Phenomenologists, in particular, have argued instead that the way people understand the human world is constitutive of that world, and so the description of any human phenomenon is radically incomplete if it fails to include an account of how it is understood by the people involved with it. Phenomenological inquiry has taken a variety of forms, and we shall discuss these, and their relationship to hermeneutics, in a few weeks (in fact, I don’t even want to define these terms yet!). Common to most of its varieties, though, is the methodological aim to be objective about subjectivity: that is to say, to try to give a thorough, detailed and detached account (i.e., a description) of the way people experience the world.
Interviewing has been a powerful and important way of accomplishing this, and interviews provide material for researchers in all the disciplines that deal empirically with human phenomena: anthropology, history, psychology, sociology, etc.. In an interview a significant person (usually one, though focus groups provide an interesting exception) is asked to report their experience, attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and understandings concerning some topic. Analysis of interview material takes a variety of forms, too: we shall be gaining familiarity with approaches to analysis that emphasize the connected character of the responses obtained during an interview. Mishler (1986) notes that when interviews are considered simply as question-answer sequences, and as simply occasions to obtain information, the complex organization of the produced discourse is lost. Mishler focuses on the narrative organization of interview responses; we shall consider both this and its organization as argument.
Several caveats are in order, however. First,
the two analytic approaches described here do not exhaust all the possible
ways of approaching interview transcripts. The skills of attention, inference
and explication developed through learning these approaches are, though,
hoped to be of general usefulness. Second, even these two analytic approaches
should not be taken as ends in themselves. The general goal of interpretive
research is to grasp and describe the particularities of a person’s point
of view on a phenomenon of interest, and the identification of elements
and structures of argument and narrative are only steps along the way towards
this goal.
Text is written discourse, and an interview transcript is a written (and so ‘fixed,’ cf. Ricoeur, 1971/79) record of a spoken interaction between two or more people. The interview transcript can thus be analyzed in ways that have proved fruitful with other written texts. Two main modes of discourse are generally distinguished: narration and argumentation (Kinneavy. 1971). Narration is the recounting of events linked into a story, while argumentation is the advancing of a claim or an opinion about something that involves an appeal to reasons or grounds. The kind of analysis we will be engaged in today excludes, on the one hand, a merely linguistic or semantic analysis and, on the other hand, aspects of the situational context and cultural context. We assume the former is unnecessary because we share the language of the interview. We will postpone the latter until the second Block of this course.
One of the first tasks in an interpretive analysis
of an interview transcript is to identify those section of the interview
that are narrative and those that are argumentation. The interview transcript
should be read several times to do this. The first reading of any text
differs from subsequent readings in that the end is unknown. In
all subsequent readings one has a sense of the whole, within which parts
can now be placed. Distinguishing arguments from narratives is one way
of dividing up the parts of a text. Once this is done, each of the parts
in turn can be considered in detail.
1. Argument Structure and Elements
Our analysis of argument employs the account of the structure and basic elements of arguments that is outlined in Toulmin et al., An Introduction to Reasoning.
Toulmin undertakes an examination of what he calls "micro-arguments": the sentence-by-sentence organization of argumentation in discourse. He argues that the logical syllogism, used since Aristotle (Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore Socrates is mortal) is too narrow and simple a model for arguments in general. In order to arrive at an adequate account of the more complex kinds of argument found in everyday life, Toulmin looks to law rather than logic. He distinguishes the following elements that are at work in all arguments (though their operation is covered up in the syllogism):
A claim or conclusion: The ‘destination’ an argument invites us to arrive at. The position we are being asked to agree to as the outcome of the argument.
The grounds from which this claim follows: The underlying foundation which is required if the claim is to be accepted as solid and reliable. Depending on the kind of claim under discussion, the grounds may comprise experimental observations, matters of common knowledge, statistical data, personal testimony, previously established claims, or other comparable ‘factual data.’ The claim under discussion can be no stronger than the grounds that provide its support.
A warrant: Knowing on what grounds a claim is founded is only the first step toward getting clear about its solidity and reliability. Steps from grounds to claims are ‘warranted’ in different ways. The warrants take the form of laws of nature, legal principles and statutes, rules of thumb, engineering formulas, and so on. A warrant deals with what is generally the case; it is a bridge-like statement that is categorical in form.
A modal qualifier: Not all arguments support their claims or conclusions with the same degree of certainty. Some warrants lead to ‘probable’ conclusions, others establish ‘presumptive’ conclusions, and so on. Most practical reasoning is in fact concerned with what is ‘probably,’ ‘presumably,’ or ‘possibly’ the case rather than with ‘certainties’ alone. There are generally exceptions to even a scientific law, and often we can only establish only a general correlation between our claim and its grounds.
