From Interview Transcript to Interpretive Story: Part 1 ... - UTSC

FIELD METHODS McCormack / FROM TRANSCRIPT TO STORY: PART 1

From Interview Transcript to Interpretive Story: Part 1— Viewing the Transcript through Multiple Lenses CORALIE MCCORMACK University of Canberra For researchers working within a narrative inquiry framework, the task of constructing an interpretive story is daunting. They need to know, What do we do after we have transcribed our interview tapes? The author’s response to this question is described in this article. The lenses of narrative processes, language, context, and moments are the dimensions people use to construct and reconstruct their identity and to give meaning to their lives. These lenses highlight both the individuality and the complexity of a life. Excerpts from an interview with one postgraduate student illustrate some of the views highlighted by each of these lenses.

SETTING THE SCENE Researchers who work within a narrative inquiry framework face a daunting task. Faced with page upon page of interview transcripts, how do we construct what Ellis (1995) calls a meaningful story? Researchers report feeling “terrified and overwhelmed” and “at a loss as to where and how to begin” (Kiesinger 1998:84). In short, they want to know what to do after they have transcribed their interview tapes. The two articles in this series respond to this problem by describing the process that took me from interview transcript to meaningful story. The process involved looking at interview transcripts through multiple lenses: active listening, narrative processes, language, context, and moments, then using the views highlighted by these lenses to write interpretive stories. These lenses are the dimensions people use to construct and reconstruct their identity and to give meaning to their lives. Thus, they highlight both the individuality and the complexity of a life. Field Methods, Vol. 12, No. 4, November 2000 282–297 © 2000 Sage Publications, Inc.

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Excerpts from an interview with one postgraduate student (Anna) illustrate some of the views highlighted by each of the lenses. Anna was one of fourteen women interviewed as part of my doctoral research. This research explored the following question: How does the experience of being a postgraduate research student change the way women construct and experience leisure in their everyday lives? I have illustrated the views from Anna’s interview transcript because it was this transcript that significantly influenced the development of my process of moving from interview transcript to meaningful story. The process of developing a meaningful story using the views highlighted by the multiple lenses is described in the second article. The process described in the two articles is not presented as a recipe whose steps are to be followed meticulously and in sequence; rather, it is one approach other researchers may wish to consider as they approach their interview transcripts.

BEGINNING THE STORY The process for analyzing interview transcripts that I describe here grew from my experience of studying the feelings women associate with leisure. I had become uncomfortable with the process I had been using as a researcher: moving from interview transcript to report and with my assumption that the process and the presentation was “giving voice” to those with whom I spoke. In particular, I was concerned that the traditional method of coding for themes in transcripts and studying those themes separated people’s words from their spoken and heard context. The outcome seemed to be the loss of the individual’s experience and the context of that experience. I found that others, too, were concerned about such questions—so concerned, in fact, that they had named their concerns the “crisis of representation” (Lincoln and Denzin 1994:576).

MISSING ACCOUNTS Some social scientists responded to the “crisis” by providing “powerful, propositional, tacit, intuitive, emotional, historical, poetic, and empathetic experience of the Other” (Lincoln and Denzin 1994:582) through the texts

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they wrote. These responses included representing interview texts as personal narratives (Kiesinger 1998; Tierney 1998), poems (Richardson 1992; Glense 1997), short stories (Diversi 1998), dramatic monologues (Hatton 1998), or reader’s theatre (Donmoyer and Yennie-Donmoyer 1995; Adams et al. 1998). However, I was left wondering how the authors came to represent their transcripts in these ways. Few had exposed to the scrutiny of readers what Mauthner and Doucet (1998) describe as “the nitty-gritty of how we analysed the interview transcripts” (p. 119). As Riessman (1993) observed, students were “drowning in a sea of interview transcripts” because the “qualitative research literature was largely silent about ways to approach long stretches of talk that took the form of narrative accounts” (p. v). To the accounts of researchers who have shared their process of moving from interview transcript to meaningful story (Cortazzi 1993; Riessman 1993; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber 1998; Mathieson and Barrie 1998; Mauthner and Doucet 1998), I would like to add the process I used in my doctoral research. However, before I can tell the nitty-gritty of my process, I will summarize the research framework within which this process is embedded. “How we analyse and interpret interview transcripts, indeed any texts, reveals the personal and social stances we take up in relation to learning and to life, our underlying assumptions, presuppositions and the wider social discourses to which we belong” (Grant 1996:111). Stories are always told, retold, and interpreted from somewhere.

