Language and bodily conduct in focus group evaluations of legal policy

Matoesian, Gregory; Coldren, James R.

doi:10.1177/0957926502013004454

Cited by 40 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…However, practitioners of other qualitative methodologies have, ironically, paid more attention to the socially situated nature of their data than have focus group researchers. Although some recent work on focus groups has begun to explore some of these issues (e.g., Barbour and Kitzinger 1999;Matoesian and Coldren 2002;Puchta and Potter 2002), these critiques have not yet entered the mainstream of focus group methodology.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Social Contexts of Focus Groups

Hollander¹

2004

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

424

311

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This article argues that focus group discussions are shaped by multiple social contexts, a fact that is often ignored by researchers. Using data from a focus group study of the effects of violence on everyday life, this article provides an analysis of four such contexts: the associational, status (especially gender), conversational, and relational contexts. These multiple and overlapping contexts foster both problematic silences (lack of disclosure) and problematic speech (strategic shaping of comments) in group discussions. These processes limit the usefulness of focus groups as a tool for understanding individual thoughts, feelings, or experiences. However, they make focus groups an excellent site for analyzing the processes of social interaction. The article concludes with suggestions for improving the implementation and interpretation of focus groups in light of this analysis.

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confidence: 99%

The Social Contexts of Focus Groups

Hollander¹

2004

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

424

311

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“…As Briggs (1986: 3) recognizes, researchers often take what is said as a reflection of what is ‘out there’, information to be harvested and domesticated into the aims of the researcher rather than a joint interaction between the interviewer and respondent(s). 5 In the orthodox interview, the interviewer’s contributions are ‘bleached’ from the final interview product along with any traces of bodily conduct, an erasure with immense consequences for understanding focus group evaluation (see Matoesian, 2005, 2012; Matoesian and Coldren, 2002). 6…”

Section: Focus Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policing evaluation: Focus group interviews as an embodied speech event

Gilbert

2017

Discourse & Communication

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Despite recommendations for a more reflexive and theoretical turn to interviewing, the analysis of language and speech still occupies center stage. This study attempts to advance our understanding of the interview by including the use of gesture, gaze, and other embodied resources in concert with speech. Looking at a focus group interview evaluating community policing policy, I show how inclusion of embodied conduct offers a more robust approach to co-constructed meaning in the interview than looking at language practices alone. More explicitly, I investigate how an interviewee’s narrative includes gestures to solicit an affiliative stance from other interviewees and how ambiguous metacommunicative norms in the focus group influence the contributions of other police participants. I show how jurisdictional boundary and professional identity emerge in and through the integration of embodied conduct and sociocultural solidarity.

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“…They typically consist of a neutral moderator, who facilitates the discussion by asking questions on a given topic, and several interviewees, who provide their opinions on the topic (Myers 2004; Puchta & Potter 2004). However, although moderators may initiate a topic, recipients do not necessarily talk on topic and even when they do, they do much more than address the topic at hand (Matoesian & Coldren 2002; Matoesian 2005). Moreover, while focus groups possess interactive qualities like conversation, they are also more formal in the sense that speakers often—though not invariably—produce extended monologues with minimal interactive contributions from other participants, which is the case in the data for this analysis.…”

Section: Ethnographic Background and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Gesture's community: Social organization in multimodal conduct

Matoesian¹

2012

Lang. Soc.

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A B S T R A C TThis article analyzes the multimodal integration of gesture, talk, and sociocultural context. More specifically, I investigate how forms of Gemeinschaft/ Gesellshaft community are embodied in the concrete details of multimodal form-in the iconic interplay of multimodal practice and symbolic forms of social organization. Using a focus group interview of community policing training, I show how criss-crossing laminations of participation emerge through novel gestural configurations like multimodal quotation and pragmatic beats to not only pace the rhythm of speech but simultaneously plot the spatial coordinates of social organization. In the course of events, we see how speakers integrate gesture, gaze, and postural orientation into the stream of their utterances to project rhythmically infused meanings of communal identity, social solidarity, and cultural opposition. (Multimodality, community, legal discourse)*

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Language and bodily conduct in focus group evaluations of legal policy

Cited by 40 publications

References 25 publications

The Social Contexts of Focus Groups

The Social Contexts of Focus Groups

Policing evaluation: Focus group interviews as an embodied speech event

Gesture's community: Social organization in multimodal conduct

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