Introduction

This chapter examines how talk in standardized survey interviews differs from talk in ordinary conversation, and how this departure may confuse respondents. Section 4 provides an analysis of an extensive American interview fragment that illustrates how the interviewer strictly follows the rules of standardized survey interviewing and thus simultaneously disregards the principles of ordinary conversation. Section 5 discusses some interview fragments that show how interviewers try to follow the principles of ordinary conversation, thereby seemingly departing from the rules of standardized interviewing. The two preceding sections provide the theoretical basis for the analyses.

Although this book is written from a conversation analysis perspective, in this chapter I also make use of the conversational maxims of the language philosopher Paul Grice. I chose to use Grice's maxims in this chapter partly because these maxims are more specific than the related CA concept of recipient design. Also, although recent survey methodology literature has come to refer to Grice, especially in its discussion of context effect, I chose to make use of his work because I believe that he has more to offer the field than is usually acknowledged.

In his Lecture Notes of 1971 (published in 1992), Harvey Sacks discusses the concept of “recipient design.” This concept refers to the fact that participants in ordinary conversation design their talk for its specific recipients (Sacks 1992b: 438). Speakers are expected to orient toward what they know their co-participants know (564).