VIEWING THE WORLD My research framework combines particular understandings of the nature of research, the nature of knowledge, the purpose of research, the nature of the research design, and the nature of the research process. These understandings are named and summarized in Table 1. This framework values transformation at a personal level, the everyday context of people’s lives, individual subjectivity, and the researcher’s voice. It strives to be both ethical and accountable.

FROM INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT TO INTERPRETIVE STORY Moving from interview transcript to interpretive story occurs in two stages:

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TABLE 1 Elements of My Research Framework Nature of research—Research as living practice: Research is “a product of human action” (Polkinghorne 1997:9) characterized by “blurring the boundaries between research and everyday life” (Norris 1997:89). Nature of knowledge: Knowledge is situated, constructed, transient, partial, and provisional; characterized by multiple voices, perspectives, truths, and meanings and a tolerance for paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity. Purpose of research: The purpose is to explore individuals’ understandings of their experience in the context of their everyday life. Nature of the research design—Stories are us: “Human experience is basically storied experience: that humans live out stories and are storytelling organisms. . . . One of the best ways to study human beings is to come to grips with the storied quality of human experience” (Connelly and Clandinin 1994:4046). Nature of the research process—Storying stories: Stories are a way of researching, a way of writing, and a way for readers to respond to the research—a process of storying stories. The outcomes of this process are not “third person objective representations” (Polkinghorne 1995:19) but rather, represent the outcomes of a series of reconstructions (Riessman 1993). The initial reconstruction is by the participant as she or he recalls an experience and then describes that experience for the researcher. The researcher then reconstructs this experience as she or he transcribes, analyzes, and interprets the experience. A further level of reconstruction occurs as the reader reads and reacts to the experience. This process is simultaneously situated in a particular everyday context and within a wider cultural/social context.

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Viewing the interview transcript through multiple lenses, which involves the following: • immersing oneself in the transcript through a process of active listening; • identifying the narrative processes used by the storyteller; • paying attention to the language of the text; • acknowledging the context in which the text was produced; and • identifying moments in the text where something unexpected is happening. Developing interpretive stories using the views highlighted through the multiple lenses.

The first of these two stages is discussed in this article and the second in Part 2 of the series. The following section begins this discussion by introducing the lenses of narrative processes, language, context, and moments.

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VIEWING THE INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT THROUGH MULTIPLE LENSES Introducing the Lenses Making sense of a life involves exploring the complex interactions between self and society constructed through language and mediated by the particular material conditions of our lives over time. Meaning is continually constructed and reconstructed. This construction and reconstruction occurs within, and is made visible through, stories. We not only live our lives as a story, as we tell our stories we relive, reconstruct, and reinterpret our experience for later retelling and further reconstruction and reinterpretation. Stories both reflect experience and are constitutive of experience. As Michael White and David Epston (1990) have argued, If we accept that persons organise and give meaning to their experience through the storying of experience and that in the performance of these stories they express selected aspects of their lived experience, then it follows that these stories are constitutive—shaping lives and relationships. (P. 2)

As people tell their stories during an interview, they may also use other narrative processes (Rosenthal 1993) to enrich these stories and to help the listener get the point of a story (the reason for its telling). During an interview, a storyteller may become reflective—trying to work out the “why?”— attempting to theorize their experience. Often, as the interview proceeds, a storyteller will add information to stories already told, as the conversation stimulates recollection of additional story pieces (a process of augmentation). Sometimes the added part may not be part of an already told story, but may be an abstracted element from outside a story (a process of argumentation). Such elements bring to a story other factors the narrator feels add meaning to the story. Storytellers may also take the time to describe particular people, places, or things in detail. While these descriptions when read alone offer little in the way of interpretation or explanation, they do inform the listener by adding detail to the picture built up through other narrative processes. Looking through the lens of narrative processes provides one view of how the storyteller constructs and gives meaning to his or her life and alerts the researcher to the particular meanings the storyteller wishes to convey (the reasons the stories were told). Language is central to the analysis of an interview transcript because it is “more than a means of communication about reality: it is a tool for constructing reality” (Spradley 1979:17; cited in Campbell 1996:263). Language, like narrative processes, helps us construct “our sense of selves, our subjectivity”

