mode most assimilated to the representing discourse. The example
above is interesting because it shows rather clearly that it was Maria's discourse,
occurred and gave the participants in it, but it was used by Maria in her discourse
to support her perception of herself as a person in her own right, rather than just
264
somebody's mother or wife. This illustrates the dominance of the representing
NRDA was also used to express particular attitudes to the interviewees held by
other people. In the following example, Sara used NRDA to represent a view of
her husband towards her - that he had been supportive of her, (1 and 3 in the
example below are NRDA). She supported this with his words in DD, (see 2
below). I take encouraged here to be a speech event, because of the DD, which
San (1) He'd encouraged me and he'd he'd said (2) I'd I'd like you to go
back to work or do whatever you'd like to do but do something with your
own life now ... (3) and he encouraged me to do that
(Sara, 193-6).
In this section, I focus on DD, ID and FDD, (including their thought equivalents),
and some aspects of their relation to the representing discourse in which they are
Table 10.2. showed that DD was the most frequently used mode by which
reporter control appears to be less in DD than in, say, ID because the represented
265
The apparent autonomy of the represented discourse in DD was sometimes used to
particular it was possible to create clear oppositions between points of view using
DD. One interesting way in which this was done was to represent points of view
interviewee and another person, or between two other parties. I give an example
person. Pam reported a misunderstanding between herself and her husband over
the issue of whether coming to university would change her. This reported
Pam: I said I hope the three years doesn't change me too much and he
he took it the wrong way he said what do you mean change you I said
because I won't be the same person at he end of three years as I was at
the beginning of it
(Pam, 251-4).
discourse, since Pam evaluated her husband's utterance as taking what she had
said the wrong way.
inclusion of embedded discourse was not very common, though it was a particular
Connie represented what a friend, now doing a History degree, had said about
starting at university. The discourse representation is in italics. Embedded in it is
266
a speech event between Connie's friend and his wife, in which the wife appears to
in both ID and DD, with the ID revealing this as a dialogue, (his wife... gave him a
good talking to):
He says to me he says the first two weeks he says were the most
miserable weeks of my life...and he says his wife turned round and gave
him a good talking to and she says look she says everybody you meet just
go up to them and start talking to them whether you know them or not so
he says I did and he says he says I've got six really good friends now but
he said that first couple of weeks he said was terrible
(Conniel: 532-7).
I suggest that Connie drew this particular dialogue into her own discourse in order
might be 'miserable', but there might be steps she could take if this was the case,
such as talking to people whether she knew them or not. This is realised in the
opposition between the points of view of the two participants whose discourse
Connie represented.
When DD is used to represent points of view, the reporting clauses keep the
voices distinct from each other and maintain boundaries between the represented
and representing discourses - this was particularly necessary where dialogues were
The use of reporting clauses is also a feature of ID. ID and DD, as I have said,
were the most commonly used modes. One reason for this frequency might have
267
been that specifying the source of the message was sometimes as important as the
reporting clause. For example, when Sara talked about her anxieties about her
competence at F.E. college, representing that it was her tutors who spoke
reassuringly was likely to have more salience than if a friend had done so:
Sar: The tutors had got to say stop worrying...you're getting your
coursework in on time you're getting good marks you're fine
(Sara, 88-90).
Additionally, the discourse incorporated into the interviewees' talk were typically
not dialogues, like those I discussed in the previous section, but isolated and one-
off instances, and thus needed the source of the voice to be signalled, as both these
modes do.
Reporting clauses are also interesting because they were an opportunity for
seemed a feature of all the interviews that the interviewees used very little
the tone of the original speaker, or the circumstances of the original speech events
reporting verb is warned, though the force of warned is mitigated and shown to be
used ironically by Maria's laughter, which follows her utterance a little later:
Mia: I've already been warned not to [ask a lot of questions] in lectures
(Maria, 309-10).
268
'Said' and 'thought' were, overwhelmingly, the most commonly used reporting
verbs. This use of neutral reporting verbs, (with respect to the illocutionary force
position of the reporter and focused on the content of what is being reported. For
example, in Connie's text, which I analysed in chapter 8, (see section 8.6.), Connie
offered no interpretative critique on all the speech she reported: people did not
argue or suggest, speak kindly or jokingly and so on, they just said things. In
short, in Connie's text there was a marked absence of external evaluation of what
people said, even though the text contained a lot of representations of discourse.