Possible rebuttals: We would also like to know under what circumstances an argument might let us down. Any except a certain or necessary argument is open to rebuttal. We can understand the rational merits of an argument only if we recognize under what circumstances (rare but possible) it may prove unreliable.
Backing for the warrant: The backing provides reasons for an argument’s validity. A backing usually has the form of a categorical statement of fact. Enumerative observation (counting as many exemplars as possible) is one kind of backing; taxonomic classification is another. (We may say "all whales are mammals" because we’ve looked at all of them; we may say "a whale is a mammal" because we classify air-breathing creatures as mammals, and the whale as air-breathing.)
This backing is part of the field in which the argument is located.
These elements are organized into a structured argument with this form:
The following is a specific example:
Toulmin notes that everyday argumentation is generally warrant-using, moving from a ground to a claim by means of an established warrant. Scientific argumentation, in contrast, is generally warrant-establishing: aiming to test a possible warrant by applying it in a number of cases where both ground and conclusion have been established. This is typically the case when we interpret an interview transcript. The interviewee is making and justifying claims, appealing in the process to warrants, most of them going unstated. The interpretive researcher has access to most of the claims and most of the grounds (they are expressed in the transcript), and is trying to figure out what the warrants are.
An argument analysis of an interview transcript
will try to articulate (lay out) the chains of justification, so as to
try to understand the field in which these arguments make sense, and the
"practical context" or "rational human enterprise" (as Toulmin puts it)
that the interviewee is situated in.
2. Narrative Structure and Elements
Interest has been growing in narrative as an organizing structure to people’s experience of the world. The premise here is that we are "story-telling animals" (MacIntyre); that we understand our own actions, and the actions of others, primarily through narrative. The function of narrative is to endow a sequence of events with an overall organization and meaning. The power of narrative is recognized now in anthropology (Clifford Geertz), history (Hayden White), psychiatry (Donald Spence), psychology (Jerry Bruner) and philosophy (Alisdair MacIntyre, Stephen Toulmin).
Let’s move now to consider those portions of the interview transcript that have a narrative organization, and define our terms:
Narrative: The recounting of one or more real or fictitious events, logically and chronologically related, caused or experienced by actors, communicated by one or more narrators to one or more narratees. On this definition, "Electrons are constituents of atoms" does not constitute a narrative, since it does not represent an event; "The goldfish died" is a narrative.
Plot: The "what" of a narrative. The set of narrated situations and events in their causal sequence. The main incidents of a narrative; the outline of situations and events (thought of as distinct from the characters involved in them or the themes illustrated in them). The global dynamic (goal-oriented and forward-moving) organization of narrative constituents which is responsible for the thematic interest (indeed, the very intelligibility) of a narrative and for its emotional effect. "Plot time" is the order in which events are represented as taking place.
Discourse: The "how" of a narrative: the narrating as opposed to the narrated. "Discourse time" is the order of presentation of events to the receiver.
Theme: The more general and abstract ideas, issues and concerns that a text is about. The theme does not promote and answer but helps to raise questions: it is contemplative rather than assertive.
A Plot has the following Elements:
Agents: An agent initiates processes and, more specifically influences people, modifying their situation (improving or worsening it), or maintaining it (for the good or the bad). There are different types of agent: Greimas suggests six "actants": subject (or hero), object (or sought-for-person), sender, receiver, helper, and opponent. One actant can be represented by several different actors, and several actants can be represented by one and the same actor. Not only human actors, but also animals, things, and concepts can fulfill these roles (e.g., the sender could be an ideological imperative).
Action: A series of connected events, moving through a beginning, a middle, and an end. A process from bad to good fortune or the reverse.
Goal: A desired final state for a character. A story brings a character closer to or farther from a goal.
Setting: The circumstances in which the events of a narrative occur.
Instrument: the means whereby the goal is sought.
Trouble: The act or event that is decisive in making a goal reachable or not. Labov calls this the "complicating action." Every gripping story involves trouble! That there is trouble implies that the goal is not an impossible one, but that it is not easily within grasp.
As interpretive researchers we are in the business of understanding stories rather than (or before) telling them. Understanding a story requires identifying the elements of the plot, and
Once we have articulated the elements of the plot and described its organization we can try to figure out from what point of view the story is told. What point is it making? What is it trying to impress upon you, as reader/listener? We must read past, or through the narrative to discover the point of view, the perspective, the concern, of the story.
