iii Observer’s Parado

Agar (1980) argues that much more attention should be devoted to the role of researcher in fieldwork, the researcher’s relationship with the people in the field, and the effects on the data being collected and ultimately analysed. Poplack (1983; 1988) states that this lack of explicitness can result in different methods of data collection and eventually to quite different findings on code switching behaviour, sometimes even of the same speakers. Gal (1988), while talking about the question of data comparability, stresses the need to embed small-scale ethnographic descriptions within a wider social, political, and historical context. Li Wei (1994: 87) also stresses that ‘adequate specifications’ of the role of the researcher in the field and his/her relations with the researched and of the fieldwork procedure are required to interpret the linguistic data appropriately.

Labov (1966, 1972a, b, c) discuss in detail the role of the observer in terms of the ‘observer paradox’ in the sense that the presence of a researcher may affect the real mode of speech of the researched. Hymes (1974) and Gumperz (1982) have also emphasized the sensitivity of language to situational context. What is required then is either a field method that turns the researcher into a ‘fly on the wall’ or an analytic procedure that accounts for his/her interactional role. If the researcher wants to obtain authentic data then one of the major tasks that he/she has at hand is to reduce this effect or find a way of getting round this issue.

Li Wei (1994) is of the opinion that the observer’s paradox is particularly acute if the investigator is not an ‘insider’. Milroy et al. (1991) have also taken up this

40 Although observer’s paradox is at times seen as a potential problem, as I will discuss in this section, it did not prove to be so for my study.

issue. Gafaranga (1998: 49) states that if the researcher ‘is interested in investigating the way members talk among themselves, ideally, he/she will have to be a member him/herself, he/she will have to have the member’s competence to participate in those situations where those competences are displayed.’ He further states that those researchers who are not ‘fortunate’ enough to be fluent in the codes of the researched may employ different methods as ‘compensatory strategies’ (ibid: 50). Since I was fortunate enough to be an ‘insider’ to an extent—well-versed in the members’ code, during the recording sessions in different homes I sometimes became a full-fledged member in the settings under study ‘a complete participant’ in the sense of Ackroyd and Hughes (1981: 107). At other times, I sat in one comer of the room where the family would be present, reading something or taking notes or sat out in the courtyard on my own trying to ‘fade into the background’ (Milroy 1987a: 42) to allow group dynamics to carry along the interaction. However, I was never able to make my presence completely unobtrusive.

I had visited the participating families, whom I did not know well before starting my research, several times and spent hours with them each time to win their trust and to make them used to my presence before starting recording them.

For the recording I could not hide the tape recorder or the microphone because I needed very clear recordings, besides in some settings it was impossible to do so. On some instances the recorded data reveals that the participants were aware of the presence of the microphone as they refer to it at times like, ‘Amman aye ayda kuula aye, aye kiivain alia chikaynday’ (mother, it is so soft, how can it suck the voice?) or ‘is it still recording’, or ‘are the spools of the tape recorder moving’. A very interesting instance of participants’ awareness of the recording and their not paying

any heed to it is found in the recorded data of family 3U when Son 2 pointed out to me that I should have recorded the conversation of the family secretly to maintain ‘objectivity’ and if the participants know about the recording they would speak ‘wrong words’. For him the ‘right words’ was the authentic natural language which I expected to hear and record. His mother at once answered him saying,‘Assail aaprin boli bulaynday pai hain iin vaastay sidhi hay’ (we are speaking our own language therefore it is right). On several occasions during my recording the participants talked on such topics, which they normally would not have discussed, had they been self- conscious. All this proves that the participants were aware of the tape recorder but they got used to it quickly and it did not interfere in their natural speech style and language choices.

Along with speech in home domain, interviews formed a major part of the data collected for this study. In the next section I discuss my methodology of conducting interviews during my fieldwork.