Connie evaluated what a lecturer said to her about handing in essays on time by
agreeing with it - and representing this agreement separately as her own discourse,
(DT):
Con: ...he says I'm not doing you any favours by giving you extra time
... to do your essays ... and I thought well he's right really
(Connie2: 170-2).
This focus on the message of represented discourse is perhaps not surprising: the
interviewees were gathering views on what becoming a mature undergraduate
student was going to be like before they had had much experience of being one,
and were thus not in a strong position to counter or confirm the views of others.
269
10.4.2.4. Free Direct Discourse, (FDD)
FDD is the freest of all from the control of the representing discourse. The lack of
effective way of showing contrastive viewpoints. Maria and Mary, who use FDD
Since FDD is the mode in which the represented discourse has maximum
autonomy, this was a useful mode for representing other people's views about
them from which Mary and Maria wished to distance themselves. Maria, for
critical views of her and her own views of herself, by representing her husband's
voice in FDD:
Mia: he ties everything in it's all ... you're dumb and you're stupid...
(Maria, 361-2).
about being at university and whether she should be allowed a place or not. The
Mar: I don't know if it's common for. for. normal age students but
for mature students but. [the university]'re going to find out. and
what are you doing here. sort of. that somehow you've got to creep
round for a week in case somebody says . you shouldn't be here...that
somehow they've made a mistake
Int: [( )
Mar: [( ) we didn't offer you a place did we [laughs 1 that somehow
they've made a mistake and they're going to find out that you
shouldn't really be here
(Mary, 319-330).
270
An effect of using FDD is to highlight the otherness of this voice she gave to the
university, and its otherness lends support to the oppositional message Mary used
here will be brief, as I feel it is more interesting to explore whose voices the
I would like to make two preliminary points about the analysis of topic. Firstly, I
note that in chapter 6 I generated topic categories to code the entire data set. Here
the reporting context. There were three reasons for this. One reason was that
example in "he said you could always go back you know", (Penny, 38), it is only
by reference to the context that it can be deduced that going back referred to going
back to university. Another reason was that the content of the discourse
representation sometimes could have been coded in more than one category. In
this situation, I drew on the reporting context to ascertain what the dominant topic
of the surrounding text was. Thirdly, it was often necessary to refer to the
representing discourse in instances of NRDA, since this mode simply reports that
a speech event has occurred, and does not always state the topics of the speech.
271
Table 10.3. below shows the frequency with which the five topics of employment,
education - both the interviewees' own and the educational experiences of other
people, their home life and sense of self were drawn on in those representations of
Table 10.3.:
TOPIC CATEGORIES
Employment Education Educ. other Home life Self Total
An! 9 5 6 1 5 26
An2 7 4 1 12
Car 2 2 4
Col 8 22 1 13 44
Co2 12 12 1 1 26
Mia 4 2 16 35 57
Mry 3 5 4 12 24
Pam 2 8 17 9 36
Pen 5 10 3 4 3 25
Sam 7 1 8
Sar 1 1 4 11 17
Shi 4 1 2 4 11
Sh2 6 5 11
Ste 4 7 13 ?LI-
Tan 2 13 3 10 3 :31
Wen 3 7 6 4 20
_
Total 26 100 68 61 121 376 _
Key:
Educ. other = Other people's educational experience
Self = Sense of self
The table shows that certain topics were addressed by the interviewees more than
about two topics: the interviewees' own education, (a lot of these instances being
about the university); and their sense of self- which the interviewees frequently
stated was affected by starting at university. In this latter category fell, for
272
example, instances of represented internal dialogue about self confidence, which I
go on to discuss in section 10.6.3.1. These two topics - their own education and
sense of self- were of direct relevance to the interview agenda, and it is therefore
not surprising that the represented discourse of all the interviewees included some
generally of the interviews, (see chapter 6, section 6.3.), that the influence of
either past or future employment on doing a degree was only important for some
interviewees - in particular, Anne, Sam, Steve and Wendy, all of whom used
For some interviewees there were certain topics that they returned to a number of
times, or talked about in depth, during their interviews. In the following cases,
topic areas. Maria and Pam used discourse representation more than other
interviewees in talking about their home lives. They particularly represented the
case this was closely associated with her view of herself, which she also expressed
through discourse representation. (She referred to the sense of self category more
Connie represented the discourse of other people talking about their own
education the most, particularly in her first interview. Her first interview took
place before Introductory Week, so it seems likely that she drew on their
experiences to give her a sense of what it might be like for her at university. The
example from her first interview in section 10.4.2.1. suggested that, at the time of
that interview, she had apprehensions about being lonely to start with. In her
second interview, at the end of Introductory Week, she talked about how this did
273
not, in fact, prove to be the case: "I've been laughing and joking to people this
week that I've never met before", (Connie2, 33). The example below, from her
first interview, captures a different aspect of starting her degree. She anticipated
ID:
Con: Rolf said to me last week he says he says he like a kid in a sweet
shop he says he wants to try out everything before he decides
(Connie I, 702-3).
