Interpreting Public Opinion Interviews as Discursive Events

• In Event: Interviews in the Field: New Perspectives and Applications

Abstract

Recent elections highlighted the need for public opinion research to more seriously consider “listening to the public” through forums such as interviews or open-ended survey questions (Cramer, 2012). Yet, how should we interpret the texts that are produced through these forums? We argue in favor of a conception of an interview as “discourse” rather than as “behavioral” event (Chomsky, 1959; Mishler, 1991). This theoretical distinction holds important implications for the practices of coding and interpretation of texts. This poster will attempt to model the process by which a researcher would systematically identify discursive patterns and structures in subjects’ responses. We do so using civilian dialogues about policing, collected through a public art project in five large cities across the US. The art project, titled Portals, connects civilians in different cities through immersive audio visual technology and prompts them to discuss how they feel about the police in their communities. Using a sample of these transcribed dialogues, we show that paying attention to linguistic patterns and structures illuminates ways in which individuals assign meaning to agents of the state. We also examine how individuals positionality and that of their conversation or interview partner play an important mediating role. We demonstrate how this approach to text analysis informs the practice of coding, and its relevance for the study of public opinion and relations of power.

Authors

• Tommaso Bardelli, Yale University

• Gwen Prowse, Yale University