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

Smooth change of topics is realized with a help of multiple negative politeness strategies, by which interviewer is preparing the informant to the question and diminishing imposition. Starting from social distancing and claiming territory, which is realized through negative politeness strategies, interviewer proceeds to solidarity practices, claiming common ground and expressing empathy (positive politeness). This is also specific for sociological interviews, as for instance in journalistic interviews questions are often spontaneous and disconnected to previous answers (Ekstrцm, 2001), which helps interviewers to catch the interviewee with unexpected questions and put him/her in a difficult communicative situation.

It was also found that politeness strategies both positive and negative are abundantly used by researchers when the questioning becomes interrogation, in which the interviewer insists on continuing the talk despite the unwillingness of the informant. The difference in use of politeness strategies was found in two types of interviews: about practices and about beliefs -- the former are richer with positive politeness strategies, while in the latter there are more baiting questions. This may be connected to the nature of inquiry: abstract ideas and real facts. 

Discussion

The obtained results give important insights on what sociological research interview is and how it is conducted on practice. We have discussed differences in interviewer's strategies in interviews about practices and behaviour and interviews about beliefs and attitudes.

Based on the found strategies of interviewers following research with experimental design can be done in order to figure out how specific strategies affect the answers and the quality of the interview. Moreover, having more data on different topics takes by different interviewers a cluster analysis of researcher can be conducted to figure out whether the choice of communicative strategies can be connected to other exogenous variables.

It can also be suggested, based on results, that sometimes questions apart from basic ones are productive to use to provoke the discussion and demonstrate attention, which is important for successful communication.

Limitations of the study are concerning the individual factors that could have affected the politeness strategies. Although patterns found were sustainable through interviews of different researchers, having bigger dataset quantitative analysis which will test the independence of communicative strategies from individual factors can be conducted.

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