In this section I focus on whose voices the interviewees drew on to express points
discourse. I structure this section around the argument that, in general, the voices
another. This argument is based on the fact that the interviews were conducted at
consequently the expertise of other people was a useful resource for the dual tasks
of trying to get to grips with this experience for themselves, and in order to talk
about it to me.
Table 10.4. below shows the range of voices that the interviewees represented in
their talk.
274
Table 10.4.:
Table showing range of voices the interviewees represented and number of
VOICE
Educational domain work Int Own Home domain Un Total
Official Student Sp/C P/S Fr
Uni FE Sch Fr 0th
An1 3 2 5 10 2 1 3 26
An2 5 1 1 3 1 1 12
Car 2 2 4
Col 4 2 17 13 3 3 2 44
Co2 - 14 4 7 1 26
Mia 9 1 1 1 28 16 4 4 57
MrY 6 1 11 3 2 1 24
Pam 1 3 15 9 8 36
Pen 2 2 1 1 17 2 25
Sam 2 ? 2 1 1 8
Sar 1 1 6 5 4 17
Chi
1 1 3 3 3 11
Sh2 4 6 1 11
Ste 3 1 4 2 11 3 24
Tan 3 ? 2 16 5 1 2 31
Wen 4 4 1 2 6 3 20
Total 53 10 , 27 11 15 I
7 f
154 f
37 )5 7
I
32 376 r
The table shows that the voices the interviewees drew on came from the
educational domain, (which had the largest number of types of voice), the work
and home life domains. In addition, there was the voice, (or voices), of the
voices. Some of the voices the interviewees' drew on were represented as specific
other people, such as 'Rolf in the extract from Connie's interview in section 10.5.
275
Others were more generalised voices of the culture, for example, 'people in
interviewees considered that the voices they drew on gave valued views on their
and to the interview agenda. I suggest this as a reason why the interviewees
In the rest of section 10.6. I discuss this range of different voices. Before doing
so, however, I would like to point out that Table 10.4. above indicates the number
of times each category was used, not the number of differe nt voices. This is in
order to be consistent with Tables 10. 2. and 10.3.: between them, these three
tables account for the mode, topic and voice of each of the instances of discourse
this means for Table 10.4. above is that some categories have high numbers
because several turns in the same conversation with the same participants were
has the highest number in the official university voice category - 14), there were 3
Having pointed this out I now focus my discussion, in the rest of section 10.6.
structured around the notion that many of these voices represented some kind of
official knowledge, or the informal expertise of people who knew the interviewee
276
10.6.2. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE DOMAIN VOICES
The table shows that some voices were identified as coming from the public
'official' and 'student' voices, and their sub-categories. The official and student
voices each gave different types of expertise, as I discuss in sections 10.6.4. and
10.6.5. below. The topic - what they said - was always about education.
