Communicative strategies of interviewers in sociological research: linguistic politeness and question form

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FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

FOR HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Bachelor's project

Communicative strategies of interviewers in sociological research: linguistic politeness and question form

Baranova Vlada Vyacheslavovna

Saint Petersburg 2020



Content

Introduction

1. Literature Review

1.1 Politeness Strategies in different types of communication

1.2 Methodological Advices

2. Data & Methods

3. Results

3.1 Question Forms

3.2 Interview flow

3.3 Discourse markers

3.4 Politeness strategies dynamics

3.5 Positive Politeness

3.6 Negative Politeness

3.7 Practices VS Beliefs

4. Conclusion

Discussion

References



Introduction

This work will aim towards describing and analyzing sociological research interviews from the perspective of language pragmatics. Pragmatics is a discipline in the field of linguistics which focuses on interlocutors conducting meaning apart from meanings of the words alone. Pragmatists are mainly concerned with how things are said, not what is said and they argue that the way of saying things can actually tell us more about the interlocutors than the things they are saying, thus expressing social relationships (P. Brown & Levinson, 1987; Morris, 2011; Thomas, 1995).

Brown & Levinson suggested that we frame our requests, offers, complaints, questions, etc. so that we minimize our imposition on a hearer. This desire is in its turn related to the notion of the “face”, a “positive social value a person claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Goffman, 1967, p.5). Face is thus something that person wants to leave unharmed and since each participant of communication possesses a face this desire to avoid “face threatening acts” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.11) and fulfill face needs is mutual. Linguistically, it is performed by implementation of various “politeness strategies” into communication, following cooperative principle of politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987). It is important to mention that politeness strategies are culturally inherited units which people use unconsciously, on a hunch, using intuition. Politeness strategies are not obligatory and regulated, but nevertheless are commonly used and this makes the study of their usage meaningful. Politeness strategies can be mixed together and applied simultaneously, making a request less and less imposing, consider the sequence in which to the basic request each time one more politeness strategy is added: помогите? - можете помочь? - не могли бы вы помочь? - не могли бы вы чуть-чуть помочь?

Generally Politeness strategies fall into two categories: positive and negative, which refer to mitigating a threat to a positive face -- “the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others” and negative face -- “the want of every `competent adult member' that his actions be unimpeded by others”(Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.62). Positive politeness is realized through speaker's trying to save the hearer's positive face by reducing the distance between them. Negative politeness is realized through speaker's trying to keep the hearer's negative face by valuing the hearer's personal territory. According to this theory, negative politeness strategies are also associated with expressions which establish and/or maintain social distance and formality (Nguyen, 2016). We assume that this notion of politeness strategies can be used effectively to analyze sociological research interviews as it was done with journalist interviews, doctor-patient communication, business negotiations (Buchbinder et al., 2015; Jalilifar & Alavi, 2012; Tan et al., 2016), as interviewing is associated with requesting information, which can be very personal, intimate or uneasy to share.

However, analyzing research interviews we cannot avoid speaking about how they are suggested to be performed, as those recommendations tell us a lot about the nature of this kind of communication. Sociological research interviews are aiming to find out the informants point of view on different things thus the general rules for interviewers are to be unopinionated, not to impose beliefs and opinions on the informant, ask open questions without presuming the answer (Горшков & Шереги, 2009). In details methodological recommendations will be discussed in literature review part. Question forms will be paid more attention to, as they are the basic units of the interviews, which affect the answers and moreover, they can be easily detected from the transcripts unlike emotions and other non-verbal behavioural patterns.

Although being the prominent and old method of data gathering in social sciences, research interviews as such are understudied as linguistic data for conversational analysis as a method which studies communication itself as the action of systematically accomplishing goals (Sacks, 1995). Interviewing is a purposeful conversation unlike the everyday conversations, as one party (interviewer) has a specific interest in communication, which is manifested at least through the fact that interviews need a preparational step for the interviewer and the other party (informant) serves as a mean for the latter to his knowledge interest (Kvale, 2006). This results in asymmetrical relations between interlocutors, as the roles through the interview are more stable than in ordinary life conversations (i.e. getting acquainted), where the roles of ones who is asking and who is answering constantly change (Svennevig, 2013). Concepts of language pragmatics mentioned above were developed for ordinary everyday conversations, however, studies have shown that they can be implemented in unusual and highly normative communication practices as well (Arezou & Saghebi, 2014; Muhassin, 2019).

Research interview in that sense can be seen as a quite ordinary conversation - acquaintanceship, with an exception that the interviewer must stay undisclosed as information about interviewer's own opinion, ideas and beliefs could affect and spoilt the answers of the informant. Moreover, research interview is an interesting field to discover from pragmatic point of view, as although the interviewer could have a higher social status than an informant (compare white male researcher with migrant woman who works at cleaning services), according to the very nature of sociological inquiry the informant is a main figure in this kind of communication, who is able and actually is expected to share his/her ideas, views, beliefs in a manner which he/she prefers, being an expert in the area in which researcher is interested in, having power in Weberian sense, namely an ability to impose his own plans and his own self-evaluation which was stated crucial for politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Interviewer in his turn also has this relational power, as he is the one initially asking questions and thus leading the conversation.

