Abstract

In this paper we consider interviewing in qualitative research as an interactional social process or language event, rather than simply as a tool or research instrument. Drawing on a broad range of research evidence and literature in applied linguistics, discourse, sociolinguistics and ethnography, plus our own interviewing experience, we look at interviewing qualities in terms of qualitative research. We consider a network of practical features and inter-related concepts: common guidelines, ideas and beliefs of participants, processes of social interaction and interview discourse, cultural ways of speaking, and issues of power, control, identity, reflexivity, performance, and practices in different cultural communities. We also give examples of our own published research into interviewing. The paper is framed as a series of 21 "quality questions": these may help interviewers to plan, enact and reflect in specific ways on a range of different features of their interviewing. The questions suggest that researchers might seek further answers from the cited literature or further afield, and thus raise more questions in a move towards a theory of research interviewing. Such a theory will include relations between views, visions, voices and values.