attempt to become a better interviewer for a couple of projects I had in mind, I started reading one by a journalist Dean Nelson called Talk to Me: How to Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Like a Pro (Nelson, 2019). One phrase he used stuck in my mind, «Asking good questions keeps us from living in our own echo chambers». What the author means is that in investigating other people’s perspectives on some issues we revisit and reevaluate our own. Nelson goes on to say that one doesn’t even have to be a professional journalist to interview others as asking questions is essentially what we do almost on a daily basis. If we are trained to formulate our questions correctly, that would be able to «draw out personalities and understandings».
Actually, interviews («qualitative interviewing», Rubin and Rubin, 2005) are a popular qualitative research tool in social sciences, including applied linguistics. This is especially the case for studies «that aim to investigate participants» identities, experiences, beliefs and orientations’ (Talmy, 2010). In the late 1960s and early 1970s narratives became an object and «a legitimate means» of doing research in history, education, anthropology, etc. (Briggs, 1986). Interviews were thought of as an effective way of eliciting different types of narratives to be investigated. This process is referred to as narrative inquiry. Of special interest have been so-called «personal speakers experiences» which draw on stories about «real, imagined, or possible events» (Pavlenko, 2007). Linguistic autobiographies as a subtype of such narratives have been one of the most common tools to study bilingualism. Different groups of bilinguals have been studied over the decades and there are a lot of papers presenting an overview of such research (e.g., Mann, 2010).
Among a huge number of studies, there were two books that I found truly inspirational for my own research into bilingualism. The first one was by a British linguist David Block called «Multilingual Identities in a Global City: London Stories» (Block, 2006). What I loved a lot about this book that despite being rigidly structured and presenting an extensive literature review on bilingualism and second language identities in particular, it had some storytelling elements as well following different individuals (immigrants, students, teachers, etc.) as they were living through their own unique linguistic experiences with London as a platform for their adventures (with obvious ups and downs). The author was able to provide the context for all the interviews and grouped them either according to the participants’ country of origin or occupation. To me, this research appeared to be an engaging attempt to humanize bilinguals while still examining their life stories through a research lens.
Another book that fascinated me was by Alastair Pennycook and Emi Otsuji titled «Metrolingualism. Language in the City» (Alastair, Otsuji, 2015). Metrolingualism «describes the ways in which people of different and mixed backgrounds use, play with and negotiate identities through language» with the focus being «not on language systems but on languages as emergent from contexts of interaction». Sydney, the city where the research is undertaken, acts as a backdrop for new language identities transformed by «global and local practices». The authors draws a lot of attention to their diverse participants’ everyday experiences making these individuals seem like actors on the vibrant multicultural Sydney stage where multilingual street signs also serve as an essential element of the action.
Besides being a linguist and a language teacher, I am a keen traveler as well. So, I instantly fell in love with the idea of analyzing bilingualism as it is incorporated into a city’s texture as well as its soundscape and landscape. As I knew I would be living very close to NYC, I couldn’t help thinking about using its multiculturalism as a platform for my own explorations of language practices there. For sure, I would not be the first person to have attempted that, so in order to make my work more original, I wanted to incorporate my future home state, New Jersey, and my host university town into the picture. As I was hoping to be able to travel to other places across in the U.S., that would make sense to include them into my narrative as well.
Even before starting this project I had an idea to make it into something not purely scientific. I agree that autobiographic narratives «are interesting and thus have aesthetic value and can engage the readers. They are accessible and thus can appeal to larger audiences» (Pavlenko, 2007). So, the purpose of my interview project was to collect linguistic autobiographies of individuals I would be meeting during my time in the U.S. in order to learn more about their language learning experiences. As I said in the previous section, originally I had adopted the stricter version of bilinguals and interviewed only fellow Fulbrighters who all had a high level of proficiency in English. Later on in the project, I realized that the more liberal definition of bilingualism (i.e., various degrees of language skills enabling communication in a certain community) would allow me to access more participants and make my narrative more varied and engaging.
After designing the interview questions, I thought would enable my interviewees to help me and my potential readers gain a better understanding of what being a bilingual is like, I started recruiting participants while in the U.S. The recruitment process was not as smooth as I had expected. It was my first experience of trying to collect data for an interview project. Looking back, I am not sure if choosing one focus group (e.g., Fulbrighters, English teachers, PhD students, heritage speakers, etc.) would have made this collection more much smaller but a lot more comprehensible and easier to write up. Eventually I decided I would attempt to make this unexpected element part of my own unique narrative made up of these individual language autobiographies.
For this project I conducted semi-structured interviews. In this type of qualitatitve interviews participants are offered a series of open-end questions on a specific topic. According to lots of social science scholars, the reason why this specific kind of interviews is routinely studied in narrative inquiry is that it allows both the interviewer and interviewee a high degree of flexibility as the former can «gently» guide the latter to elaborate on certain points depending on the answers provided. These interviews are also called «exploratory», as despite its general directions given before the interview a researcher can «go deep for a discovery» modifying their line of inquiry (Magaldi and Berler, 2020).
As for the participants, it was obvious that all of them would share some sort of interest in linguistics (the topic of bilingualism specifically). Some of them might have imagined what to expect in the process before getting the interview questions and the guide. What is more, at some point of their own learning/teaching careers, they must have contemplated similar or the same issues I asked them to dwell on in their talk. The individuals who were helping me recruit the participants and the interviewees themselves were professors of Linguistics or their students. The other part were fellow Fulbrighters coming from a range of backgrounds that I knew to a varying extent. The remaining part were individuals who were also interested in linguistics and responded to my social media posts about my project.
As for a few factors that have to be considered while conducting such studies, I am perfectly aware of how the effect of «prior relationship» (Mann, 2010) as well as power balance with the interviewees has to be taken into account in this type of a qualitative study. It certainly determined the participants’ motivation to be interviewed. Some (mostly Fulbrighters) were my friends and willing to help. Others (those with no background in Linguistics) found my research idea interesting and were curious to reflect on these issues. There were also a few students who agreed to be interviewed so that their professors would give them some extra credits. That for sure had some sort of effect on how the interview was going and the rapport between me and the participant. Being recorded might have made some individuals more self-conscious.
As I was watching back all of these interviews while working on this book, I realized how much «the voice of the interviewer» (Mann, 2010) (i.e., mine) was present in interviews. I faced a sort of a dilemma while thinking of ways to analyze and present my interviews.