We thus want to discover not the descriptive rules of research interviews: not how they are suggested to be performed, but how they are actually performed. This will provide the understanding of interviewing practice and give insights on how the methodological advices can be reconsidered. We will find how and when the researcher applies politeness strategies and will give an explanation of these phenomena. The reason for difference in applied politeness strategies will be discussed. We will also speak about how politeness strategies are related to recommendations of methodologists.



1. Literature Review

Interest in language pragmatics has been prominent since its appearance. Most studies deal with types of communication in the following spheres: business, human-computer interaction and internet-mediated communication, intercultural and gender-based analysis, intimate information sharing, education and family communication, reporting health issues, conducting surveys.

While studies concerning intercultural perspective (Rabab'Ah & Rabab'Ah, 2019) and gender issues pay respect to nowadays tendencies in science in general, although have shown some significant results, proving that women in general are more polite and cooperative (Mullany, 1999), studies concerning intimate information sharing, reporting health issues, conducting surveys will be helpful for this study as in some respect communication described in those studies share the same properties as sociological interviews: as some research interviews aim to gather information on sensitive topics, researcher and informant relationships are normative as in case with doctor and patient and conducting surveys and requesting information are similar to the process of interviewing per se.

1.1 Politeness Strategies in different types of communication

Analyzing politeness strategies in communication in institutional settings: in the court, at the doctors and in the police station researchers found out that members with more institutional power use politeness strategies extensively (unlike Brown & Levinson have initially predicted), mostly negative politeness strategies, which serve distancing and depersonalizing (Harris, 2003). They argued that politeness theory is a prominent way to analyze institutional communication. Comparing communication at doctor's and in the police station they have supported the thesis that social distance impacts the choice of politeness strategies interlocutors use.

In the study of health-advisory service the authors looked at how doctors frame their questions to minimize imposition and explicitness while asking their patients questions of intimate matter. Several strategies were spotted, one of which is “commencing with a meta-linguistic statement about the impending question” (e.g. “this may seem a strange question…”, “now I have to ask you…”) (Brown & Crawford, 2009). This is used to get the patient ready for an upcoming question and to minimize chances of a refusal and to mitigate face-threatening actions. The other strategy discovered was to use multiple politeness markers such as “may” and “just” in an opening series of questions (e.g. "may I just ask you?").

Other studies have shown the same but from the patient's side while asking a doctor for analgesics. Analysis of conversations has shown that majority of patients did not ask for pills explicitly - they either complained on pains they had waiting the doctor to offer a medication or asked to get them out of pain not asking for the pills explicitly thus giving freedom for the expert, the doctor (Buchbinder et al., 2015). Authors explain it with the fact that in the US analgesics are a delicate and matter, which is even legally supported. For the lightest painkillers like Ibuprofen one has to have a doctor's receipt.

Analyzing first conversations and self-presentation Svennevig has stated that for the reciprocity and mutual interestedness interlocutors are creating and sharing common ground, establishing solidarity, which is one of tree necessary domains for communication along with affection and familiarity (Svennevig, 2013). This is performed through asking questions i.e. “… and you?” after making some claim to make interest symmetrical, which refers to positive politeness strategy. However, in conversations, for which interest in intrinsically asymmetrical (i.e. interviews), the author claims that the respondent shows the interest with “symbolic gift” of many details and information on the topic which was not explicitly asked for. Some attempts were made in order to explain and conceptualize the reasons for which people are reluctant to share information. Following grounds for non-disclosure were identified during the analysis of interviews: avoiding negative reaction, right for privacy, dissimilarity of experience/interests, non-support the other, experience is not important, other does not ask. All these reasons instantiate the harm to the self.

On the other hand, as for reasons of information disclosure the fourth most wide-spread among the sample was information-sharing (Derlega et al., 2011). Study of face-work while communicating about sexually transmitted infections with partners the researchers (Brannon & Rauscher, 2019) proved empirically that the decision to disclose to a significant other is based of minimization of harm to the self.

Process of complaining was studied as well (Worley & Samp, 2019). Researchers have found through survey with questions such as “I hint rather than directly expressing the complaint” that dating couples use more politeness strategies than married ones. They also found evidence for the fact that face concerns do moderate the choice of politeness strategy by a partner.

Switching to more artificial communication environment, namely surveys, researchers have discovered the following strategies used by interviewers: they summarize what the respondent has said and ask back for the confirmation, which the respondent usually gives. (Molenaar & Smit, 1996). This may seem like a prominent strategy, however, it raises the question of validity of the data, as two different interviewers can summarize given information in two different ways. They also state that during survey interviews politeness principle is a risky technique that jeopardizes desired assess to sincere opinions. Studies of political interviews have shown that choice of hedging expressions (which are a part of politeness strategies) is related to professional power of the speaker. The results of this study also suggest that the degree of political power has an inverse relationship with the frequency of hedges employed by a politician.

