Ethnicity, language and gender in the interviews Sample Clauses

Ethnicity, language and gender in the interviews. Language and culture are important aspects in the interviews. For example the used concepts have to be explained that well for the informants that there is no confusion of their meaning.100 As I have interviewed people with a cultural and linguistic background different from my own, I need to take into account what kind of difficulties it might cause. For instance, as a researcher I am an outsider of my informants‟ in-group but a member of the majority group. According to Xxxxxx, “the purpose of qualitative interviewing is to understand others' meaning making”. This understanding is not an easy task, especially not in cross-cultural interviews.101 Traditionally cross-cultural interviewing has referred to the collection of data by interviewing people across cultural and national borders. However, there are many research examples that describe insider-outsider challenges faced by interviewers conducting ethnic interviews also within their own societies.102 Language was one of the challenges that I faced in my interviews. Most of the informants spoke fluent Finnish but in 1 or 2 cases I assume that if their Finnish language skills had been better, the interview might have been easier for them. For example one informant seemed to be nervous before the interview, maybe because I used the recorder or because of the language. After the interview we continued discussing for a moment and she seemed to be more relaxed. In general, in the most of the interviews, language or nervousness was not a problem. Thus, even if my informants could not use their native language in the interviews, the choice of the language was not too severe a problem. Actually using other than one‟s native language can even have some advantages. Xxxxx X. Xxxxxx interviewed Japanese women living in the UK and made notions about the language in the interviews 99 Hirsjärvi & Hurme 2000, 60. Hyvönen 2009, 45. 100 Hirsjärvi & Hurme 2000, 48 and 53. 101 Xxxxxx 2002, 97. 102 Ryen 2002, 336. and about the intercultural interviews in general. According to Xxxxxx, the possibility to use one‟s own language in the interviews makes the situation easier for the informant, as they are able to concentrate on contents and not on the language. However, also culture influences the situation. Women interviewed by Xxxxxx stated that they were able to speak to her more freely because they were not restricted by the cultural and linguistic values of their native language. By using a foreign language they were able t...