The ethnographic interview

This chapter describes the use of interviews as a method for data collection in linguistic ethnography. It provides an account of the history of interviews, locating their origin as a tool in sociology and survey research, while qualitative and ethnographic interviews were developed particularly in anthropology and in Chicago School sociology. The chapter argues that the interpretive turn in the 1980s and 1990s led to expansion in the use of qualitative interviews in social sciences in general. It goes on to describe some of the debates around the use of interviews in linguistics and anthropology, including challenges around the role of the interviewer, the relationship between interviewer and informants, and…