1.1.2 Co-ordinated activity in interaction


Because this is an interview, it’s tempting to just focus on what the respondent is saying. However, interviews are interactions: what one party says depend on what the other said previously. This means that we should treat actions as ‘co-produced’ or produced jointly by the parties in the interview (or any other kind of interaction).

These points are shown clearly in the following extract. It comes from the same collection of interviews as extract 1. Let’s look at how this unfolds.

...Text 2
..Adapted from Extract 1 in Hak in Van den Berg et al (2003:201)

Hak

The interviewer co-produces the interview data in several ways. For example, the question begins with a claim, ‘There’s a much greater emphasis on ehm Maori culture and the use of the Maori language (1.0) an’ so on’. So, from the start, the interviewer defines the relevant topic (Maori culture) and the relevant feature of that topic (‘the way things are going’). The respondent in turn refers to where ‘they’ll end up’ and ‘if they carry on’. So, in an important sense, the views expressed are co-produced.

Let’s now have a look at what the interviewer does on lines 10, 15 and 20. S/he says ‘yes’, ‘yes’ and ‘yeah’.

Q: What do you think these utterances are doing?

Answer
Acknowledging receipt of what R has just said, showing appreciation or interest in what they’re saying, and showing an expectation that R will continue talking.

Note that in each case, R does indeed carry on with her talk, each time expanding the previously expressed view: ‘they’re making New Zealand a racist country’ (lines 11-12); ‘but really they’re doing it (.) the other way around’ (line 16); and ‘everything seems to be to help the Maori people’.

Finally, in line 18, I produces a gist or summary of R’s contrast between what people think racism is (‘putting the darker people down’) and reality (‘really they’re doing it the other way round’), she says ‘a sort of reverse racism’.

In other words, I is not only acknowledging what R is saying, and encouraging her to continue, she also actively formulates what R means (and thereby also shows her understanding by producing a version of what she’s said, which R can agree or disagree with and correct).

R in her turn says ‘yes’ and then expands on this formulation, ‘everything seems to be to help (0.2) the Maori’, producing a more extreme version. She thereby indicates her acceptance and agreement with I’s version. (More detail and other cases can be found in Hak, 2003).

IMPORTANT POINT: to say that I co-produces this account is not to say that she is also its co-author. I has shaped the account through the questions asked, she has appreciated R’s viewpoint, and helped R to express the account.

A FURTHER POINT: Although the interview extract above provides a nice example of how things produced in interaction (such as accounts) are joint products, the same can be said of the products of more everyday, informal interaction too.