Analyzing Race Talk

The interview is one of the most important sources of social scientific data yet there has been relatively little exploration of the way interviews are conducted and interpreted. By asking internationally respected scholars from a range of traditions in discourse studies including conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and sociolinguistics to respond to the same material, this exciting new book sheds light on some key differences in methodology and theoretical perspective. Key topics are addressed such as the forms of knowledge produced in interviews, the interview as social interaction and the foundations for the study of talk and texts in qualitative research. The use of interviews exploring attitudes to race further broadens the scope of the book, enabling the contributors to explore sensitive issues around the construction and interpretation of interviews on controversial topics and specifically on issues for race and ethnicity.

Harry van den Berg is an Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. He is the author or editor of 15 books on different topics and has published numerous articles and book chapters. He is a member of the Committee of Quality Inspection of the MOA (The Dutch Market Research Association). Margaret S. Wetherell was appointed to a Personal Chair at the Open University in 2000. She is the author or editor of 12 books and has published over 60 articles and book chapters. She is one of the most widely cited psychologists in the UK with over 1,000 citations of her single and joint authored research as measured by the SSCI. Currently she is co-editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology. Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra was an associate professor at the Unviersity of Utrecht. She authored or edited 5 books and published numerous articles and book chapters. She played an outstanding role in the development and application of methods of conversation analysis especially in the field of interview discourse. She died in December 2002 just after the completion of this book at the age of 52.