Symposium Study I Part IV
How is Qualitative Interview Data Like a Poem?
Dan Lukiv
M.Ed., English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca
Perhaps you find that question peculiar. Interview data, from qualitative research (Madjidi, n.d.; Patton, 1987; and van Manen, 1990), is generally not "characterized by the imaginative treatment of experience and a heightened use of language more intensive than ordinary speech" ([Webster's:] Poem, 1992, p. 749), nor by "composition characterized by intensity and beauty of language or thought" (p. 749). Outside the domain of human science, freelance writers, reporters, and journalists interview informants (Adamec, 2000; and Cool, 1987), and talk show hosts (my all time favorite: Johnny Carson) interview guests. These interviews, no matter how biased the interviewers, usually provide the information or entertainment sought. Some of these interviews may actually posses poetic characteristics as just mentioned from Webster's. Have you heard, on a talk show, manic Robin Williams' "imaginative treatment of experience and...heightened use of language more intensive than ordinary speech"? Some might call his performances strangely poetic. But the question remains: In the world of human science research, How is qualitative interview data like a poem?
The implicit nature of the data relates to the implicit nature of the poem. Whether the poem is metaphysical, extranatural, narrative, lyric, dramatic, metrical, rhyming, or free verse (Bugeja, 1994), generally the reader must analyze and interpret the poem to find understanding. Meaning is generally not explicit, whereas the opposite is often the case in expository writing (van Manen, 1990). In poetry, the explicit often bores the reader. He wants to figure the poem out for himself. In other words, the poet must "show, not tell" (Drury, 1991, p. 30). Likewise in fiction, generally the reader wants the author to show him meaning, to show, not tell, what the characters, for example, are like (Knott, 1997). In this sense, often fiction, like poetry, has implicit, not explicit, quality. Meaning is usually not explicit in qualitative data either (van Manen, 1990). The researcher must analyze and interpret the data to find understanding (Lukiv, 2002a or 2003a; McMillan & Schumacher, 1997; Patton, 1987; and van Manen, 1990).
Just as a professor of literature could analyze and interpret W. B. Yeats' famous poem "The Second Coming" (1922/n.d.), using tools his "trade" has taught him, a qualitative researcher could analyze and interpret data, using tools his studies in research have taught him. In my phenomenological studies about what events in school had encouraged established poets to take up creative writing seriously in adulthood, I applied rigorous procedures, in the name of validity (Arminio, 2002; Guba & Lincoln, 1982; McMillan & Schumacher, 1997; Morse, Barrett, Mayan, Olson, & Spiers, 2002; and Siegle, n.d.b) to analyze and interpret the data (van Manen, 1990), producing themes as an end result. Presently I am at the preliminary stage of my third phenomenological study, which will also explore school-based events that encouraged one person to become a creative writer, a novelist in this case.
Qualitative interview data speaks, in the same sense that a poem speaks, about meaning, about thematic statements. The researcher must find these, as they exist embedded in the transcribed lines, perhaps related to categories, concepts, or other understandings (Calloway & Knapp, 1995; Glaser, 2002; and Introduction to Qualitative Tools, 1998). We recognize "that a text can 'speak' to us" (van Manen, 2000m). "The more vocative a text, the more strongly the meaning is embedded within it" (2000m), and the more "difficulty that this [vocative text] presents...[for the researcher] to articulate or address this implicit [meaning] in explicit, reflective and cognitive terms" (2000m). That statement relates to poetry. Van Manen asks, "How is meaning captured by or embedded in poetic language? These concerns are methodologically relevant since they help us become attentive to what can o[f]ten be important in phenomenological inquiry and phenomenological writing" (2000m).
The qualitative researcher, or the person studying a poem, may consider "methods [that] enhance the...'lived sense' communicated by a text. To achieve this, begin by asking: What tone belongs to this text?...Sober? Contemplative? Ceremonial? Respectful? and so forth" (van Manen, 2000k). These methods bring textual meaning "vividly into presence, making it...recognizable" (van Manen, 2000j). As van Manen, a phenomenological researcher, tells us,
There is no limit to the range of approaches that one can use in bringing experience [as found in interview data] vividly into presence. But the main aim of evocative inquiry is to listen to the things that are before us, that have a hold on us through the mediating function of the evocative text. (2000g).
The search for meaning can be fascinating, exhilarating: "When concrete things are named in text in...a peculiar effect may occur: its textual meaning begins to address us. We say: 'this poem, [or] this text [qualitative data], speaks to me!'" (van Manen, 2000h). When I analyzed and interpreted my phenomenological interviews, I found myself somewhat dizzy with excitement as I actually found themes embedded in concrete things (experiences/stories), themes that through participant review (van Manen, 1990) were verified as valid. I felt as if I were entering the life experience of another, learning how school, in specific ways, had encouraged each of my participants to become writers. I relate to van Manen's statement that
human science can not only increase our understandings of the human world, it can also humanize this world by transforming us and deepening our humanity. This sense of life meaning is not necessarily found by looking more deeply into the innerness of our "selves." Meaningfulness is more likely found in the space that lies outside the self, in the communal realm of the "other" [in the case of my studies, in the realm of my participants]. (2000f)
The interview data, as a text, speaks to the researcher about meaning, themes, humanistic insights, just as a poem speaks to the reader. Humanistic insights become a subset in "the realm of the ethical" (van Manen, 2000i). The data speaks implicitly about what is right, humanistic; the poem does too. Some call this poetic truth (Bugeja, 1994). Some speak of truth through research (Ewing, 2003; and Leggo, 2003). Philosophers also speak about truth (Vanderstraeten & Biesta, 1998). In either of the three cases--poetry, research, or philosophy--I find that the term truth can be misleading, because it requires a ruler that measures truth according to a universal standard, but people tend to describe truth according to personal, not universal, standards (Answering The Roman Governor's Question, 1965). One person calls the Theory of Evolution a fact (Gould, Luria, & Singer, 1981), another calls it a theory (Lukiv, 2001b, Chapter 5). One person says the soul is immortal, another says it's mortal (see section two).
I circumvent this subject about truth. I don't want the philosopher's What is truth? labyrinth. Philosophical answers to such questions quickly become abstraction dog piles (see chapter two). I prefer to speak of meanings and themes that implicitly lie within both poems and qualitative interview data. Those meanings and themes answer how such data is like a poem.
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