NB: Notice that I said the point of view of the story, not the point of view of the storyteller. There has been a heated debate among interpretation theorists (in literary criticism and elsewhere) about whether when one reads a text one can reconstruct the author’s intentions. E. D. Hirsch has argued that uncovering the author’s intention is the aim of textual interpretation, and he has tried to make this the criterion of a successful interpretation. But the argument I find more convincing is that of Paul Ricoeur (whose writings are quite fascinating, and now extensive). As Ricoeur describes it, every text "escapes" the intention of its author, as it escapes the occasion of its original production.
3. Narrative as a Mode of Knowledge
We have been considering how the material we are studying has a narrative character, but the product of our analysis can also have a narrative organization. When we write up an interpretation analysis, we can write a narrative. We can report the knowledge we have obtained from our analysis in narrative form. This is possible because, as Bruner notes, narrative is a powerful way of organizing experience and constructing a view of reality. Gerald Prince says as much in his Dictionary of Narratology:
"By definition, narrative always recounts one or more events; but as etymology suggests (the term narrative is related to the Latin gnarus: "knowing," "expert," "acquainted with"), it also represents a particular mode of knowledge. It does not simply mirror what happens; it explores and devises what can happen. It does not merely recount changes of state; it constitutes and interprets them as signifying parts of signifying wholes (situations, practices, persons, societies). Narrative can thus shed light on individual fate or group destiny, the unity of the self or the nature of a collectivity. Through showing that apparently heterogeneous situations and events can make up one signifying structure (or vice versa) and, more particularly, through providing its own brand of order and coherence to (a possible) reality, it furnishes examples for its transformation or redefinition and effects a mediation between the law of what is and the desire for what may be. Most crucially, perhaps, by marking off distinct moments in time and setting up relations among them, by discovering meaningful designs in temporal series, by establishing an end already partly contained in the beginning and a beginning already partly containing the end, by exhibiting the meaning of time and/or providing it with meaning, narrative deciphers time and indicates how to decipher it. In sum, narrative illuminates temporality and humans as temporal beings" (Prince, p. 60).
References and additional resources
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Harvard University Press.
Geertz, C. (1988). Works and lives: The anthropologist as author. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Giddens, A. (1976). New rules of sociological method: A positive critique of interpretive sociologies. New York: Basic Books.
Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Validity in interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jonsen, A. R., & Toulmin, S. (1988). The abuse of casuistry: A history of moral reasoning. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kinneavy, J. L. (1971). A theory of discourse: The aims of discourse. New York: Norton.
MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtue: A study in moral theory (2 ed.). South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Mishler, E. G. (1986). Research interviewing: Context and narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Prince, G. (1987). A dictionary of narratology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1971/1979). The model of the text: Meaningful action considered as a text. In P. Rabinow & W. M. Sullivan (Eds.), Interpretive social science: A reader. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1976). Interpretation theory: Discourse and the surplus of meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press.
Spence, D. P. (1982). Narrative truth and historical truth: Meaning and interpretation in psychoanalysis. New York: Norton.
Tappan, M. B., & Packer, M. J. (1991). Narrative and storytelling: Implications for understanding moral development. New Directions for Child Development, Whole number 54, 1-105.
Toulmin, S. (1958). The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Toulmin, S., Rieke, R., & Janik, A. (1974). An introduction to reasoning. New York: Macmillan.
We can illustrate these points with an example analysis of the argument structure of lines 6 - 15 of the teacher interview we've already considered. What follows is one possible analysis of the argument structure of the teacher’s reply to the interviewer’s first question ("...what is your general impression of the Touchstones discussions you’ve had this semester?"). Here I’ve used abbreviations: "G" means "ground," "C" means "claim or conclusion," "W" means "warrant." The elements are numbered so that linked pairs of grounds and claims have the same number.
G1: "In geometry it’s so much teaching oriented"
| and...
| W1: In a teaching oriented class the teacher is in charge
| so...
C1: "It’s very difficult to give them an opportunity to be in charge or discuss things"
G1: "In geometry it’s so much teaching oriented"
| but...
|W2: A discussion is not teaching oriented
|so...
C2: "What [Touchstones] does is gives them an opportunity to be in charge of something"
G2: [ditto]
| and...
|W3: A teacher has to work hard to let students take charge??
| so...
C3: "I’ve tried very hard to let them run the discussions"
G3: [ditto]
| and...
| W4: They’ve taken the opportunity
| so...
C4: The students are in charge
G3: [ditto]
| and...
| W3: When Ss run discussions T has little to do with them
| so... ("for that reason...")
C5: "I don’t have very much to do with them"
G4: The students are in charge
| and...
| W5: Students enjoy being in charge
| so...