These were voices identified as coming from, and talking about, the public domain
which they identified as coming from the private domain of the home. I have
not identified as part of the educational domain), and 'spouse/children'. For all
the interviewees with partners, this last group formed the immediate social
environment in which they lived, and were the people whose lives were going to
be most affected by the interviewee coming to university. The topics talked about
by these voices tended to be about the university, the sense of self of the
interviewee, or the home life which they shared with the interviewee. The
discourse of these people was likely to realise an informal expertise about the
Work voices were represented by 6 of the interviewees, but only Wendy and
something I had said earlier in the interview. I have discussed this in chapter 9,
section 9.3.2.2.
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10.6.3. INTERVIEWEES' OWN VOICES
the interviewees also used internal voices of their own - they were, of course,
experts on themselves. The 'own voice' column in Table 10.4. shows that there
representing more than one voice of their own, as in the following example of DD:
Pen: It's so easy to say um no it's too difficult and then to say oh I wish
I'd done that
(Penny 380-1).
It was not only Penny, but also Sharon, Maria, Mary and Pam who used two
contrasting 'own' voices - both of which expressed their expertise and knowledge
of themselves. Two more examples follow. In the first, Sharon expressed her
ambivalent feelings about getting to know new people at the university in two
internal voices:
Sha: I thought right I'll go into the bar and just sort of hang around
and meet people...and I walked up there [and]...I thought I can't go in
there on my own ...and I calmed myself down and! was thinking you
can do it you know it's okay
(Sharon2, 76-80).
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It is interesting to note that in her third turn, Sharon's more venturesome and
confident voice addressed her shyer self as a second party, (you can do it), thus
increasing the contrast between the views realised by her two internal voices.
In the second example, Maria represented two points of view about self
long stretch of text in which she described certain demoralising effects on her of
remaining at home to look after her children:
Mia: You sit at home all day and doubt yourself you sit at home and
think why can't I do that and no I could never do that and then there's
this other side of you that says come on get off your bottom and do
something you are capable of doing it
(Maria, 395-8).
The context suggests that this was an internal dialogue, though her use of the
second person, (you sit at home...), both distanced from her what seemed to be a
conflict she herself had experienced, and universalised it, made it into an
experience other women also had. This was borne out by her saying jokingly a
little later on that she would have liked to "go on national television and talk to all
those housewives who are sat out there" and tell them "there is life after children",
(540, 580). It is interesting that her 'doubting' voice was represented as thought,
and the 'you can do it' voice was represented in speech. It is possible that these
were almost interchangeable verbs, since it is likely they both referred to Maria's
internal speech. On the other hand, the use of a verb of speech, as opposed to a
verb of thought, also suggests more objectivity was being accorded to the 'you can
do it' voice, to the voice of the new and confident Maria who was going to prove
her capabilities in the external world of the university; in contrast to the 'doubting'
voice, which was accorded the more internal and introverted status of thought. As
in the example from Sharon's interview, the contrast between the two voices was
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also increased by the 'doubting' voice taking the first person and the 'confident'
Sam: I'd like to get...my first essay done. find out how I've done on
that then . then I'll know
Int: It'll give you some sort of=
Sam: Well that's it yeah
Int: Cue about where you are yeah
Sam: Have I no chance or have I you know
(Sam 211-5).
Secondly, interviewees used their own voice to express points of view they held
about their own experience. For example, Anne used discourse representation to
express a point of view she did not hold about why she wanted to do a degree:
conversation
conversation with another voice - as a response to the other speaker, and this
established a contrast in viewpoint between the two voices. Connie, in particular,
280
seemed to use discourse representation to represent conversations, i.e. to include
Con: [the lecturer] says oh this is the way you'll look in the lectures is it
and I says oh no I'll be lying on the floor in lectures
(Connie2, 54-5).
UNIVERSITY
In the rest of the chapter, I discuss in a little more detail, some of the voices the
identified as official educational domain voices, (this section), the informal expert
voices of family and friends, (section 10.6.5.), and the category of voices I have
All the interviewees, except Carol and Sam, represented the discourse of at least
one official voice of the university. These were both voices attributed to specific
agents of the university, who the interviewees had actually encountered, and
discourse in the latter case was hypothetical. I discuss these in the following two
sections.
A range of official university voices were mentioned in the interviews. The topic
talked about by all these voices was the university. Some of these voices were
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at the Societies Bazaar, with the discourse represented being about club
memberships.
