Coding-in-the-Moment and Other Hidden Skills of Clean Language Interviewing

Abstract

Chapter Summary

Underpinning clean language interviewing is a set of skills that allow the interviewer great facility in tracking what has been presented. These skills include minimising personal inference and making an informed choice of what question to ask. They are grounded in the logic of the interviewee's data and the purpose of the interview.

This chapter makes visible four hidden skills I identified through reflection on a doctoral study I conducted using clean language interviewing. These are, how I: ‘parcel out’ sentences in order to build visual-spatial schema; apply content-free codes during the interview; decide what is salient in the interviewee's words and gestures; and use adjacency to navigate my way around the data. Since these skills are applied moment-by-moment during the interview, I refer to them as ‘coding in-the-moment’. I conclude with a comparison between grounded theory methodology and clean language interviewing.

Citation

Walker, C. and Way, M. (2022), "Coding-in-the-Moment and Other Hidden Skills of Clean Language Interviewing", Cairns-Lee, H., Lawley, J. and Tosey, P. (Ed.) Clean Language Interviewing, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 143-154. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-330-820221011