CI8470: Interviewing/ Performing identities

There is more performing going on

around us than we realize

And we are performing, even when we

don’t realize it

Interviewing: Issues Applying predetermined agendas

Find what you’re looking for Not listening: rehearsing next question

Lack of follow-up Interviewee conforms to expectations Lack of rapport/comfort

Interviewee just “answers the questions”

Locations for interviews Schools: reserve small rooms in media

center/counseling office Privacy for student IRB: limitations on off-site interviews

45 degree vs. direct contact Avoid “interrogation” stance Focus on writing/artifacts

Place recorder off to side

“Surface acting”“surface acting” controlling one’s emotions in a manner that gives the impression that one is experiencing those emotions. Frank Abnegale, the imposter/confidence man in the autobiographical book and film, Catch Me if You Can. Abnegale learned how to engage in “surface acting” to give the impression that he was a an airline pilot, a pediatrician, a lawyer, and a sociology professor by carefully attending to the genres and practices operating in specific social contexts.

Teachers: “rhetorical listening” “surface acting” I suggest that teachers can listen to students to know

not only how, but who to be with them. They can strategically perform the role of learners, just as, perhaps, the ethnographer puts on an attitude of naïveté…In order for teachers to enable students’ affective work, they must begin by staging their empathy, knowing all the while that the price of successfully persuading students of their (the teachers’) emotional commitments may very well be that they succeed in persuading themselves of these commitments as well. (p. 202).

Teaching/ethnographic research stance: listening “Research bargains”: developing rapport and

relationships with participants. Begin by staging empathy with

students/participants. Appear to care about things they may not

care about. Emotions: not simply unreflective, self-

disclosure/therapy.

Focus groups Advantages: trigger effect

One person’s answer triggers another Multiple perspectives

Differences in perspectives: further thinking Facilitation: encourage others to talk

“X, do you agree with Y?” Summarize and gain reactions

“You seem to be saying that X--is that what I’m hearing”

Recording interviews USB digital recorders: store/categorize DSS.

or MP3 files on a computer Share with co-researchers/transcribers Olympus, iRiver, SONY

Classroom discussions: need multiple mikes

Video recording Allows for analysis of nonverbal positioning Can intimidate interviewees: better for focus

groups or classroom discussions

Transcribing interviews Purposes/methods

Linguistic analysis: need to transcribe Discourse/thematic: selective transcribing

Cassette tapes: foot pedal machine Digital files: start/stop software Professional transcribers: grant funds

Interviews with middle-school students Purpose: issues facing “struggling readers” in

a special class Questions for interviews:

Development of a sense of agency Transfer of writing to reading activities Change over time in ability/attitudes

Sally (Indian) Manga fan/producer: not engaged in school

Dan (African-American) shift in behaviors/attitudes towards school

Developing interview questions Define purpose for interview

Research questions Begin: ice-breaker questions

Talk about weather/shared interests factual information/easy-to-answer

Range of types of questions Beliefs, feelings, analysis, critiques, recollections

Pointing questions Focus on an artifact, writing, map, photo, etc.

Task: develop questions Develop questions: interviewing your participant

themes or topics that intrigue you about your participant Follow up/”pointing questions” for tasks

Mapping, place/space, narrative Practice using these questions with journal partner Reflect on whether your questions solicit what you’re interested

in finding out

Bettie: race/gender/class as performance Cultural practices

Speech, accents, dress, mannerisms Performance: agency and passing Performativity

Effects of inequality creates class identities Passing: temporary selves

Discourse and Identity: Intro. Positioning

relationships we take up to define “who we are”

Interaction order: management of self Footing/voices

“who” is speaking “whose” words/roles Indexing local and global identities

Bettie: portrayals of Las Chicas Business skills class: “girl culture” Resistance of prep/school notions of “proper female

behavior” Performances of dissident femininity “moral panic” misinterpretations as promiscuity Performances perceived only in terms of gender

versus class or race Adopted discourses of victimization versus desire

Future: vocational business school

Las Chicas: Lack of a critical discourse of class Not perceived themselves as “poor” Different from professional middle class Lack of social and cultural capital Framed class in terms of “acting White”

versus “acting Mexican” Lorena: “double-voicing” valley-girl-talk “I’m going to play volleyball for Harvard

next year”

Middle-class Chola performances College-prep, but racial alliance with

Las Chicas against white norms MEChA: Chicano political activity Often performed working-class

identities to avoid acting white

Gender discourses trump race and class Both Las Chicas and working-class white

girls: perceived primarily in terms of gender. “Class differences, performed in race-specific

ways, are often wrongly understood as primarily about gender”

Difference between “good girls” vs. “bac girls” Race-class performances trapped them into

low-wage economic future/maturnity

Positioning in Room 251 Left side

All African American students, except for one Pacific Islander

Center Mostly white students, with 3 exceptions

Maureen (side) and Sid (front): teachers Analysis: time/space chronotope

References to others in abstract space Avoid references to themselves in immediate space

Latanya: “acting ghetto” Ian: Discussion of meaning of “honky” Sam (white)

“The Black community is the only community that seems to like really find a pattern” of racial abuse.

Latanya: upset Shameen (African-American): “Stop acting ghetto.” “ain’t never been in no ghetto” Own family as not “ghetto”

Maureen (teacher) “I think that we have a little problem here.”

Bodily positioning Latanya: facing banner and Ian

“using the words” Not saying [honky]: “like that” Laytanya’s taboo/banner space

Ian: continues to face forward Alliance with teacher space

Maureen: evaluate effects of “honky” Robert (African-American): challenges Maureen:

“painful for who” Challenge to Maureen’s position

Chronotope: abstract space Ian: “Black person”/”White person”

Avoid focusing on local spaces Ben, Sam, and Ian: “white space”

Positioned Latanya as object Ben: foot on chair in front of him

Cool control; emotional distance

Shushing of Latanya Sahmeen: “Save your voice”

Put his coat over Latanya Protect Latanya identity against critique

African-American males: police Latanya Sahmeen: goating her Reflection: “I was messin with her”

Carnival, “thirdspace” activity Policing of those who challenge

Tony: concern with Latanya’s image in the classroom “She’s making herself look herself look

worse in front of the class, and then that gives them a bad perception of Black people, that we don’t--we can’t stay focused. That we always gotta snap on something. We can’t stay to the topic or whatever.”

Stabilizing identity through multimodal artifacts Construction of white space

Body posture, Sam slamming on desk Physical/social isolation of Latanya Paradox: agency:

“Participation” is valued, but “engagement” with one’s personal identities is controlled

Decontextualized, “abstract space” of school Reproduction of middle-class white

privilege

Genre as Social Action define social roles and relationships position or reposition oneself in

relationship to others evoke certain social worlds as

represented or mediated by a genre

Social genres: typical routines and roles Job interviews Ceremonies/funerals/rituals Sales transaction/bargaining Classroom practices: question-asking Blues songs: coping with difficulties Court/legal hearing

Genres: learned through interaction “Learning genres involves learning to act-with

other people, artifacts, and environments, all of which are themselves in ongoing processes of change and development. In short, this practice perspective draws our attention to how genre practices are learned through, and transformed in, situated interaction.” (Bazerman & Prior)

Role-play: Journal partners write a script for 2 people: Teacher: IRE: leading “discussion” Sales transaction: buyer/sales-clerk Teacher job interview TV crime-scene news interview with

witness

Reflection: Genre conventions Roles/identities: Power/positioning Agendas Speech acts Norms: appropriate actions Break downs/violations