ci8470: interviewing/ performing identities there is more performing going on around us than we...
TRANSCRIPT
CI8470: Interviewing/ Performing identities
There is more performing going on
around us than we realize
And we are performing, even when we
don’t realize it
Interviewing: Issues Applying predetermined agendas
Find what you’re looking for Not listening: rehearsing next question
Lack of follow-up Interviewee conforms to expectations Lack of rapport/comfort
Interviewee just “answers the questions”
Locations for interviews Schools: reserve small rooms in media
center/counseling office Privacy for student IRB: limitations on off-site interviews
45 degree vs. direct contact Avoid “interrogation” stance Focus on writing/artifacts
Place recorder off to side
“Surface acting”“surface acting” controlling one’s emotions in a manner that gives the impression that one is experiencing those emotions. Frank Abnegale, the imposter/confidence man in the autobiographical book and film, Catch Me if You Can. Abnegale learned how to engage in “surface acting” to give the impression that he was a an airline pilot, a pediatrician, a lawyer, and a sociology professor by carefully attending to the genres and practices operating in specific social contexts.
Teachers: “rhetorical listening” “surface acting” I suggest that teachers can listen to students to know
not only how, but who to be with them. They can strategically perform the role of learners, just as, perhaps, the ethnographer puts on an attitude of naïveté…In order for teachers to enable students’ affective work, they must begin by staging their empathy, knowing all the while that the price of successfully persuading students of their (the teachers’) emotional commitments may very well be that they succeed in persuading themselves of these commitments as well. (p. 202).
Teaching/ethnographic research stance: listening “Research bargains”: developing rapport and
relationships with participants. Begin by staging empathy with
students/participants. Appear to care about things they may not
care about. Emotions: not simply unreflective, self-
disclosure/therapy.
Focus groups Advantages: trigger effect
One person’s answer triggers another Multiple perspectives
Differences in perspectives: further thinking Facilitation: encourage others to talk
“X, do you agree with Y?” Summarize and gain reactions
“You seem to be saying that X--is that what I’m hearing”
Recording interviews USB digital recorders: store/categorize DSS.
or MP3 files on a computer Share with co-researchers/transcribers Olympus, iRiver, SONY
Classroom discussions: need multiple mikes
Video recording Allows for analysis of nonverbal positioning Can intimidate interviewees: better for focus
groups or classroom discussions
Transcribing interviews Purposes/methods
Linguistic analysis: need to transcribe Discourse/thematic: selective transcribing
Cassette tapes: foot pedal machine Digital files: start/stop software Professional transcribers: grant funds
Interviews with middle-school students Purpose: issues facing “struggling readers” in
a special class Questions for interviews:
Development of a sense of agency Transfer of writing to reading activities Change over time in ability/attitudes
Sally (Indian) Manga fan/producer: not engaged in school
Dan (African-American) shift in behaviors/attitudes towards school
Developing interview questions Define purpose for interview
Research questions Begin: ice-breaker questions
Talk about weather/shared interests factual information/easy-to-answer
Range of types of questions Beliefs, feelings, analysis, critiques, recollections
Pointing questions Focus on an artifact, writing, map, photo, etc.
Task: develop questions Develop questions: interviewing your participant
themes or topics that intrigue you about your participant Follow up/”pointing questions” for tasks
Mapping, place/space, narrative Practice using these questions with journal partner Reflect on whether your questions solicit what you’re interested
in finding out
Bettie: race/gender/class as performance Cultural practices
Speech, accents, dress, mannerisms Performance: agency and passing Performativity
Effects of inequality creates class identities Passing: temporary selves
Discourse and Identity: Intro. Positioning
relationships we take up to define “who we are”
Interaction order: management of self Footing/voices
“who” is speaking “whose” words/roles Indexing local and global identities
Bettie: portrayals of Las Chicas Business skills class: “girl culture” Resistance of prep/school notions of “proper female
behavior” Performances of dissident femininity “moral panic” misinterpretations as promiscuity Performances perceived only in terms of gender
versus class or race Adopted discourses of victimization versus desire
Future: vocational business school
Las Chicas: Lack of a critical discourse of class Not perceived themselves as “poor” Different from professional middle class Lack of social and cultural capital Framed class in terms of “acting White”
versus “acting Mexican” Lorena: “double-voicing” valley-girl-talk “I’m going to play volleyball for Harvard
next year”
Middle-class Chola performances College-prep, but racial alliance with
Las Chicas against white norms MEChA: Chicano political activity Often performed working-class
identities to avoid acting white
Gender discourses trump race and class Both Las Chicas and working-class white
girls: perceived primarily in terms of gender. “Class differences, performed in race-specific
ways, are often wrongly understood as primarily about gender”
Difference between “good girls” vs. “bac girls” Race-class performances trapped them into
low-wage economic future/maturnity
Positioning in Room 251 Left side
All African American students, except for one Pacific Islander
Center Mostly white students, with 3 exceptions
Maureen (side) and Sid (front): teachers Analysis: time/space chronotope
References to others in abstract space Avoid references to themselves in immediate space
Latanya: “acting ghetto” Ian: Discussion of meaning of “honky” Sam (white)
“The Black community is the only community that seems to like really find a pattern” of racial abuse.
Latanya: upset Shameen (African-American): “Stop acting ghetto.” “ain’t never been in no ghetto” Own family as not “ghetto”
Maureen (teacher) “I think that we have a little problem here.”
Bodily positioning Latanya: facing banner and Ian
“using the words” Not saying [honky]: “like that” Laytanya’s taboo/banner space
Ian: continues to face forward Alliance with teacher space
Maureen: evaluate effects of “honky” Robert (African-American): challenges Maureen:
“painful for who” Challenge to Maureen’s position
Chronotope: abstract space Ian: “Black person”/”White person”
Avoid focusing on local spaces Ben, Sam, and Ian: “white space”
Positioned Latanya as object Ben: foot on chair in front of him
Cool control; emotional distance
Shushing of Latanya Sahmeen: “Save your voice”
Put his coat over Latanya Protect Latanya identity against critique
African-American males: police Latanya Sahmeen: goating her Reflection: “I was messin with her”
Carnival, “thirdspace” activity Policing of those who challenge
Tony: concern with Latanya’s image in the classroom “She’s making herself look herself look
worse in front of the class, and then that gives them a bad perception of Black people, that we don’t--we can’t stay focused. That we always gotta snap on something. We can’t stay to the topic or whatever.”
Stabilizing identity through multimodal artifacts Construction of white space
Body posture, Sam slamming on desk Physical/social isolation of Latanya Paradox: agency:
“Participation” is valued, but “engagement” with one’s personal identities is controlled
Decontextualized, “abstract space” of school Reproduction of middle-class white
privilege
Genre as Social Action define social roles and relationships position or reposition oneself in
relationship to others evoke certain social worlds as
represented or mediated by a genre
Social genres: typical routines and roles Job interviews Ceremonies/funerals/rituals Sales transaction/bargaining Classroom practices: question-asking Blues songs: coping with difficulties Court/legal hearing
Genres: learned through interaction “Learning genres involves learning to act-with
other people, artifacts, and environments, all of which are themselves in ongoing processes of change and development. In short, this practice perspective draws our attention to how genre practices are learned through, and transformed in, situated interaction.” (Bazerman & Prior)
Role-play: Journal partners write a script for 2 people: Teacher: IRE: leading “discussion” Sales transaction: buyer/sales-clerk Teacher job interview TV crime-scene news interview with
witness
Reflection: Genre conventions Roles/identities: Power/positioning Agendas Speech acts Norms: appropriate actions Break downs/violations