The more power a politician has the less mitigating phrases (i.e. I think, it sounds like, etc.) (Jalilifar & Alavi, 2012). This supports the idea that strength of politeness strategies is associated with relative power the interlocutors (or speaker and audience) have. Other researcher analyzed small interviews where the interviewer requested quite trivial information from the person (about vacation, holidays and weekends) and figured out that social distance indeed has the impact on politeness strategies, how it was proposed originally by Brown & Levinson.

When asking something people who is barely known (high social distance), interviewer uses more hedges i.e. would you, can I, etc.(Alsulami, 2015). Study of job interviews suggest that politeness strategies, both positive and negative are used by candidates during their interviews. Analysis of interviews revealed that dominant strategy was attending interviewer's interest and claiming common ground for the sake of demonstrating the interest in the field and desired job (Tan et al., 2016).

The most popular negative politeness strategy was apologizing when asking for clarification or repetition. Implementation of quantitative methods and experimental study of business letters (Janssen, 2010) was shown that some politeness strategies are not only used but indeed work out as mitigators of bad impression after refusal letters. The most prominent strategy among giving reasons, giving compliments and asserting knowledge was reasoning. It improved the impression of communication being used alone and increased the impact of other strategies taken together. All in all, recent studies show that politeness strategies are extensively used in various types of communication, including institutionalized, which includes the situation of research interview. They serve different needs, such as minimizing imposition, expressing solidarity, claiming common ground, which is important part of facework, which is performed during interaction.

As for requests in business letters, that the amount of applied politeness strategies is dependent from the status of both interlocutors (Pilegaard, 1997). The sane is relevant for exit interviews, in which politeness strategies are claimed to be a proxy for keeping good relationships between the institution and an employee and their choice is dependent on status (Chien, 2013).

As literature review tells us, all types of communication discussed above have specific politeness strategies which are used by interlocutors.



1.2 Methodological Advices

One aspect that we cannot omit while studying sociological interviews as a linguistic material is how they actually should be completed. In other words, what are prescriptive rules of interviewing.

As discussed above, affection of empathy is a crucial point in building successful trusting communication, and in sociological interviews building trust is an important feature, as the informant is expected to disclose personal information. Empathy was found to give positive results in school communication (Mikkonen et al., 2015) and psychotherapy (Matarazzo & Wiens, 1977).

Empathy in research is, however, quite a challenge for interviewer, as it is not always clear how to express it and not to lose a role of researcher, not to lose the line of the interview and its goal (Laura Vazquez Maggio & Westcott, 2014). Empathy helps interlocutors to become close, but crucial for research is not to become too close, to keep the distance - this creates a methodological challenge (Watts, 2008). Importance of emotions, which are expressing empathy was also mentioned to be important in qualitative research (Edwards & Holland, 2013). Since not all typical emotion expressions are allowed in research interviews for mentioned reasons, it is recommended to use ones, which express empathy and interest (i.e. repeating back, “wow! Tell me more about that”, “that's really intreseting”), expressing active listening.

Other important thing to mention related to sociological interviews is a way of asking questions. Methodological guides usually suggest asking short, simple questions, no more than one at a time, ask specifying questions (how? why?) after given information (Горшков & Шереги, 2009), do not to express attitudes.

Presuming questions, which are common in journalistic filed are not appreciated in sociological interviews, however, sometimes they are needed to make the respondent comfortable to answer the question honestly. In this types of questions, we go ahead of the information, consider “Does your organization give donations?” and ““How much did your organization give in soft money donations?”. In second case, we suppose that charity is common practice, the researcher here already knows a part of the answer (that the organization does donate) (Leech, 2002). On one hand, this might be helpful, if the answer is positive, but is the organization does not actually donate and the question asked presumes that they do and it is a common practice, the respondent will be feeling uneasy to answer this question, as it may harm his face.

However, generally, open questions which do not contain any prompts from researcher are suggested, as they enable informant to fully express his/her opinion (Добреньков & Кравченко, 2004).

Some researchers which work on qualitative methodology are more inventive and suggest other types of questions. Baiting question, for example, are suggested to use questions with presuppositions, as the respondent as mentioned above will either open more easily or correct the researcher if he had a wrong idea. Echo questions, in which we repeat what the informant has said, as with stating something that the informant has said we show that we keep up with him/her, listening and staying focused. This is believed to encourage the informants to go further (Bernard, 2000). Another important aspect which can hardly be avoided is discussing, giving remarks and opinions. In everyday communication it is a basis of reciprocity, which is necessary for successful communication, but in research interviews the researcher is strongly prohibited to discuss something, share his/her opinions and ideas, as it can spoil the thoughts of the informant (Горшков & Шереги, 2009). It is also recommended not to state something without asking question after, basically giving remarks (Белановский, 2019). As for the flow of the interview, it is better to be smooth, without unexpected switches from one topic to another. Ideally, each following question should flow out of the preceding one, but if it is not possible, connections should be uttered by the interviewer (Горшков & Шереги, 2009). Several styles of topic change are suggested: summarizing transaction, while which the interviewer summarizes what has been said by the interviewer, making him/her understand that he/she is listening and is caring about the preciseness of the information. Moreover, it gives interviewer a change to be corrected if he/she had got something wrong (Штейнберг & Шанин, 2009).

