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

Tekst 4
THE QUEST FOR OBJECTIVITY IN THE STUDY OF SUBJECTIVITY.
Abstract
This paper explores the debate over standardisation and non-standardisation in research in-
terviews. From various sides, it is claimed that a strict insistence on formal standardisation of
interviewers’ practice does not warrant standardisation of the interview situation and the re-
sulting data, because it breaks with the participants’ expectances of a conversation. The in-
terviewer and the interview thus are faced with somewhat of an objectivity- dilemma. On the
one hand, ‘true’ standardisation may only be feasible by allowing for an element of conversa-
tional freedom and inter-subjective accommodation in the interview. On the other, accommo-
dating to the individual interviewee may flood the interview with interviewer’s bias.
To claim true standardisation, interviewees must share a common understanding of the
interview genre and the words used. An understanding like this cannot be achieved through
interview design, but must be argued by the researcher to exist, and must be based on familia-
rity and routine.
1. Introduction
The study of attitudes can be thought of as ‘the objective study of subjectivity’. Though the
relation is far from straightforward, attitudes are in some way subjective factors underpinning
people’s actions. The scientific study of attitudes attempts to describe these factors objective-
ly. The study of language attitudes is therefore in a double sense interesting in understanding
subjective factors in linguistic variation and change. On the one hand, language attitudes are
relatively concrete utterances of underlying subjective factors. On the other hand, the actual
situation in which the investigation takes place, whether as an experiment or as an interview,
is itself subject to the socio-psychological processes which are investigated. An attitude inter-
view is simultaneously an investigation of subjective and socio-psychological patterns and
inseparably a social encounter given to these selfsame patterns.
In the following, a classic definition of the standardised interview is presented along
with some of the objections posed against it. The presentation will be exemplified with ex-
cerpts from attitude interviews conducted under a project, which investigates the Danish po-
pulation’s attitude towards the linguistic climate in Denmark today. Informants cover a wide
range of social backgrounds, managers, scientists, unskilled workers to name some extremes.
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