Discourse based interviews

Rationale and design of discourse-based interviews

Given the gap in literature on the definition of formality, there appears to be a need for exploring further the way formality is perceived and enacted in discourse to better understand the underlying factors behind its use. It is argued here that having the participants talk about their own writing is useful in that it gives a more accurate and researcher-unbiased picture of a reality that is closer to the way it is perceived by the very people who experience it. The importance of such „first‟ rather than „second order concepts‟ (Angouri & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2011) has been highlighted by a number of researchers of workplace discourse (Bargiela-Chiappini & Harris, 1997; Odel et al., 1983; Sarangi, 2002). Admittedly no analysis is completely researcher-bias free.

However, given the inherent practical restrictions of conducting, analysing and interpreting research, a mutual cooperation of researcher – participant in the research stages above can be very fruitful.

In this context, the intention here was to urge the informants to provide the necessary contextual information to more accurately understand the stylistic choices made in the production of the written documents. Given that style is claimed to operate on two levels, conscious and unconscious (Rice, 1997, p. 6), the assumption behind the use of discourse-based interviews is that they help elicit the informants‟ tacit knowledge - that allows access to the contextual information necessary for our understanding of written discourse, an important limitation of other methodologies like corpus-based studies (Odell et al., 1983; Widdowson, 2000). It becomes obvious that adopting the insider‟s lens rather than that of the “observer looking on” (Widdowson, 2000) can give access to

contextual information that is not present in the text. Admittedly basing the discourse analysis on either the information elicited from the participants or the discourse analyst‟s best guess can be criticised for being subjective. However, here although the analysis highlights the participants‟ perceptions, it is also based on the discourse analysis of the data and seen in light of evidence from past literature studies on formality. In agreement with other discourse analyses utilising „second order‟ concepts, the interview process was as non-directive as possible and iterative helping the participant to activate his/her tacit knowledge (Harwood, 2006). “Research on verbal reports as data confirms that informants can report reliably on such socially learned information, which has been tacitly transformed into functional plans they apply when writing (Smith & Miller, 1978 cited in Odell et al., 1983, p.228).

Having said that, the multiple and alternating authorship and audiences of email chains pose a number of problems. Since accessing and interviewing all multiple authors is virtually impossible, it was decided to seek interviews from participants who were directly involved as main writers or/and readers of the sample email chains thus acting as main informants. Seven participants volunteered to act as informants in discourse-based interviews, where they commented on the formality of the emails they were directly involved in either as writers or readers: Maria, Chris, and Thomas from PharmaMed, George from Rysy, and Bill, Victoria, and Luis from Infoquest!. The informants were asked to a) give their own perceptions of what constitutes formality, b) to indicate and explain instances of formal and informal language in their writing and c) to comment on the formality and appropriacy of the overall formality of the emails and of particular linguistic items.

Analysis of discourse-based interviews

The interviews were recorded and transcribed²⁶. In the analysis, the informants‟ views were initially summarised into notes and these were examined for similarities and differences allowing for the compilation of a comprehensive list of themes on the definition of formality and appropriacy rather than a list of points of convergence. The idea behind it is that all participants‟ perceptions on what formality is and what is considered appropriate are equally important given that they are consistent with their

26 For transcription conventions see appendix H.

linguistic choices in their writing. As Odell et al. (1985) rightly remark about addressing isolated alternatives (i.e., isolated linguistic choices and perceptions as opposed to common perceptions),

although an isolated feature (e.g., form of address or elaboration) may seem insignificant, it is a sensitive indicator of a writer‟s complex understanding of the rhetorical context and ways for them to achieve their purpose within that context (p. 231).

Upon writing, each participant‟s views were expanded in detail and supplemented with quotes from their interview data sets. The quotes included in the text were selected to represent the themes that emerged in relation to the situational and linguistic characteristics of formality (see figure 14, and tables 12 and 13). The fact that certain interviewees were more engaged in the study than others and provided richer information is reflected in their greater number of quotes. The thematic map that emerged in the final stage of the analysis of these interviews is shown in the introduction to chapter 5 on the analysis of emails.

3.8. Conclusion

This chapter concludes the preparatory stage of the thesis. In the first two chapters, the relevant literature and theoretical frameworks of the research were discussed. The goal of the present chapter has been to discuss the methodology used in this study. A mixed method approach was adopted to better address the multifaceted aspects of workplace written communication. The aim has been to capture general features of workplace writing and to deeply explore the most frequent and important workplace genre, the email. The procedure and the tools were described in detail, and the role of the researcher and ethical considerations were addressed. The thesis will now move to the analysis and discussion of the data. This will take place in two parts. Part A of the findings will be discussed in chapter 4 and part B will be discussed in chapter 5.

Chapter 4. Analysis and discussion of findings