Hør dog hvad de siger - Note-to-Self: Trials & Errors

The provocative conclusion that can then be drawn from the discussion of accommoda-
tion theory is that social or cultural differences, the very data of most interview investigations,
are constructed jointly by the informant and the interviewer. The informant of course partici-
pates in the construction through his answering and explaining, but to an equal, if not excee-
ding degree, the interviewer does so also in his accommodating questions limiting his de-
mands to the perceived competence of the informant. Great responsibilities are placed on the
interviewer when his questions and probes, which effectively delimits the informant’s
answers, are based primarily on his a priori perception of the informants, and secondarily on
his ability to challenge and adjust these during the interaction. Interviewing, it seems, is a
highly reflexive enterprise on the part of the interviewer.
Naturally, the process runs both ways. Just as the interviewer facilitates some conversa-
tional identities for the informant and not others, the informant does the same for the inter-
viewer. Again, the difference is not in the process but in the stake for each participant. The
interviewer partakes (to a larger or smaller degree) in writing the conclusion about the infor-
mant, the informant’s views on the interviewer is not similarly published.
Accommodation theory is comparable to Briggs’ anthropological points in some re-
spects, as well as divergent in others. Both theories agree that knowing and appropriating the
interlocutor’s real capacities or repertoires as opposed to one’s own stereotyped views, is ne-
cessary for successful communication (e.g. interviewing). On the other hand, accommodation
theory can be used to underline the innate and dangerous circularity in Briggs’ point. The in-
terviewer’s perceptions of the interlocutor’s repertoires will always be that, his perceptions;
perceptions that will have a tendency to reproduce themselves as the informant slips into the
conversational slot prepared for him by the interviewer. That is, in investigations one could
fear that the interviewer’s a priori perceptions of the informant (e.g. as an elderly) will take
the form of self-fulfilling prophecies. In accommodating questions to the perceived repertoi-
res of the informant, the interviewer restricts the informant’s possibilities to include only a
limited set of answers, which will then go on the record.
6. Discussion
Borrowing a phrase from Eckert’s (2003) discussion of ‘the authentic speaker’, what I have
wanted to argue is that notions of objectivity in interviews are elephants in the room, “large
presences […] that we set aside in order to get on with our research enterprise” (ibid: 392).
And like Eckert “[w]hat I am arguing is not that they are improper constructs, but that they
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