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Narrative Inquiry: Online-First ArticlesThe structured narrative interview
In this study, Greimas’s work on narrative structure is used to improve a specific practice: the research interview. In the social sciences, narrative interviewing often consists of collecting data from which a narrative is then constructed through analysis afterwards. In the interview method presented here, the interviewer instead prompts the interviewee to construct a narrative. We introduce the method, contextualize it by comparing it to previous and contemporary interview methods, and illustrate it with a small, sociolinguistic study: students (n = 12) from a humanities faculty and a science and engineering faculty at a Dutch university were interviewed about experiences with the use of different languages than the language of instruction in an international learning environment. The method allowed for smooth data collection, due to its narratively structured questioning and consequent rich data. Moreover, using narrative structures to guide the interview also facilitated easy analysis and comparison of the stories.
Keywords: interview methods, applied narratology, emplotment, Greimas, translanguaging, language policies in higher education
Article outline
- Introduction
- The interview as research method
- From neutral conduit to construction site
- The interview as a narrative environment
- The structured narrative interview
- Pilot study
- Context, aims and research set-up
- Results: Four types of translanguaging stories
- 1.Prohibiting translanguaging leads to discomfort
- 2.Translanguaging makes things less formal
- 3.Suddenly, it’s okay to translanguage
- 4.Translanguaging can be good
- Discussion
- Concluding remarks
-
References
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