Elicitation Strategies

The subject of this chapter, elicitation strategies, is defined as the combination of selected canonical genres and their associated textual strategies applied to the planning of interview protocols, and also the enactment of interviews while also encouraging reflection on the interviewing performance. Developing an interview protocol now requires the selection of relevant canonical genres suitable for each question. Genre retrieval networks are used to select the most appropriate canonical genre for each question. Along with the genre retrieval networks, a generic question template has been developed that provides interviewers with the ability to facilitate eliciting responses that are in a format that allows interviewers to determine if responses are complete, or to issue sensible follow-up or clarifying questions. Some novel features of interviews are identified. A terminology and approach for discussing interviewing practices is also developed. A sustainable approach to interviewing practice that involves learning and reflection is also advocated.

Summary and Discussion

The book developed an approach to interviewing that takes, as its point of reference, a functional communication theory and uses some of its units for conceptualizing interviewing practices in terms of canonical genres and textual strategies. Planning interview protocols now involves a process of assigning canonical genres to the candidate questions. During the interview process, enactment practices facilitate the smooth enactment of the interview and aids interviewers in reflecting and learning in both static and go-along interviews. In the final chapter, the argument and findings of the book are summarized and future research directions for this approach to interviews and interviewing are suggested. The domains of interest in the book have been related to organizations and business. Potential future applications are suggested that involve the storing, processing and manipulation of interview texts and the searching and retrieval of generically coded segments that can benefit knowledge and experience management in organizations.

Fieldwork in Business Contexts

Go-along interviews, also known as walk-along interviews, involve interviewers and interviewees moving through an environment that has relevance for the specific interview in question. These types of interviews are useful in many different business contexts. From a communication perspective, this form of interviewing also represents the most extreme form of interviewing practice. The physical environment effectively becomes a participant in the developing interview, shaping the interview by “suggesting” new topics or imposing thematic constraints on the interview. Any transcript reflects this shaping through references to its wider world. From the perspective of communication, the physical environment—natural or built—imposes specific situations with respect to communication that can, in turn, be used to trigger certain factual and narrative canonical genres. These communicative situations link to relevant textual strategies and canonical genres as well as situational information that can be recovered. They also provide engagement practices for go-along interviews and interviewing.

A Functional Approach to Interviews and Interviewing

From an SFL perspective, the many completed acts of communication or texts associated with interviewing—the unfolding interview itself, the audiovisual record of the interview, interview protocol, the ethics, legal, and collateral texts—can only be understood within the contexts of their production and reception. SFL employs several contexts and one of these is referred to as the context of culture or genre. Genres are patterns associated with completed acts of communication that reveal conventionalized stages. These staged patterns of communication are learned and taught in institutions. Consequently, a genre literacy is likely to be shared between both interviewers and interviewees: a kind of common cultural capital. A range of textual strategies enable genres to be elicited or restarted. Alternatively, a wandering interviewee can be brought back to the point if necessary. This chapter provides an argument for using genres as a firm foundation for interviewing practices.

Relevant Canonical Genre Families

The basis for a functional communication perspective for elicitation strategies is a selection of generalised high-value genres referred to as canonical genres. There are a number of families of genre but those that are of particular relevance to interviewing and interview protocols are the so-called factual and narrative genre families. The purpose of the chapter is to describe each of these in turn. Following the software engineering pattern movement, each genre that belongs to these families will be described using a common format: a name (capitalized as is convention for genres in SFL), a description, a genre element inventory or a table that provides the list of the genre elements codes, names and function, the corresponding genre digraph, and an authentic transcript marked up with genre stages. The transcripts used to exemplify these canonical genres, reveal a range of unusual features unpacked in more detail in the next chapter.

The Need for a New Perspective on Interviewing

Interviews are defined as communicative exchanges whereby an interviewer asks questions and an interviewee answers them. The purpose of this chapter is threefold: to provide a brief description of the received understanding of research interviews, interview protocols, and interview practices. Interviewing in general is also described. It is argued that the basis of interviewing is an informational theory of communication deficit. The suitability of applying this theory to interviewing is critiqued. The critique replaces information theory with a specific functional theory of communication. The result is a wider view on interviewing as a collection of completed acts of communication (texts), accounting for the interviewing process and its artifacts (audiovisual records, transcripts) as well as related texts associated with the ethical, legal, and managerial conditions and requirements under which it occurs.