More interestingly, there were voices representing views about students and
academic life. These were always the voices of academic staff. For example, Sara
quoted the lecturers who interviewed her as saying that mature students were "not
oddballs" and they were "motivated" to learn, (Sara, 77, cited in chapter 9, section
9.2.1.3.), and Pam quoted the convenors of a pre-university course for mature
students at the university as saying that "mature students had the feeling they
Con: They said . if you've got a problem just come and knock on our
door that's what we're here for....he was saying to us if you don't. get.
your essay in on time you're going to have other essays so you're going
to end up with a backlog anyway so he says you're not doing yourself
any favours and he says I'm not doing you any favours by giving you
extra time [to do your essaysl...he was saying a lot of it is just organising
yourself
(Connie2, 149-84).
In each case in which a specific official university voice was cited, the voice was
attributed to someone expert in the area they talked about - club officials about
club membership, lecturers about student academic life, as the example from
Another way in which a voice of the university was represented was in the quoting
of university literature. I have already discussed the occasion on which Penny did
this, (see chapter 9, section 9.3.2.1.). Anne also stated that she quoted the
university's literature, the Rules of the University booklet, but in fact she
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represented a hypothetical university voice. I discuss this example below, as it
Ann: I think, reading through the rules as well . when the rules of the
university came through [the post] . and it says things like. erm when
it gets on to the . when the police will be drawn in when one. and
there'll be. in cases of serious misconduct the police may be called, now
anywhere [apart from the university] there'd be no doubt that the
police would be called in ...cases of serious misconduct. but there are
obviously some things that are dealt with a little bit . you know . we
don't want to have anyone from the university getting a bad name
(Annel: 257-64).
The second instance of represented discourse, (we don't want to have anyone from
the university getting a bad name), is FDD, because of the first person plural
pronoun. I also consider "when one. and there'll be. in cases of serious
This is because of the change in intonation on the tape recording, and the two
broken constructions, when one. and there'll be, which suggest Anne was trying
to recall what in fact the Rules booklet had said, which she then goes on to give.
Anne used this hypothetical voice which she 'quoted' to contrast what seemed to
large.
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10.6.4.2. Hypothetical voice of university authority
voice. Since this was a voice generated by the interviewees, it carried aspects of
their assumptions about the institution. I have mentioned the case of Anne, above,
and here merely point to a few more examples of how a voice of university
The voice being used by Wendy in the example below was clearly not an actual
voice, firstly because it represented words that were not spoken, and secondly
because it incorporated vague referents, (this this and this), which it is unlikely
Wen: Nothing came back saying well if you actually went to this this
and this then you know we'll look at you next year
(Wendy, 468-9).
This extract was part of Wendy's account of how she was nearly refused a
university place. The voice of the university here represents an assumption she
had about the university which was not supported by events - she had anticipated
that if she was refused a place, the university would advise her about how she
could apply more successfully next year, but "nothing came back".
voice to the university, though she only represented it as the pronoun 'they'. I
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Mar: ...they're going to find out. and what are you doing here . sort of
... we didn't offer you a place did we [laughs] that somehow they've
made a mistake
(Mary, 316-30).
The oppositional message given by this hypothetical voice was supported formally
by the discourse being represented in FDD, (the mode least assimilated to the
laughter, and by the fact that she later said that this was only what part of her
believed. Nevertheless, this example and those from Anne and Wendy's
interviews do express assumptions these interviewees had about the power of veto
the university had, and how they felt positioned vis-à-vis the university by their
identity as students.
college
Other official voices were quoted which came from interviewees' prior experience
Sam and Sara were the only interviewees who represented the voice of 'school.'
They both represented this voice as giving them, (as grammatically passive
Sam: You were told that you were you know you were useless you were
going to fail
(Sam, 174).
Sar: I was told when I was ten that I was. thick that I'd never get very
far in life to just be quite [satisfied] with what I'd got
(Sara, 267-8).
285
As Sara later said, this expert opinion led to "the inferiority complex and the lack
of confidence that's something I've had to fight against for years", (Sara, 350).
using discourse representation. The expert voices being represented here tended
the following example, Connie represented what her F.E. college tutor Bill had
Con: Well I know our teacher Bill he said when we did that B unit [in
Psychology] he says if you just begin to understand the language this
year you'll have done well
(Conniel: 429-31).