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(Richardson 1994:518). Through this lens, the researcher looks at language as text and language as a social process. Language as text, as a means of communication, is concerned with content, with “people, situations, and ideas that speakers mean their words to convey” (Riessman 1993:21). As a social process, language functions to construct individual identity and social relationships between people and systems of knowledge and beliefs (Fairclough 1992; cited in Grant 1996:139). Language helps the researcher see how the storyteller speaks about himself or herself, about the relationships in his or her life, and about the environments in which his or her life has been or is being lived. Most importantly, this lens allows the researcher to see how the storyteller “speaks of herself before we speak of her” (Brown and Gilligan 1992:27–28). Stories are not told in a vacuum—they are simultaneously situated within a particular context (situation) and within a wider cultural context. The context of situation is the immediate social situation of the storyteller and the listener. In this research, the context is the interview—a conversation constructed jointly by a particular teller and a particular listener in a “relation of power, at a particular historical moment” (Riessman 1993:31). Hence, the context of situation includes the autobiographical context each person brings to the interview (personal context) and the interactional aspects of the relationships between the interview participants (interactional context). The context of culture is the social, political, cultural, historical, and structural conditions of the wider society in which the stories have been experienced, told, and retold. Looking through this lens highlights the social constructions of reality held within the prevailing cultural fictions (the dominant collectively held meanings that relate to individual experience). Through this lens, we can explore those “natural,” uncontested, and taken-for-granted positions available to women to understand themselves (and thus their lives). We can also explore a woman’s notion of personal agency within subjectivity. We can look for times and places where each woman constructs or reconstructs her sense of self through acts of accommodation, challenge, or resistance. Often the stories we recall represent significant moments—epiphanies or turning points—that then lead us to tell other stories about what happened before and after these moments. There may also be times during a story where particular phrases or key words signify something different or unexpected is happening. Whether these moments occur as stories or within stories, they are times that “alter and shape the meanings persons give to themselves and their life projects” (Denzin 1994:510). To summarize, narrative processes, language, context, and moments are dimensions people use to construct and reconstruct their identities and to give meaning to their lives. Looking through these lenses, we can see more of the

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life as constructed by each individual and reduce the distance between an individual’s understandings of his or her life and our interpretations of his or her life. What does this involve? The following sections describe the process of looking through each of the lenses. Each description includes examples drawn from Anna’s interview transcript. I conclude the article with my response to the following question: So, why multiple lenses?

ACTIVE LISTENING As active listener, the researcher listens to the tape several times. While listening, the researcher asks, • • • • • •

Who are the characters in this conversation? What are the main events? Where/When do they occur? As researcher, how am I positioned during this conversation? As researcher, how am I positioned in relation to the participant? As postgraduate student, how am I positioned in relation to the participant? How am I responding emotionally and intellectually to this participant?

As is often the case in part-time doctoral studies, many months may have passed since the interview conversation occurred. Through active listening, the researcher can reconnect with the storyteller, the story, and his or her reactions to both of these. The researcher thinks about “how and where some of her own assumptions and views—whether personal, political, or theoretical—might affect her interpretation of the respondent’s words, or how she later writes about the person” (Mauthner and Doucet 1998:127).

NARRATIVE PROCESSES Here the researcher reads the transcript locating the different narrative processes used by the storyteller: stories, description, argumentation, augmentation, and theorizing. Identifying the narrative processes begins by locating stories. Stories are characterized by • recognizable boundaries—a beginning and an end; • within these boundaries a series of linked events/actions (the complicating action) that are responses to the question, And then, what happened? and

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• that together these give the story a unity of purpose and a coherence recognizable as the point of the story—why the story was told.