In general, interviewer must be polite, tactful, the questions consistent and simple, the interview should not turn into interrogation process -- all this contributes to the quality of gathered data (Горшков & Шереги, 2009).



2. Data & Methods

To find out the communicative strategies of researchers during sociological interview we resorted to secondary data analysis, for the reason that linguistic behaviour that we study is to a great extent personalized and varies on personal and group level, just as our habits do, and, secondly, me, having preliminary knowledge in language pragmatics and politeness theory conducting the interviews for analysis could have evoked bias.

The steps to go through to answer the research questions we:

Find the acceptable secondary data and get access to it

Code the data

Investigate data for sustainable code sequences suggested by literature

Find other sustainable linguistic patterns

Discover the relation of codes from different code categories (axis of coding)

Figure out, how codes and their sequences evolve during the interview

The data to analyze communicative strategies of interviewers was provided from two HSE's laboratories: Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science and Centre for Youth Studies, to which I express my gratitude for otherwise this study could not have been done. First set of interviews consisting of 12 items was taken from poor people with questions devoted to their lifestyle, work, family and education conducted for project. Interviews were taken by 6 different researchers. The second set of interviews (20 items) was taken from young people and was generally devoted to their civic consciousness and solidarity taken for projects Сivic Сonsciousness of Russian Youth: Contemporary meanings and practices. Interviews were taken by different researchers working in the research centre. In this way we obtained a dataset with people of different ages - teenagers, youth and adults. Interviews were taken by different researchers with varying level of proficiency (from students to lecturers).

In order to find out strategies that interviewers use while conducting research interviews we will go thought analyzing interviews two-steps-coding: open and selective (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Initial code categories were suggested by research questions and theory, for theoretical frameworks (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Bernard, 2000) were very explicit in the instantiation of studied phenomena in language. In this style other studies investigating politeness strategies were conducted (Buchbinder et al., 2015; Mullany, 1999; Hiemstra, 1982). These code categories are positive politeness, negative politeness and question form. Later, during the processing some other distinct sustainable language pieces were found so that other code categories were created.

This strategy was chosen in order, on the one hand, to have cornerstones not to lose the agenda and, on the other hand, not to restrict ourselves to foreseen closed set of codes and thus not to lose information that is important and specific for research interviews. communication slang interviewer subjunctive

Some categories appeared during the coding process, for instance information flow and discourse markers.

Interviews were coded with RQDA. 52 codes belonging to 4 code categories were found (positive politeness, negative politeness, topic change, type of question) . The most widespread code with frequency 2187, the second - 667 and the last - 4 appearances. Theoretical saturation has come during the coding of nearly 20 interviews - new codes and code categories have not appeared since.



3. Results

In this section prominent communicative strategies of interviewers are presented. They were found to be sustainable through the interviews on different topics taken by different researchers, so that we have a ground to assume that those strategies are common for sociological interviews. All citations from the interviews will be written in italics.

3.1 Question Forms

The analysis of the interviews revealed that researchers use the questions of the following forms:

Basic form question (2187 cases, 58.9%) -- requesting information in free form (i.e. How old are you? How are you feeling?). These questions possess a question word (how, when, which, etc.) and they are called specific. Sometimes these kinds of questions can be answered with yes/no, or, more generally, with confirmation/negation (i.e Do you have siblings? Do you like studying?) - these questions are called general questions.

Baiting question (661 cases, 17.8%) -- these questions consist of proposition and a question word (i.e. А с мужем вы уже здесь встретились, да?) or contain the proposition explicitly (i.e. То есть они не ходят в детский сад?). These question differ from the ones mentioned above, because they could have been asked in a basic form, without presuppositions (i.e. А где вы с мужем встретились? Они ходят в детский сад?)

Question to continue (34 cases, 0.9%) -- unfinished questions or propositions, in this the informant takes the initiative to finish it with information saturation (i.e. Это с бумагами для..?)

Summarizing question(162 cases, 4,3%) -- similar to baiting questions in form, but do not contain new information. In these questions information given by the informant is summarized in the way researcher sees it. The informant's move is to negate this proposition or accept it.

Conditional questions (62 cases, 1.6%) -- these are the questions, it which the interviewer places the informant in some situation (i.e. Как ты думаешь, ты мог бы встречаться с девушкой, которая была бы вообще, абсолютно вне каких-то субкультур?), they combine illustrative and imitation questions (Штейнберг & Шанин, 2009), which by reducing the level of certainty as they are conditional, about probable events, not about real ones are easier to answer.