The range of voices from the educational domain also included voices of other
students. Nine interviewees used such voices, six of them representing the voices
of people they knew who were or had been students, and whose experiences were
therefore relevant. Connie called upon the voices of seven different such friends
in her first interview, two of which I have already mentioned, (see sections
The voices of family and also friends who were not represented as being, or
support for the interviewees in starting their degrees. Five of the eight
interviewees with partners drew on the voice of their spouse, and four of the
interviewees with children drew on the voices of their children. The voices of
parents in the case of Mary, Sharon and Maria, and siblings in the case of Anne
and Connie were also drawn on. For some, the family seemed to be a particularly
286
important locus for the intersection of view points about the interviewees'
particular, used this strategy to express negative views about her she perceived
He will call me thick and he will call me and he calls me fat anyway
. (360).
2. Children about her changing behaviour once she started full time study, (DD):
I suspect the children would look at me and say mother behave yourself
[laugh]
(101).
other people, they also had the effect of making them seem more real. Using DD
especially helps to consolidate a claim by the reporter, that these words are what
others have really said. So, as a strategy, it can be used both to make a truth
claim, because of the widely accepted notion that DD is a verbatim report, and to
distance the reporter from the words she represents. Maria used this strategy very
effectively to convey aspects of her family's relationship to her and her studies, but
287
10.6.6. UNNAMED VOICES
10.6.4.2. are one case in the interviews where the specific source of the voice was
unclear. There are several other cases where this occurred, which I discuss below.
either because they were named or because the speaker could be deduced from the
context. Those that were not I placed in the 'unnamed' category. This category
example Anne represented what other people said about doing a degree:
Ann: The first question you tend to get out of [people] is what are you
doing that for . what are you going to be at the end of it
(Anne 1, 473-4).
This is an instance of what I have called 'choral voices' in chapter 9, section 9.3.3.
10.6.6.2. Hearsay
The use of the FDD mode of discourse representation, with its lack of reporting
clause, may not give the speaker at all, as in the example below:
Pam: I've heard these stories ooh crikey I know a load of divorces after
three you know after people have gone to university
(Pam, 266-7).
It was not the case that in all instances where FDD was used the source of the
288
speaker gives a pervasive quality to what is presented as hearsay: it is a rumour
which cannot be traced to its source and therefore carries an expertise difficult to
refute.
Use of a pronoun instead of a noun for the anterior speaker sometimes made it
Con: They've said there are one or two ikcturersl that are a bit fuddy
duddy
(Connie2, 67).
The use of a passive reporting verb also sometimes obfuscated what the source of
Here, as in some other cases where the passive was used, a good guess at who the
agent was could be gleaned from the context - here it seemed to be Carol's tutors
at F.E. college. It is worth noting that within the selected discourse representation
used for most of this chapter, there were only 14 cases of passive reporting verbs.
They all referred to things the interviewee was told by educational institutions.
Carol, (in the example above), and Sharon referred, respectively, to academic and
administrative aspects of F.E. college; Sam and Sara, referred to school, (see
examples in section 10.6.4.3); Sharon, Anne and Maria referred to university, for
example:
289
Mia: I've been warned not to [ask questions] in lectures only do it in
seminars [laugh]
(Maria, 309-10).
Though these cases were infrequent, (14 out of 376 instances), they are suggestive
10.7. CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have discussed in some detail the interviewees' use of discourse
chapters 7 and 8. Narratives did, after all, often contain the representation of
discourse.
290
- CONCLUSION -
FOLLOWED IN THESIS
11.1. INTRODUCTION
this study which I encountered during the research process, (section 11.3.).
approach I have taken in this thesis is to explore in some detail how the meanings
given by the interviewees' were discursively constructed.