C6: "the students have enjoyed them"
G4: The students are in charge
| and...
| W6: Being in charge is valuable
| so...
C7: "I think they are very valuable"
G5: [ditto]
| and...
| W7: Valuable teaching experiences are enjoyable
| so...
C8: "I’ve enjoyed them"
It will be evident that grounds and claims are chained together: the claim of the first grounds-claim pair forms the ground for the next pair.
It should be emphasized that this analysis is one possible interpretation of the teacher’s response. You may have an analysis that differs in its details.
We can diagram our analysis, to emphasize the connections between the ground-claim pairs:
The table shown next is one way of identifying
the elements of this argument analysis and showing the order in which they
appear in the interview. This makes it evident that the ordering of the
spoken response does not correspond neatly with the ordering of elements
in the analysis. Since it includes only those elements explicitly mentioned,
it indicates which of the elements are implicit: that is, elements
we have had to infer in order to make sense of the argument, but are not
actually spoken by the teacher. (Only one of the warrants is explicit,
but this is not unusual. As mentioned earlier, Toulmin notes that warrants
are typically appealed to implicitly, while grounds are appealed to explicitly.)
| Line 6. I think they are very valuable | C7 |
| l 6. and I’ve enjoyed them, | C8 |
| l 6. I think the students have enjoyed them. | C6
Q (I think) |
| l 7. I think that what it does is gives them an opportunity to be in charge of something | C2, G2
Q (I think) |
| l 9. rather than - | Support [G1 - C2] |
| l 9. in geometry it’s so much teacher oriented | G1
Q (so much) |
| l 10. that | Support [G1 - C1] |
| l 10. it’s very difficult to have them, give them an opportunity to be in charge or discuss things. | C1
Q (very difficult) |
| l 12. I’ve tried very hard to let them run the discussions | C3, G3
Q (very hard) |
| l 13. and I don’t have very much to do with them | C4
Q (very much) |
| 14. for that reason. | Support [G3 - C4] |
| 14. So, | Support [G6 - C6] |
| 14. I feel they are very positive. I have very positive feelings about them. | Restatement of C7 and
C8
Q (I feel) |
In an interpretive analysis of this kind we are working with a methodological presupposition of rationality: we assume that what an interviewee says makes sense and expresses a rational view of the world, even when it seems muddled, confused or ambiguous on a first reading. Making inferences about implicit elements to the argument follows from this presumption, and is part of the work of rational reconstruction of "what is meant" from "what is said."
Having articulated the organization of the argument
in this reply, we can ask how convincing we find it. Are there points where
you find the implied warrant questionable, for instance? As you think about
this, bear in mind the interviewee’s next question: "What have you noticed
yourself doing as a discussion leader that seems to encourage students
to discuss?" How does it relate to what the teacher has just said? Does
it perhaps question one of the warrants we have inferred: ‘When Ss run
discussions T has little to do with them’ (in single quotes because it
is never actually stated)? Here we are beginning to consider the interview
as connected discourse between two speakers, a topic we shall return
to next week.
5. Narratives in the Teacher Interview
There seem to be several short narratives in the teacher’s reply to the interviewer’s second question: lines 24-27; lines 28-38; lines 48-57. The first introduces what the interviewer later (l 59) calls "your Kafka example"; the second recounts an approach to discussion which the interviewer also returns to later for more detail (l 110-112); the third recounts another approach to discussion. Narratives typically illustrate a point where argumentation, as we have seen, is a matter of providingreasons for a point.
Notice too that there is material in this reply that amounts to description rather than either argumentation or narration. When the teacher says "I think I primarily keep quiet...." (20), and "the other thing I’ve done, I’ve taken people who were most vocal and made them student leaders" (l 39), and "After the discussion we’ll mention things, afterwards try to ask them..." (44), she is not, on a strict definition, recounting a narrative, since these are not specific events linked in time. The teacher is describing general patterns of activity. But these descriptions are very important, for they are all answer to the interviewer’s question ("What have you noticed yourself doing...?") and they provide us with an understanding of the kinds of action the teacher is involved in during the discussions. We can note them in the teacher’s own words, as descriptions of the "world" of the classroom discussion, and we can consider what the teacher’s motivation might be for engaging in them, and what understanding they show of the discussion and its aims.
Example Narrative Analysis. Let’s consider the "Kafka example," both as it is initially introduced in lines 24-27, and the later elaboration (l 71-108). The class has presumably read a passage or short story by Franz Kafka. We will want to take a look at the text of this story, but let’s first see what we can infer about it from the interview (plus our own knowledge of Kafka’s writing. Have you all read Kafka?).