3.9.4 Interviews

These interviews constitute the fourth part of the data triangulation. The other three that I have used in my research have already been discussed (cf. 3.9.1, 3.9.2, 3.9.3). Although ethnography and interviewing are epistemologically rather different (Harkess & Warren, 1993; Warren, 1987), in practice they are used as supplements for traditional fieldwork (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995). Interviews explain and put into a larger context what the ethnographer sees and experiences (Fetterman, 1998: 37). Conversations in the field become ‘intensive’, ‘active’, ‘long’, or ‘ethnographic’ interview. For researchers who are not a part of the culture under study the interview may decrease distance i.e. it may bring more understanding of that culture whereas, in

studies where the researcher is studying her or his ‘own people’ it may bring distance between the interviewer and the interviewees (Warren & Hackney: 2000).

I conducted two types of interviews for this study.

1) Interviews with four members of each family participating in my research. The interviewees belonged to different age groups.

2) Semi-structured in-depth interviews with school heads, primary school teachers, both of rural and urban Multan, and teachers, researchers and writers of Siraiki.

I had to juggle with the time of the interviews to suit the schedule of the interviewees. The interviews in category one (cf. 3.9.4.i) were held in the homes of the participants while others (cf. 3.9.4.ii) were conducted in the respective schools or institutions of the interviewees. I took two trips to Bahawalpur to interview the teaching staff of the Siraiki Department, Islamia University.

Before I discuss this data in detail, I would like to comment on the responses given by the interviewees in the interview process. Whyte (1982) believes that the researcher must weigh the validity of statements made by the informants as a first step in research data analysis and ‘must know in what respect an informant’s statement reflects his personality and perception and in what respects it is a reasonably accurate record of actual events’ (ibid: 115). Whyte proposes that the following factors may also influence an informant’s reporting in the interview situation:

• Ulterior motives

• The desire to please the interviewer

• Idiosyncratic factors (e.g. mood, wording of question, extraneous factors) I was aware of these factors when I conducted my research interviews and during several interviews I felt the influence of these factors on the responses of the

interviewees. In the case of some responses, I had no way of judging their authenticity e.g. the observation made by Dr. Ahmad about the Vice-Chancellor’s reasons for opening a Siraiki research centre (cf. 5.5) and the claim of Mr. Sindher that the opening of the Siraiki department was a political decision (cf. 5.2.2). Such examples may or may not be categorised as instances of the interviewees’ agendas who try to support their cause. Researchers are advised to exercise caution in such cases, ‘All language, even language which passes as simple description, is constructive and consequential for the discourse analyst’ (Potter & Wetherell, 1987: 34).

In several cases though, I could judge the authenticity of such accounts through the accounts given by the other interviewees, and through the data that I had collected from multiple sources (cf. 3.4). I will cite a few examples here of how I was able to verify the authenticity of some of the interviewees’ accounts. When I interviewed the head of the English medium schools (cf. 5.3), they all questioned me thoroughly about my research. During my interview with one school head I felt that my area of research affected her responses when she tried to claim that her school is very supportive of the Siraiki language, ‘it’s a rich heritage of our culture, we don’t want to lose it’ but her statement was shown to be false when I judged it in the light of the responses of the teachers of the same school given in their interviews (cf. 5.3.2). Son 1 in family 3R claimed—perhaps to save face in front of me (cf. 5.6) that his grandfather and father spoke Siraiki as well as Urdu with them at home (cf. 4.4.1 .iii), but his claim was nullified in the light of the recorded data of their home conversations. Keeping these idiosyncratic factors in mind I took a number of steps in my interviews. I tried to hold the interviews at the place of the interviewees’ choice. I also did not insist on completing each interview in one sitting. The interviews which I conducted in the workplace of some interviewees were interrupted several times due to telephone calls

or some callers. However, the flexibility of not completing each interview in one sitting helped to some extent in not affecting the responses of those interviewees. With several interviewees belonging to the families participating in my research, I had to change the wording of the questions in order to make them understand exactly what I was trying to ask.