The researcher then identifies those aspects of each story that constitute the basis for interpretation: the abstract (summarizes the point); the evaluation (why it was told, highlights the point); the orientation (who, what, where, when); the series of linked events/actions that are responses to the question, And then, what happened? and the coda (brings the story to a close) (Riessman 1993). The evaluation and the abstract answer the question, Why was the story told? The answer to this question becomes the title of the story. This was a real holiday is an example of a story from Anna’s interview transcript. This example illustrates each of the elements of a story described above. This Was a Real Holiday I lived in Hong Kong for six months so it wasn’t that far away to go to Borneo for a holiday. It was a honeymoon. I actually got married. I’m separated now. Orientation That was pretty amazing. This was a real holiday I think. Abstract We stayed in a hotel. We walked on the beach and canoed out to an island. We climbed Mt. Kinabalue, walked through rainforest and above the treeline, saw pitcher plants. We ate Chinese food with lumps of ginger in it. As we drove back on the bus it was raining, I was petrified. Then, what happened? That’s what I call a proper holiday. I don’t know, I suppose it’s just a stereotype image of people going on holiday. I don’t know where it comes from, but you go away somewhere and stay in a hotel. Evaluation Probably from advertising. Coda Next, the researcher identifies the descriptions, argumentations, augmentations, and theorizing and asks, What is their relationship to the stories told

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in the text and to each other? Knowing what other sorts of text are present in the transcript helps the researcher understand how that text fits in relation to the stories told. For example, did the participant tell more about something she has spoken about in a story (augmentation)? What does it add to the story? How could it be included in the story? Is the participant reflecting, giving an opinion, or trying to work out something (theorizing)? What does this add to the stories told? Does it indicate a particularly problematic issue for the participant? The following examples illustrate the narrative processes of theorizing and augmentation in Anna’s interview transcript. In the theorizing excerpt, Anna reflects on her experience of a “real” holiday. In the second excerpt, Anna gives the reader additional information about her leisure and how it changed over the years she has been studying. Theorizing Coralie: Was that the same sort of holiday then as the other one you mentioned where you went sailing and that or was it different? Anna: No, this was a real holiday I think it was (pause) I don’t know I suppose cos we (pause) it was actually a honeymoon I actually got married and ahm separated now but ahm I guess cos it was going to another country and we stayed in a hotel that what I call a proper holiday.

Augmentation Coralie: So leisure changed when you became an undergraduate student. Is that when the change occurred? Anna: It changed from high school and then when I first left high school and I was working and then and when I went to uni and then since I was a serious student and a postgraduate student ahm I think that the state I’m in now is similar to a stage when I was at high school and then there was a stage in the middle where it involved a lot of drinking going out with friends and that sort of things but I guess yeah ahm (pause) it hasn’t really changed since I’ve been a postgraduate student but since I’ve been really interested in my studies.

The stories are then enriched with the additional information. Sometimes, the researcher is given sufficient information through the other narrative processes used by a participant to construct a story or stories. The enriched stories and the constructed stories are returned to the participant, accompanied by a letter asking the participant to respond to the following questions: • Does what I have written make sense to you? • How does this account compare with your experience?

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• Have any aspects of your experience been omitted? Please include these wherever you feel it is appropriate. • Do you wish to remove any aspect(s) of your experience from this text? • Please feel free to make any other comments.

When the stories are returned, the researcher reflects and responds to the participant’s comments, for example, by changing the stories or negotiating the stories with the participant. Anna returned her stories without modification.

LANGUAGE Looking through this lens, the researcher asks the following questions: What features of the language of the interview transcript impact on its interpretation? and How do they impact? Three language features are considered at this stage: What is said, how it is said, and what remains unsaid. 1.

What is said includes the following: • word groupings or phrases that indicate the relationship of self and society (e.g., of course, it was natural that); • frequently used words (e.g., leisure time); • words that assume common understandings and uncontested “knowledge” (e.g., you know); • words that make space for thought (e.g., uhm); • specialized vocabularies (the way particular groups/communities use ordinary words in special ways or use variant of common words that are specific to their community); • words around the key words in the research question: leisure, work, study, and time; and • words participants use to talk about their self-image, relationships, and their environment.