Re-questioning (185 cases, 4.9%) -- these are the questions in which the researcher re-asks the information

These types of questions are divided not only because they are structured in a different way, but because they provoke informants to give different kind of information.

Basic form questions are prevalent in the beginning of research interviews - they make researcher familiar with the informant, they are plain in terms of interlocutors' relations.

Other types of questions (baiting, summarizing, conditional) are appearing more closer to the end of discussing topic or at the end of the interview, when researcher returns to the information, that was already discussed.

Baiting questions

Baiting questions are fairly different in this aspect. Containing presupposed information, they demonstrate the attention of the researchers to informant's words, as the researcher predicts the information that he will most probably receive and questions it:

И: То есть, это они на 69-ом сначала учились, да?

Р: Да

И: А потом поехали в Мюлепельто?

И: Не случается конфликтов?

Р: Нет, мы поддерживаем друг друга… Наш коллектив очень хороший… Бывает и такое, что актрисы за роль друг друга съедают

И: Это конкурентная среда, да?

Р: Конкурентная - в любом случае…

These types of questions are more wide-spread in interviews about practices, not about beliefs, in the latter they usually take the form of suggestions or alternatives to talk about which informant has not mentioned himself, but which are important for the researcher:

Р: А вот Навальный?

Р: Вам важнее музыка или текст?

Р: Ты когда-нибудь получал поддержку от государства?

И: Было, наверно, что-то. Сейчас уже не могу вспомнить

Р: Вот ты на бюджете учился? Стипендию получал?

Apart from that, baiting questions provoke wider answers from respondent, they are often followed by answers, which contain more information, than requested in the question itself:

Р: Первый ребёнок у меня родился в 93-м году

И: Это от первого мужа?

Р: Трое детей у меня от первого мужа

This kind of disclosure happens independently from the answer (positive/negative). 109 times given the positive answer, 60 times given negative answer:

Р: Это младшая, которая учится в 4 классе?

И: Старшая. Вот она нынче проучится, а на будущий год уже потом поедет куда-то туда. Или в Мичурино, или в Сосново.

Conditional questions

Conditional questions were mostly found to be used in interviews, devoted to beliefs, not practices. These kind of questions were asked in unclear situation, in which the interviewer has not got the clear answer:

И: Что Вы делали на последних выборах?

Р: Ничего, я никуда не пошла

И: А если бы пришлось, какие были мысли?

This can be explained by the fact that questions about beliefs and attitudes especially can be transformed into situational questions, through which the attitudes are elicited.

In other situations, conditional questions are used to speak about future, hypothetical facts:

И: У тебя возможен рост профессиональный? Если тебя повысят, кем ты будешь?

This makes the task easier for the informant, as he/she can visualize the situation for himself/herself, not just speculate on hypothetical events.

Summarizing questions

These kind of questions are used mostly to the end of the discussed topics. They are more often used in biographical questions or questions about past experience:

И: Вы с мамой, получается, сюда переехали?

И: То есть, вообще друзей у них было немного?

These questions are usually followed by simple yes/no answers without more detalization of the topic.

Quite often these types of questions were used in questions about beliefs and preferences

This is the way for the interviewer to establish the rule or principle, generalize the facts and stories the informant has told. Moreover, by asking these types of question researcher makes sure that he/she had understood the informant correctly, which is important for the research (Штейнберг & Шанин, 2009).

3.2 Interview flow

Important aspect of the interview, which differs it from everyday speech is the change of the topic of the discussion. Usually the process of topic change is realized by the interviewer in the following manner:

И: Понятно, а расскажите немножко о своих родителях, кем они работают, или работали, если на пенсии, какие у вас с ними отношения.

Here we see the following strategical sequence: discourse-marker (понятно), which closes the former topic - call for action (расскажите) with mitigation (немножко) - two questions of basic form.

И: Хорошо. Следующий вопрос связан с коммуникациями с государством. Как ты считаешь, государство поддерживает таких людей, как ты?

In this example it is realized in the similar form: discourse-marker - question warning (Следующий вопрос связан с коммуникациями с государством) - basic question with epistemological distancing.

Generalizing these examples, we can define the following strategy of topic change:

Close the previous topic

Warn about the forthcoming question

Introduce the new topic

Ask questions devoted to the new topic

3.3 Discourse markers

During data processing, unforeseen code category was found - discourse-markers. On the one hand, they serve a role of separators of language pieces, while on the other hand, they create a meaningful connection of these pieces, relating current utterance to prior discourse. In everyday speech these markers are «ну», «а», «но» and often they are used not in their literal dictionary meaning, but used, for example, to start a sentence (Fraser, 2009). In data analyzed in our case discourse markers were also found, they are the following: «Понятно» -- 177 cases, «А вот» -- 119 cases, «Хорошо» -- 28 cases, «Окей» -- 24 cases, «Ясно» -- 19 cases, «Ладно» -- 4 cases:

И: Ясно, а она заканчивала здесь училище?