Who are the agents? The following terms are used in the narrative to refer to subjects: "I"; "one student" or "he"; "the observer"; "strangers"; "an old man"; "they"; "the three of them"; "these girls"; "we"; "the Justice of the Peace." We can organize these: "We" seems to refer to the teacher ("I") and the students ("they"). "These girls", "the three of them," and "they" (sometimes) are alternatives. "The observer" is a character in the Kafka story. The "old man" is an agent in a story told by the "three girls"; he is a "stranger" to them as "observers."
What is the action? In short, it is a class discussion. Since we want to understand the way the teacher understands her class discussion, this suggests that we have picked a good narrative to examine. We will return to a more detailed account of the action once we’ve identified the other elements.
What is the goal? What goal is this story moving towards, as the teacher narrates it? The teacher talks in line 26 of the "end" of the discussion, though it was an end that amounted to "a real tough time" in her view. The discussion was "dead" (l 73) and she "just about died" (l 71) with it. So this story is about unrealized movement towards the goal of a successful discussion.
What is the trouble? Clearly this is a story about trouble. The trouble is that "they agreed with what Kafka said" (l 25) and "they didn’t want to look more into it" (l 26). But more broadly, as the teacher sees it, "we have a more mean society" (l 94). So the trouble doesn’t lie directly or simply in the students, but in a society that has "taught [them] not to bother with strangers" (l 81).
Can we now give a more complete account of the action of this narrative? Let’s re-tell events in "plot sequence," using the teacher’s words where they express something important. The discussion was to be about a passage written by Franz Kafka, but the students agreed with Kafka and "that was the end of it." There was silence - no discussion. The teacher "just about died." A student commented that the discussion was over, and the teacher agreed that it was "dead." She raised a question about the responsibility of the observer in Kafka’s story, but this didn’t advance the discussion and the teacher herself questioned the validity of her point. Then the students introduced an example (so that we have a story within a story). Its structure is (presumably) parallel to their reading of Kafka. Their point is, as the teacher now tells it, "they thought the safest thing to do was nothing." The teacher then shifts from the role of simple narrator to that of commentator: she talks (in what amounts to an argumentation) of changes in society which, while on her mind because "it was so evident in the discussion," she thought it inappropriate to raise ("I thought it wasn’t for me to bring in what it used to be, so I kind of left it alone"). Although a visit next day to the Justice of the Peace apparently caused at least one of the students to see the story from a different perspective, the discussion in class "never really moved."
(A note here: the phrase "what if they were the one running?" on line 99 takes on a clearer meaning when one reads the Kafka passage. Contrast interpreting this phrase before and after reading that passage.)
What is the theme of this narrative, then? What issues and concerns does it address and speak to? Most literally, the theme of the narrative is the theme of the teacher’s reply to the interviewer’s question: that "primarily keeping quiet" is what the teacher does to encourage student discussion. The teacher returns to this towards the end of her narrative: "And I thought it wasn’t for me to bring in what it used to be, so I kind of left it alone" (l 95). Yet the story serves as an illustration of a "tough time" that resulted from doing this, since the discussion and the teacher both, metaphorically at least, "died." Nonetheless, the teacher seems to be making the point that the fault here lies not with her strategy, but with the fact that in this case the students saw nothing to discuss in the passage, because "there was nothing they could do" (l 80). The fault lies with a "mean" society. On line 27 the teachers says the students "didn’t want to look more into it," and later - referring now to the embedded narrative about the old man - "there was nothing they could do" (l 80); "they thought the safest thing to do was nothing" (l 89). The narrative seems to equate not wanting to "look more into" the discussion passage with not wanting to "bother with strangers." Both are, in a sense, a failure to think critically, to see beyond first appearances.
Other questions remain. Was the teacher correct, in her own terms, not to voice her views about societal changes? What influence does she intend to have on student discussion by the conduct she refers to in saying "I don’t have very much to do with them"? In what sense can it be said that, if the students went so far as to introduce the example of the old man who came staggering towards them at the bus stop, they were not engaged in a detailed discussion of the Kafka passage? Perhaps this last question is what motivates the interview’s next question: "So at that point, you did ask and others would have ( ) the question?" (l 103), though the teacher insists that "it still never really moved" (l 106).
So after reading the first three pages of the interview, we are puzzled about the teacher considers the proper goal of a Touchstones discussion, and what her own aims are in trying to help the students achieve that goal. These puzzles should guide your continued work of interpretation in lab, and for the homework assignment.
© Martin Packer, 1999