Some examples of what is said from Anna’s interview transcript follow. This extract includes examples of words assuming common understanding (e.g., uni, that sort of thing), frequently used words (e.g., I guess, yeah), and words making space for thought (e.g., ahm). Coralie: So leisure changed when you became an undergraduate student. Is that when the change occurred? Anna: It changed from high school and then when I first left high school and I was working and then and when I went to uni and then since I was a serious student and a postgraduate student ahm I think that the stage I’m in now is similar to a stage when I was at high school and then there was a stage in the middle where it involved a lot of drinking going out with friends and that

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sort of thing but I guess yeah ahm (pause) it hasn’t really changed since I’ve been a postgraduate student but since I’ve been really interested in my studies. 2.

How it is said—structural features such as the following: • active/passive voice; • speech functions (questions, commands, statements, exclamations); • where the personal pronouns we, I, and you are used by the participant, particularly in relation to herself (How does she see and present herself? Where does she shift between these pronouns?); • repetition, false starts, and hedging; and • metaphors, similes, analogies, and other kinds of imagery.

The following excerpt illustrates Anna’s use and interchanges of the personal pronouns you and I. Coralie: But if you went to Sydney and stayed in a hotel would that be a holiday? Anna: I don’t know it just depended on what we did when we were there (laughter) ahm (pause) maybe it’s something to do with leisure that if you’re going there just to have fun and relax and enjoy yourself (pause) it would be a holiday but if you were going for a conference or (pause) on business or something or to visit with someone I guess it would be a trip (pause). 3.

What is unsaid, but signaled in the text— performance features such as the following: • periods of silence, noting the length of the silences; and • tone, speed of delivery, inflections, emotions, volume, and hesitations.

In the following extract, for example, both long and short pauses are present. Coralie: So if you’ve got leisure and work and sometimes they overlap a little bit, where does study fit in that . . . Anna: (long pause) I guess study is work, but some work some work is enjoyable (short pause) and some work isn’t enjoyable (long pause) so study (short pause) ahm (short pause). Mm, I don’t know.

CONTEXT Looking through this lens, the researcher is interested in the context of culture and the context of situation. Paying attention to the context of culture involves asking,

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• What cultural fictions does each woman draw on to shape or construct her view of what counts as being a person? • How have these ways of talking, thinking, and being positioned each woman? Where does she conform to them? Where does she resist or challenge them? Where does she rewrite them?

The following extract illustrates our discussion of the cultural fiction of holidays. As our conversation progresses, Anna starts to think about the elements that define what for her is a real holiday. She proceeds hesitantly, with a great deal of uncertainty, as she tries to work out what she means. Coralie: What was your holiday memory? Anna: I wrote two the first one was about going camping with school friends and that was on the east coast of Tasmania and about going to a group and we were drinking and smoking at night and we went sailing on a catamaran during the day and I really enjoyed it because I joined a family to eat dinner (pause) and the other one (pause) the other one was a holiday in Borneo (laughter) well I lived in Hong Kong for six months so it wasn’t that far away to go over there for a holiday so that was pretty amazing. Coralie: Was that the same sort of holiday then as the other one you mentioned where you went sailing and that or was it different? Anna: No this was a real holiday I think it was (pause) I don’t know I suppose cos we (pause) it was actually a honeymoon I actually got married and ahm separated now but ahm I guess cos it was going to another country and we stayed in a hotel that what I call a proper holiday. Coralie: What makes a proper or to use the term real holiday? Anna: (Laughter) I don’t know. I suppose it’s just the stereotypes of image and people going on holiday I don’t know where it comes from but you go away somewhere and stay in a hotel probably from advertising and ahm (pause) the other one was going camping it’s not (pause) you didn’t think of it it is a holiday but (pause) at the time when I was planning to go I didn’t really think of it as going on holiday I thought of it as going camping (laughs) (pause) yeah I don’t know. Coralie: Maybe you mentioned . . . the holiday in Borneo as being different? Is that relevant to making it a real holiday? Anna: Cos it was to another country. Coralie: Different from where you’re living. Anna: Yeah probably yeah and I think because we stayed somewhere—we stayed in a hotel.

With respect to the context of situation, the researcher can ask of the transcript, • What can I learn from the participant’s response to my opening question and to my wind-up question?

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• What can I learn from the participant’s reactions (verbal and nonverbal)? From my reactions? • What can I learn about the interaction between the interview participants from the appearance of the text? For example, what is the number of questions and answers and what is their length? Who asks the questions? What type of questions are asked? What is the location of questions in the interview transcript? Who interrupts whom, and where and how frequently does this occur? • What can I learn about our interaction from what is not said in the text? For example, does the participant ask me a question without giving me time to respond? Where do I pause before asking a question or responding to a query? Are there places where I feel I could have responded but didn’t?