И: Хорошо, а на следующем уровне, районном или городском?

И: Понятно, и долго он там работал?

И: Ок, в очередной раз меняем тему. Поговорим о Вашем опыте выезда за границу, если такой был. Бывали ли Вы в каких-нибудь странах, кроме России?

Discourse-markers is a broad set of linguistic features, some of them function as markers related to topic change during the dialogue, which is realized in four paradigms: parallelism, reorienting, dissonance, and consequence (Fraser, 1988). Discourse-markers, found in our data represent reorientation (Хорошо, Понятно, Окей, Ладно), while discourse-marker “А вот” was already examined to have a function of discourse organization and topicalization (Рачёва, 2016). And it was argued that they indicate the finish of one discourse piece and start of the other (Кибрик & Подлесская, 2009).

The choice of discourse-markers can be explained with personal features of speakers, as constancy of their usage persists and dominates through one interview taken by one researcher.

3.4 Politeness strategies dynamics

In sociological research interviews we can observe a dynamics of politeness strategies: In the beginning of the interview, negative politeness prevails:

И: А не могли бы вы (appeal to informant's ability) чуть-чуть (mitigation) рассказать, может быть (subjunctive), о своих родителях? Где, как?

Closer to the end of the interview, researcher uses more and more positive politeness strategies.

И: То есть справитесь…

И: Всё равно подсказывают, даже нам подсказывали, и вообще всем, в любой школе мне кажется…

Interview is a big linguistic act, where we can observe the dynamic of relation from distance to solidarity between interlocuters from the side of researcher. With this strategy, researcher firstly claims the importance and inviolability of interviewee's knowledge and experience and later showing approval by solidarity and empathy.

3.5 Positive Politeness

Positive politeness was also found to be used by researchers during the conversations. Most widespread positive politeness strategies are not relevant for sociological interviews, as researcher's ethic does not allow to use popular politeness strategies such as exaggeration, colloquialisms, phonological slurring, inclusive forms (Kvale, 2007; Morand & Ocker, 2003)

Slang Usage

Slang is not widely used in the data (61 cases) and it was payed some attention from researcher only in 15 cases, being questions about the meaning of the words. Slang, specific for the social group which was studied in case of poverty - халтурка, халтура, халтурит - is left with to attention from the researcher's side. From the communicative perspective, it creates a level of familiarity between interlocutors, which is one of three aspects important for successful communication (Svennevig, J, 2013). Using the same slang creates the same discourse field, in which interlocutors have a mutual ground to be understood. In case the researcher re-asks the meaning of the slang words the informant could have gotten a feeling that they belong to “different world”, which hardens the communication. Moreover, in case the slang word has a negative connotation, being asked more questions about it, the informant could have felt the imposition from the researcher, being obliged to explain the phenomenon. Other types of specific lexical items, namely toponims and names of institutions (e.g. «ОржКо», «на трубах», «Беседа») - are being questioned by the researcher and the answer gives no difficulties.

In the interviews, devoted to beliefs among subcultures, a lot of slang words are used by researcher himself and picked up by the informant. These are the words that describe the appearance of subcultures (i.e. гады) and related cultural products (e.g. дарксейв, тристайл, тектоник, баттлы) and hierarchical positions within group (e.g. тру, позеры, херки) and group division labels (e.g. алкоготы, алковеганы, алкопанки, босконосцы):

И: А сейчас есть разделение на тру и позеров?

Slang words, “group identity markers” (P. Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 107) give informant an impression, that the researcher has a preliminary knowledge in the field and gives interlocutors shared language that they understand and claim common ground. Creating common ground with help of slang words is one of positive politeness strategy. Authors of politeness theory mention, that slang language can be used between people with low social distance.

Echoing and interviewer's remarks

Interviewers, despite suggestions of methodologists use remarks a lot (204 cases). Remarks interviewers give make a dialogue sound like an ordinary communication in which reciprocity plays an essential role (Leimar, 1997). As usual schema of iterative change of ask-answer roles are not applicable in research interviews, remarks are partly taking the role of reciprocity from the interviewer's side.

The phenomenon of echo questions, in which the words of the informant are repeated (Bernard, 2000) is also found commonly used (112 cases). By repeating, citing the informant's words interviewer expresses active listening and interest in informant's words, and apart from this, gets more information, as the informant usually discloses the topic more widely after the echo as he/she understands that this is what the one who is asking is mostly interested in. Thus, echoing (repeating informant's words) appears to be a discursive marker of topic of interest and natural way of guiding interview flow. More than that, citing informant's words is an easy way of asking specifying questions about the topics that were already mentioned:

И: А скажите, вот ваша мама. Вы сказали, что у неё 2 образования. А она где работала?

