In-depth Interviews

Creswell (2003) points out that interviews involve examining and reflecting on perceptions in order to gain an understanding of social and human activities. Moreover, a qualitative interview data can “facilitate more in-depth understanding of the participant manners, ‘thoughts, and actions’, thus interviewing is a significant qualitative data collection method that can be used for describing linguistic problems and practice” (Harris and Brown 2010: 1).

Cohen et al. (2007: 351) defined interviewing as ‘a two-person conversation’ in which the interviewer seeks to elicit information that provides answers to his/her research questions. Burns (2000: 423) defines interviews as “a verbal interchange, often face to face, in which an interviewer tries to elicit information, beliefs, or opinions from

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another person”. Since interviews allow the “'participants to express their thoughts and understanding, and they provide a positive way of understanding others” (Cohen et al 2007: 349). Gay and Airasian (2003: 209) defined an interview as “a purposeful interaction between two or more people that focused on one person trying to get information from the other person”.

Furthermore, Harris and Brown (2010) highlight the democratic dimension that interviews can offer to interviewees by providing an opportunity to ask for explanations, and to clarify the interviewees’ views in their own words. The findings from the recordings of naturally occurring data informed the interview questions, particularly questions relating to:

a- How Libyans perceive offers of hospitality.

b- Linguistic ideologies related to the use of insistence strategy in offering hospitality.

c- The expectations related to offering hospitality in same and cross gender hospitality situations.

The semi-structured interviews allowed the interviewee some kind of autonomy over the interview (Wilkinson and Birmingham 2003; Berg, 2009). They also allowed me to ask for explanations and illustrations, as well as to ask new questions prompted by the interviewee's responses.

I conducted an interview in Libyan Arabic in order to examine the concepts of hospitality and generosity in offering situations and their relationship to politeness in Arabic. The idea behind this interview was to investigate the attitudes, beliefs and ideologies that Libyans tend to access in order to indicate hospitality and generosity. This information was completed by a number of informants of both sexes, from different educational backgrounds and of various ages.

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The participants were asked to provide their preferred date, time and location for the interview. These arrangements were flexible and changes were made as required due to individual unexpected circumstances. At this stage, I tried to establish trust and a friendly relationship with the research participants; I respected them and communicated with them in a collaborative atmosphere, to ensure that the democratic principles of equity and respect were followed. The participants were told a second time that the data would be anonymous and confidential, and that they had the right to withdraw or stop the interview at any time (Berg, 2009).

Although such interviews may not be rich in contextual detail, they can provide insights; firstly, on the linguistic ideologies that Libyans stereotypically hold about the use of offering/refusal interactions, rituals, norms and conventions. Secondly, they can provide hints regarding which politeness conventions are appropriate in the interactional behaviour of offering as, often, beliefs about appropriate behaviour are reflected in people’s evaluation of politeness; they have opinions about the way they or others should speak, compared with how they actually do speak (Grainger et al., 2015: 45). Thirdly, interviews offer insights into what the respondents consider to be relevant to themselves in such situations.

The informants of my interviews were both males and females who spoke Libyan Arabic. I decided not to restrict myself to a specific cultural group (e.g., undergraduates), but used a random selection of informants of different ages and educational backgrounds in order to avoid my study being centred on a specific cultural group. Some of my friends helped me to collect the data by inviting their friends, relatives and colleagues of both sexes, with different social and educational backgrounds, ages, and so on, to attend the interviews. Thus, the data were not restricted to my own community alone (e.g. my relatives, friends, and so on).

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The informants were asked to supply information about their age, gender, and the Libyan city from where they came (Table 5.1 quantifies this information).

It is worth bearing in mind that the Libyan informants for this study came from different parts of Libya. Although some of them live in England now, the interviews were conducted only with individuals whose residence was temporary (2 years or less) and excluded those who had been living in the UK for a long time (more than 2 years). Hence, their answers were more likely to be particular to Libyan Arabic culture. All of the Libyan respondents speak Libyan Arabic as the mother tongue, and Modern Standard Arabic, which they learnt at school.

Table 5. 1: The social profile of the interview data.

Libyan Female male

Age: 25-35 3 3

36-56 3 3

The interview consisted of five questions. The interviewer asked the informants how they established their hospitality offer, as well as whether they liked to insist when hospitality is being offered to a guest, and why. There was also a question about whether the informants invoke God's name, and why. Finally, the informants were asked whether offering and responding to an offer of hospitality differed between same- and cross-gender situations, and why. It is worth noting that the questions were designed to give the informants an opportunity to provide answers which reflected their perspectives about the appropriateness of offering/responding to an offer in their own culture (see the interviews in Appendix C, p: 40-57).

The wide range of data collected means that this study is more likely to reflect the diversity and variability within Libyan culture and present various perspectives of

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the different cultural groups. This allows me to suggest what might be considered polite/impolite or appropriate/inappropriate in relation to offering hospitality in Libyan culture. Mills and Kadar (2011) argue that:

[B]y analysing a wide range of data, for example, analysing working- class and middle-class people, young and old, it may be possible to make generalisations about the resources available to these particular groups and their tendencies to use particular forms to indicate politeness or impoliteness. Furthermore, we will able to discuss the way that, in the process of being polite or impolite, individuals construct their identities in relation to what are perceived to be group and social norms (Mills and Kadar, 2011: 43).