Katherine Mortimer

Interviews as interactional data

Interviews are designed to gather propositional information communicated through reference and predication. Some lament the fact that interviews always include interactional positioning that presupposes and sometimes creates social identities and power relationships. Interactional aspects of interview events threaten to corrupt the propositional information communicated, and it appears that these aspects need to be controlled. Interviews do often yield useful propositional information, and interviewers must guard against the sometimes-corrupting influence of interactional factors. But we argue that the interactional aspects of interview events can also be valuable data. Interview subjects sometimes position themselves in ways that reveal something about the habitual positioning that characterizes individuals or groups. We illustrate the potential value of this interactional information by describing “payday mugging” stories told by interviewees in one New Latino Diaspora town. (Interview data, narrating events, transference)

SITUATIONAL CONTEXT OF EDUCATION: A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF BILINGUAL LEARNERS

SITUATIONAL CONTEXT OF EDUCATION: A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF BILINGUAL LEARNERS. Maria Estela Brisk, Angela Burgos, and Sara Ruth Hamerla . Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. vii + 246.

Mexicans as Model Minorities in the New Latino Diaspora

24.50 paper. In this volume, Brisk, Burgos, and Hamerla offer educators of language-minority students assistance in addressing two perennial challenges: linking sociolinguistic theory and research to classroom practice and strengthening connections between home and school. Their offering comes as a collection of thoughtfully crafted, tested, and honed lesson plans through which teachers and students together study the linguistic, cultural, economic, political, and social factors that affect students and their learning in a bilingual and bicultural environment. They propose that close examination of the situational context of education in ones own community will benefit students, their families, and their teachers and, ultimately, promote learning.