For example, the following exchange presents Anna’s response to my opening question. This response is very short and ends in a pause. Her response leads me to wonder, Will this shortness and frequency of pauses be indicative of all her answers? Does this say something about the topic, about Anna’s feelings/interest in the topic, about me as a researcher, about Anna’s expectations of an interview? Coralie: Tell me about leisure in your life before you became a postgraduate student. Anna: Ah yep (pause) before I was a postgraduate student pretty similar to now actually ahm what I normally do is ahm ride my bike on weekends ah go for walks in the nature park and watch a bit of TV and ahm talk to my flat mates or talk to other friends (pause).

MOMENTS Moments may be signified by key words or phrases, descriptions of events or stories, or other forms of discourse. Sometimes, they are memories retold during the interview; on other occasions they occur spontaneously during the conversation. Some but not all of these may be “radical” moments (Denzin 1994:510), such as epiphanies or turning points. Some are more commonplace (such as those from Anna’s transcript presented below), but they still impact on the meaning of the story being told. These may be unexpected (surprising moments, moments of strangeness, moments of insight, puzzling moments). They may be moments of intense joy or sadness or self-questioning moments (personal reflective moments, contradictory or confusing moments). A Personal Reflective Moment Coralie: You kind of need to keep talking about it to work it out. Anna: Yeah, I think so—yeah I’m really having to think.

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A Moment of Uncertainty Coralie: Was that the same sort of holiday then as the other one you mentioned where you went sailing and that or was it different? Anna: No, this was a real holiday. I think it was (pause) I don’t know I suppose cos we (pause) it was actually a honeymoon. I actually got married and ahm separated now but ahm I guess cos it was going to another country and we stayed in a hotel that what I call a proper holiday.

SO, WHY MULTIPLE LENSES? Viewing interview transcripts through multiple lenses recognizes that no one lens can reveal both the individuality and the complexity of a life. Multiple realities suggest multiple perspectives. Looking through the multiple lenses of active listening, narrative processes, language, context, and moments provides this multiplicity of perspectives. Narrative processes, language, context, and moments are dimensions people use to construct and reconstruct their identities and so give meaning to their lives. Constructing and reconstructing subjectivity involves a process of conscious and unconscious accommodation and resistance. This accommodation and resistance is the outcome of complex interactions between the available discourses about the “self” and the discourses society makes available to us. These interactions are constructed through language and mediated by the particular material conditions of our lives over time. Meaning is negotiated and continually in process as we adopt particular positions, reject others that have little resonance for our lives, and strive for coherency in the stories we tell. Through multiple lenses, competing, contradictory, or complementary positions of an individual may be revealed, as may how that individual accommodates, challenges, or resists these positions over a life. Multiple lenses thus reveal the “in process” nature of a life. They reveal both the individual and collective nature of an individual’s experiences at a point in time and over time.

CODA To read about how I constructed Anna’s interpretive story Leisure. . . . yeah, I don’t know. Gosh, it’s really making me think using the views of her interview transcript highlighted through the lenses of active listening, narrative processes, language, context, and moments, continue on to read Part 2 in this series.

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CORALIE MCCORMACK is an associate lecturer in the Centre for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Scholarship (CELTS) at the University of Canberra, Australia. She is completing her Ph.D. using personal narratives to explore female postgraduate research students’ perceptions of their leisure while they are postgraduate students. She is also studying how female academics balance their multiple roles in a rapidly changing higher education context. Among her recent publications are “Paths, Phases, Juggling and Balancing Acts: How Women Academics Understand their Personal Experience of Postgraduate Study” (with B. Pamphilon, in Quality in Postgraduate Research: Making Ends Meet, Proceedings of the 2000 Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference, edited by M. Kiley and G. Mullins, 191–202. Adelaide, Australia, April 13–14, 2000. The Advisory Centre for University Education, University of Adelaide, Australia) and “Memories Bridge the Gap between Theory and Practice in Women’s Leisure Research,” Annals of Leisure Research, 1998.