Researcher's remarks which do not contain anything connected with the information given by the informant are used in other circumstances. Other than making communication more plausible remarks and examples are used by researcher when he/she starts to insist on speaking about the topic the informant is reluctant to talk about. For example, when the answer was already negative, but the researcher still wants to continue:

И: Насколько важно быть гражданином России для вас, ваших родственников, друзей, знакомых?

Р: Мне кажется …

И: Ну вот я могу привести пример Абхазии… вот они получают российскую пенсию

Р: Это потому что они работали в Советском Союзе

И: Ну мало ли, узбеки тоже работали… Потом, значит, если брать тоже самое… Страны СНГ…

By giving examples, of sometimes referring to personal experience the researcher tries to provoke the answer, which is perhaps a key one for the study, but not interesting for the informant.

Interviewer's empathy

Different empathic expressions were found in our data in 201 cases. A lot of empathic phrases (интересно, ясно, правда?) are used to show solidarity and understanding from the interviewer. By inserting emotional interruptions in a long speech of the informant the interviewer shows his/her attention and interest:

Р: Моя одноклассница меня просто затащила с собой поступать. Получилось так, что я терпеть не могла английский язык.

И: Да ты что?! (смеется)

Р: В школе. (смеется) У меня была такая учительница, что мы стояли перед классом, перед дверью, и молились, чтобы она не пришла, чтобы у нее застрял ключ в замке, запихивали туда жвачку, еще что-нибудь, чтобы она не открыла кабинет, чтобы у нас не было, чтобы она заболела, еще что-нибудь случилось, и потому что это был очень-очень. Вот мы сидели, и головы боялись поднять. И я бы не сказала, что я знала английский, при этом я его особо не знала. А в десятом классе у нас приехала в наш город небольшой женщина с Воркуты, учитель английского языка, стала жить недалеко от нас, моя одноклассница тоже как-то через своих, может, знакомых узнала, что вот приехала такая женщина, и стала ходить просто заниматься английским. Ей очень нравилось.

Р: Вот, но причем, самое смешное, что я в своем университете предлагала тему, такой вариант диссертации, и мне очень жестко оказали. Я очень долго стояла не могла понять в чем дело. Меня заставили писать диссертацию, которая мне совсем не нравится, я не знаю даже что делать, но в общем придумаю что-нибудь.

И: Это вообще печально, да.

Р: Да, вот потому что практику мне не на ком делать. Тут-то у меня связи есть вроде, есть кого спросить лично, а тут...ладно, и не из такого выплывали!

Emphatic phrases also play a role of discourse markers before the questions:

И: Ясно. Здорово. А она просто знакомая, бабушка эта?

И: Круто. За границей у тебя были конфликты или сбои межкультурной коммуникации?

Or as an appreciation of the informants' abilities:

И: На оригинале читаешь?

Р: Да

И: Здорово

И: Да, здорово, Алёна. На этом у меня вопросы кончились

And in this case it is a prominent positive politeness strategy, by which the interviewer shows that the informants' experience and knowledge are valuable.

3.6 Negative Politeness

In the data analyzed in this work found negative politeness strategies include negations, subjunctives, indirect questions and mitigations, which are widespread in ordinary communication. Apart from that, some negative politeness strategies, which are more specific for research interviews such as question warning and epistemological distancing. In this section all those strategies will be discussed.

Negation, subjunctive and informant's ability

Although negation is one of the most wide-spread negative politeness strategy in everyday speech (e.g. Couldn't you go a little faster?), bureaucratic and institutionalized communication, in sociological research interviews it appeared to be used very rarely. Other negative politeness strategies, which often come in hand with negation are widely used. These are subjunctives and indirect questions, which has become conventional in conversations

Subjunctives express speaker's hesitation about the willingness and ability of hearer to answer a question (Morand & Ocker, 2003) were used 72 times mostly with verbs connected with questioning and answering (i.e. Ещё я хотела бы спросить). IN research interviews subjunctives are mostly presented in asking indirect questions.

These are questions, in which the speaker does not ask exactly what interests him/her, but rather an ability of the other to answer (e.g. Could you tell me what time it is?). Framing questions this way address at least somehow hearer's potential willingness or ability to give us information, which saves his negative face:

И: Вы не могли бы рассказать с того момента, как родились? Где вы учились?

И: Можешь рассказать, где ещё работала до этого места, и, собственно, здесь работаешь?

И: А вот можешь рассказать о каких-т своих образах…

In the data analyzed researchers performed indirect questions, asking about the informant's ability to recollect/tell the story 50 times.

Mitigation

Mitigating words (i.e. что-то, некоторые, немного, чуть-чуть) make the questions and requests softer, consider не могли бы вы мне чуть-чуть помочь? and не могли бы вы помочь? In our data mitigation is a wide-spread phenomena (83 cases) usually used with verbs рассказать, скажите, спросить etc. With mitigating these requests we make them less imposing:

И: Тогда я хотела про медицинское обслуживание немножко спросить

И: А вот можно про каждого ребёнка как-то по чуть-чуть?

И: А есть что-то такое, что тебе не нравится в этой субкультуре?

