Researcher and informant roles in narrative interactions: Constructions of belonging and foreign-ness

Abstract

In this article I focus on the influence of researcher/informant roles on the types of narratives that are produced and on the ways in which storytelling interactions are managed in research contexts. In particular, I show that storytelling activities and story types both reflect and shape relationships among participants based, among other factors, on their local management of situational and portable identities. I argue that one important methodological consequence of the analysis is the recognition of the fact that all data produced in interaction (including interviews) are irreducibly context-bound and that therefore an analytical separation between observer and observed is impossible. I also discuss how a treatment of the research event and of storytelling in it as a real interactional encounter can shed light on issues related to the insider-outsider status of the researcher and the Observer's Paradox (Labov 1972b). (Narrative, interviews, interactional roles, immigrants, identities).

Identity in the London Indian diaspora: Towards the quantification of qualitative data

“…Participant H04 may thus be a good example of how much questionnaire and interview data may occasionally diverge. This is not entirely surprising if we consider De Fina (, p. 30), who points out that identity construction in an interview setting ‘is a dialogic and reciprocal process in which “the other” is as important as the self; the kinds of identities that people present crucially depend on who they understand the interlocutors to be.’ For individual participants, this might mean that they amplify their host‐community orientation with an interviewer who is not from the community.…”

Co‐Constructing Colonial Dichotomies in Female Former Colonizers' Narratives of theBelgianCongo

“…As has been shown extensively before, the interaction between interviewer and interviewee always has a significant influence on the way in which identities are performed within interview narratives (De Fina ; Kiesling 2001b:113; Trechter and Bucholtz :10–11); so we now focus on the influence that the interviewer had on the construction of meaning in these stories. First, we observe that the interviewer hardly ever challenges the interviewees; rather, he contributes to their stories, mainly by voicing continuers, aligning through laughter, and co‐constructing Africans as savage and childlike.…”

On the margins: Undocumented students’ narrated experiences of (il)legality

“…While traditional (i.e., Labovian) approaches tended to extract the narrative from surrounding talk, current work emphasizes the importance of context, viewing the constraints, conventions, and conceptions of the interview (or conversation) as important in shaping the content and structure of the narrative (De Fina, 2011). As De Fina (2009) argues, "we should not erase the interview context as is often done in narrative research," nor should it be treated as "unnatural"; rather, the interview context must be viewed as any other context of interaction, and therefore, our work should include analysis of how the interview context "shapes and is shaped by the narrative" (p. 234).…”