Short Analysis Rough Draft

Ok so for right now I am definitely trying my best to analyze the language that is being used in the data set five about the chat rooms. I plan on doing an interview for my final analysis project so I think that it would be beneficial to me to see the type of language that is used by the interviewer in order to not sway the answers of the interviewee.

Something that stood out to me in particular is that throughout both excerpts there were not a lot of questions that were asked. Between both excerpts there were only approximately six questions asked. Not every time that the interviewer talked was a question asked, I think that allowed time for the interviewee to answer fully and made it less like an interrogation and more conversational. Because of the conversational feel I think that as an interviewer you have to have a general questions but I do not think that you should have a list of questions that you only plan to ask because you lose some of the full explanations if you were to cut them off. The original question was asked in the first line of the interview and then the questions after that spawn from the answers that are given, which seems to add to more qualitative and plentiful data.

The interviewer never in these excerpts mentions herself or even says the word I, the focus stays on the interviewee and the topic that they are talking about. In order to be able to keep the interview going along steady it would make sense for both the interviewer and the interviewee to be in the same Discourse community. Being a part of the same community would allow for the understanding of the language that is used throughout the conversation. For example, in the excerpts if the interviewer did not know what a chat room was or had little experience with the computer and internet then the interviewer would become confused and unable to continue on the track with the interviewee. The interviewer has to be well-informed on any topic that could arise regarding the original topic. For example, the original question was a broad topic and could have gone in a variety of directions. The interviewer asked how the interviewee felt about computers, if they decided to talk about the make up of a computer and the different programs that are on it then the interviewer would have to know how to handle that type of conversation which would require understanding of the terminology used.

I think the biggest thing that reviewing this data set has showed me is that it is very important to be in the same Discourse community as the person that you are interviewing. You need to be able to communicate with them in a way that is non threatening and will allow them to give you as much information as they can produce through a method of conversation.