Negative politeness strategies such mitigation along with subjunctives are commonly used when the comprehensive (from the informant's point of view) answer was already given, but it is not enough for the researcher:

И: Есть ли в вашем доме какие-то дела, проблемы, когда соседи объединяются для их решения?

Р: Никогда ….

И: А вообще когда-нибудь, может, видели, что собирается народ?

In these cases we can assume that the informant has either nothing more to say, or he/she is generally not interested in it, not paying attention to these facts of the worlds and thus cannot answer the question as the researcher is expecting him/her to. It is confirmed by the fact that these strategies usually occurred when people who is far from politics (artists, engineers, etc.) were asked questions about civic life and communication with governmental institutions.

Question warning

During research interviews, researcher often resort to negative politeness strategy such as question warning, which serves to smooth the relation between interlocutors and prepare one for the coming question and minimize the intrusion from the researcher's side (Schegloff, 1988). This strategy is commonly used in health consultations, where pre-invitation sequences (question warnings) are used to minimize the potential refusal to answer and diminish the imposition on the person, who will be answering question (Brown & Crawford, 2009).

In our case, question warning is used 124 times when the researcher changes the topic of discussion. It can be explained in a following way: often, topics are not related to each other and question warning is used to smooth the change in discussion, moreover, it may be needed so that the interviewee does not think that previous discussion and the new questions are related.

Usually it is realized though the following schema:

Question warning / Questioning informant's ability to answer a question

Call for action with topic mention

Questions (or sequence of questions) devoted to the topic

Here are the examples from the corpus:

И: А можешь рассказать про свой день в детском доме? Как вообще проходит? Что вы делаете?

И: Угу. Возвращаясь к профессиональной карьере, всё-таки, какой она вам видится? Нельзя параллельно две карьеры делать, и хореографическую, и актёрскую?

Although usually it is not recommended during research interviews to ask sequences of questions, this practice is common especially in the beginning of the topic. With question sequences the researcher gives an informant more freedom and wider pool of questions to answer, although in most cases, after this sequence not all questions are answered, and the researcher repeats them.

Epistemological Distancing

During the analysis of the interviews about beliefs and attitudes it was found that interviewers often use the strategy of epistemological distancing. This invariant of negative politeness is used while asking questions, namely in most cases interviewer firstly asks как вы думаете/как вы считаете/как по вашему/как вам кажется/на ваш взгляд and then about the fact itself:

И: А как ты думаешь, эта среда более толерантная, на твой взгляд?

И: А как ты думаешь, готы вообще -- уходящая субкультура?

И: Как Вы думаете, что значит быть гражданином?

И: А с твоей точки зрения, есть кто-то, кто никогда не сможет стать гражданином?

In the first case two such methods are concatenated: а как ты думаешь; на твой взгляд. Such tool as epistemological distancing can be considered as a negative politeness strategy. Firstly, it takes off the level of responsibility from the informant, as the interviewer is not asking about the truth or some universal, or about what must be done, but is asking only about the informant's relation to the phenomenon Secondly, question framed in this manner appeals to the very person, putting his/her thoughts/beliefs/ideas in the centre of the question, making him/her important, not the fact of the world that they are talking about. This sorts with what the authors consider a negative face and thus negative politeness: it provides the hearer (informant) his/her territory of thought and actions, not imposed by others (Brown&Levinson, 1987). Exactly by this parameter sociological research interview is different from journalistic ones, in which questions are often direct and straight, thus more provocative.

3.7 Practices VS Beliefs

Difference in communicative strategies of interviewers was found between the interviews about practices (including biographical questions) and interviews about beliefs (including attitudes, experiences) -- the former are presented by the interviews from the Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science and the latter -- from the Centre for Youth Studies. In those two types of interviews the position of the researcher is appearing in different ways. In the interviews about beliefs, for example, much more researcher's remarks, empathy and referring to personal experience are presented, which related to positive politeness, but the baiting questions with presuppositions are almost absent. More than that, strategy of epistemological distancing is widely used. Whilst, in interviews about practices, baiting questions were much more frequent. This can be connected by the fact that the actions are easier to predict than thoughts and opinions.

In general, in the interviews about beliefs positive politeness strategies are more common. This can be explained with the fact that it is more natural and easier to give feedback and show solidarity with abstract ideas and beliefs other than actions.



4. Conclusion

With the analysis of sociological research interviews, we have found that they are quite different from other types of institutionalized communication, unlike business communication, research interviews do not contain politeness strategies as giving reasons and complements (Janssen, 2010). In general, negative politeness is more intrinsic for a researcher, as it appears in questions, whereas positive politeness is in most cases just a reaction to the informant's answers, which, nonetheless, helps the flow of the interview.

Prescriptive methodological rules seem not to be practiced precisely: interviewers do ask presupposing questions: baitings and perform remarks: echo questions, which provokes the discussion and signals about the attention of the interviewer, which is a necessary feature of successful communication.

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