THEY DO SO
291
undergraduate student interviewees said about their experience of starting at
university. This is a standard way in which research interviews are used in the
social sciences, and my 'content' analysis of chapter 6 was an analysis of this kind.
other analyses in this thesis were devoted to this how of meaning making.
not just of the ideational content of the meanings the interviewees generated, but
(1986:136), and suggest that to take account, as I have done, not only of what
interviewees say but how they do so enhances analyses of research interview data.
discursively interactive nature and the effect of this on the meanings constructed
which those meanings were elicited - the interview event itself, (Part II); and the
realisation of meanings in particular discursive forms, (Part III). I discuss these
dimensions in the following two sections.
292
11.2.2. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF INTERVIEWEE MEANING
MAKING - THE INTERVIEW
interviewees, it was necessary to take into account the interview context in which
meaning making of the complex power relations which obtained between myself
Among other things, this involved me in exploring the way I, as the interviewer,
elicited information from the interviewees. This does not accord with the
took the view that it was essential to be critically reflective about my own role in
disturbance but as one element in the human interactions that comprise our
because the way responses are elicited by an interviewer, along with other
conventions governing interviews, constrain how talk may occur in them. In my
of the social context in which those responses are produced and interpreted.
293
11.2.3. THE DISCURSIVE PRACTICES INTERVIEWEES USE
The other dimension of how meanings were constructed on which I focused in this
study was their discursive form. In Part III I explored the interviewees' frequent
in narratives and through the use of the discourse of others. I suggest that to
explore how the interviewees used particular discursive forms to represent their
perspectives on the data than a focus on ideational content alone would have done.
For example, it was by looking at the narrative forms of interviewees' talk that I
was able to show how they represented their experience of starting at university in
relation to a dense network of other experiences in other times and other domains
of their lives. This gave a holistic perspective on the experience which was the
topic of the interviews, since it showed how the interviewees wove it into the
enriched perspective on the interviewees responses. It showed not only that they
drew extensively on the views of others about their experience, but also showed
what sorts of relationship the interviewees had to the views they represented -
their own ambivalence, whose views they valued in helping them to understand
their experience of starting at university, and the extent to which they assimilated
294
These perspectives on the meanings made in interviews are of value to social
scientists because they show the kind of enriched analysis that can be undertaken
In this section I briefly reflect on the process of doing this particular piece of
research. First I note the inevitable problem of integrating earlier and later
analyses in a project undertaken over three years. Every trawl thorough the data to
analyse one phenomenon acquainted me better with the data set. Every analysis I
This meant that by the end of the research process I had more objectivity about
what I did near the beginning than I had about what I did near the end. I note two
effects of this. One is a certain unevenness in the written thesis. The other is that
by the time I got to the redrafting stage, hindsight and greater experience meant
Another feature of the process of doing this particular piece of research was
dealing with the consequences of the shift I have described in my research focus.
set. However, as my focus shifted onto how those views were actually
295
I dealt with analysing this large data set in two ways. Firstly, I imported a lot of
extracts from the interview transcripts into the thesis. I did this for several
reasons. One of these was that, as I have explained, I decided not to append the
interviews to give a flavour of the interviewees talk as the talk of real people. I
also wanted to include many extracts because each phenomenon was widely
present in the data and I wished to illustrate and discuss the range of its
manifestations. However, there was the need to balance having many extracts
with the need to select few enough to undertake sufficient critical commentary of
them. In addition it was the case that any stretch of interview data might realise
more than one phenomenon, which is why some extracts were used in more than
The second way in which I dealt with the large data set was to adopt a 'broad'
were realised in these interviews. There was a tension throughout the project as a
me that they all could have been analysed in much more depth, which trying to
cover a range of phenomena prevented me from doing. For example, it was not
the data set and still hope to keep the analysis of narratives as only one part of the
thesis. There were also a great many interesting examples of each phenomenon
also meant there was a loss of focus on how individual interviewees used the
meaning making practices I explored, and a loss of the coherence they established
during their interviews. On the other hand, a broad and cross-sectional approach
296
least part of one interview in chapter 8, where I explored how Connnie constructed
11.4. CODA
I wrote my first 'book' when I was 9 years old, The Story Of A Horse, three
chapters and three pages, with illustrations by the author. I hope this thesis will
not be my last. From the almost-finished point I have now reached, I feel that I
practice social scientists frequently engage in. My limited claim for it is that it
does indeed expose some of the complexity of the discursive meaning making
practices in the interviews I conducted, and that these findings are of interest more
generally to social scientists because of the common use of research interviews for
collecting data. I think that the constraints of researching and writing for
examination purposes have made this thesis a somewhat cautious piece, subdued
writing hereafter will be as careful and reflective, but more buoyant and
exuberant; that it will bear more clearly the marks of the passion I have always
297
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BUBLITZ, W. 1990 Discourse analysis: the state of the art. In Uhlig, C. and
Zimmermann, R., (eds.) Anglistentag Marburg (pp. 259-284).
