The ‘radical critique of interviews’: a response to recent comments

ABSTRACT

This paper responds to some recent discussions in the Journal about how interview data can be used. While recognising the value of detailed analysis of the discourse employed in interviews to identify its formal features, it is argued that such analysis is not essential for all the purposes for which interview data can be employed in social research; that informal understanding of everyday language use, built up through ordinary experience and during the course of inquiry, can often be relied upon. It is also argued that practical cautions against taking interview data at face value must not be conflated with philosophical doubts about whether interview data can serve as a source of evidence about anything beyond the interview context.

KEYWORDS:

• Interviews
• Radical Critique of Interviews
• Discourse Analysis

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Martyn Hammersley

Martyn Hammersley is Emeritus Professor of Educational and Social Research at The Open University, UK. He has carried out research in the sociology of education and the sociology of the media, but much of his work has been concerned with the methodological issues surrounding social enquiry. His books include (with Paul Atkinson) Ethnography: Principles in Practice (Fourth edition, Routledge 2019), The Politics of Social Research (Sage, 1995), Reading Ethnographic Research (Second edition, Longman 1997), Questioning Qualitative Inquiry (Sage, 2008), The Limits of Social Science (Sage, 2014), The Radicalism of Ethnomethodology (Manchester University Press, 2018), The Concept of Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and Troubling Sociological Concepts (Palgrave Macmillan 2020).Website: http://martynhammersley.wordpress.com/