Disclosing the Interviewer: Ethnopoetics and the Researcher's Place in Transcribed Interviews

Abstract

The transcription of oral interviews into textual data is a complex process. Translating spoken language with all its extralinguistic features into some sort of written text presentation – through transcribing it – is time-consuming and fraught with ethical, methodological and theoretical issues. This article’s argument is two-fold: first, it calls for more transparency from researchers in explaining what happens on the way from interview to published text. There are many ways to transcribe, and they fit different purposes. We should be clear as to why we choose different methods. Second, it argues that our disciplines as well as our readers would benefit from us allowing more space to the researcher in transcribed interviews.