298
FAIRCLOUGH, N. 1993 Critical Discourse analysis and the marketization of
public discourse: the universities. Discourse and Society 4. 2. (pp. 133-168).
KRESS, G. and HODGE, R. 1979 Interviews. In Fowler, R., Hodge, R., Kress, G.
R. and Trew, A. Language and Control. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
LEECH, G.N. and SHORT, M.H. 1981 Style in Fiction. London: Longman.
299
LUDWIG, D., FRANCO, J. N., and MALLOY, T. E. 1988 Effects of Reciprocity
and Self-Monitoring on Self-Disclosure with a new acquaintace. In Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology. 50. 6. (pp. 1077-1082).
POLANYI, L. 1985 Telling the American Story. New Jersey: Ablex Publishers
Corporation.
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APPENDIX 1
Dear
If you would be willing to talk to me, I can be contacted in the following ways to
arrange a place to meet. You can write to me at the Department of Linguistics,
(giving a telephone number so I can contact you quickly), or you can telephone
me at home, (Tel: xxxx). If possible, and if you live near enough, I would like to
meet you before Intro Week, (28 Sept-2 Oct), to talk about your initial
impressions of being a student. The meetings will be informal, no longer than an
hour, and at times to suit you. I will be restricting my study to full-time, British
students, over the age of twenty five.
If you are interested, please let me know within a week of receiving this letter. I
wish you anyway the best of luck as you begin your degree.
Kathy Doncaster
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LETTER B: 15 November 1992
Dear
I hope your first term at Lancaster University has been going well. I am writing to
see if you would be interested in meeting near the end of term to talk about how
you have found university life so far. You may remember that we discussed this
as a possibility in September. I am sure a lot has happened since then! I am
particularly interested in your views on seminars, lectures and essays, as these are
situations which may influence students' perceptions of themselves, and in which
they have to engage very specifically with academic language. And these are my
main research interests.
If you would be willing to talk to me again, or would like some more information,
I can be contacted at home, (Tel: xvoc ), or via the internal mail, (Linguistics
Department). If you leave a message on my ansaphone or in the Linguistics
Department, please could you give a telephone number so I can contact you
directly - otherwise we'll never be able to set up a time to meet!
Best wishes
Kathy Doncaster
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LETTER C: 16 April 1993
Dear
It has been sometime since you were kind enough to talk to me about your
expectations and experiences of being at the university. I have collected quite a
lot of information from mature students, and am now deciding what parts of it to
use for my PhD thesis, and for any articles or papers I may write as a result of my
research.
I will probably not contact you again, (though you are welcome to contact me if
you want), and we may therefore lose touch. I don't yet know whether I will use
the material you gave me, but I am writing to you now to check out the following:
if I do use it, are you willing to trust me to treat it in ways that respect your
privacy? I would refer to you via a pseudonym in my work, and get in touch with
you if I had any specific doubts about confidentiality, or about how to protect your
anonymity. To be able to do that, I want to make sure I have an address where I
can reach you.
So, if your address below is incorrect, or if you want to discuss this further, please
get in touch with me by 30 April, (Friday, week 2). I can be contacted at home,
(Tel: xxxx), or via the internal mail, (Linguistics Department).
If I do not hear from you I shall assume you are satisfied with the plan I have
outlined.
I hope all is going well in your studies, and I wish you the best of luck in this new
term, and in your exams.
Kathy Doncaster
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APPENDIX 2
1. General:
What made you respond to my letter?
How do you feel about starting your degree?
6. Other:
Is there anything else that interests you about doing a degree that you would like
to mention?
304