The interviews with the four participants were all conducted in Chinese, and audio- recorded. All the interviews were fully transcribed in order to obtain a full account of the exact words they said, the tones they used and all the details I could possibly grasp from the interview records. Transcribing started right after each interview was taken, and was followed by translation of the transcripts.
4.4.1.1 Small stories as narrative for identity analysis
Since Labov’s (1972) research, sociolinguistic scholars have been employing the participants’ narrative about their personal experience and past events to elicit
understanding about their identities. The rationale for this approach to identity research is that by story-telling, the participants (narrators) can reflect on the past experience, represent their subjectivities in the experience and thus make sense of themselves (Bamberg, M.G.W. et al., 2007). As this narrative approach to identity analysis has swept through the sociolinguistic research, Bamberg, M. and Georgakopoulou (2008) argue that this kind of narrative research with a focus on the “big stories” can filter out the conversational narratives or “small stories” that can also be used as identity analysis. Thus they propose a new perspective on narrative and identity analysis that focuses on small stories – the conversational story-telling elicited by interactions between the researchers and the researched. The analysis of interview data in this study is informed by this analytical approach.
According to Bamberg, M. and Georgakopoulou (2008), the small stories can be very small incidents mentioned by the participants to back up their arguments, or unfolding events elicited by the interactions between the interlocutors. Therefore, the narratives in this approach are considered as situated language use, which entails ongoing
negotiation and display of their identities. As the interview framework suggests (Section 4.3.6.1), the conversation between the researcher and the participants mainly deals with their thoughts and understanding of various topics, and the data shows that many small stories (either about past experience or ongoing reflections) were elicited during the process in order to back up their arguments. Following Bamberg and
Georgakopoulou’s suggestions, I conducted a three-step analysing operation to tap into the small stories as reflections of self-identities.
Summarise the themes of each sections in the transcripts Summarise the sub-themes under each themes
Compare similar sub-themes across each section (theme)
The themes summarised in the transcripts are about the small-story-telling of different experiences, the sub-themes are about the interviewee’s reflections on the particular experience. Since the interview aims directly at understanding their self-identities, the topics being discussed in the interviews are related, such as reflections on
personalities, daily practices, interests, and so on. So I started by examining the related themes and proceeded to the further analysis. Take the transcript of Yu as an example.
Image 2: Example of Yu’s interview transcript (1)
Image 3: Example of Yu’s Interview transcript (2)
As the images above suggest, I started the analysis of interview with the Chinese transcript, and tried to sort out the themes and sub-themes in Chinese. After
summarising the themes and sub-themes, I started to work on the English translation of all the Chinese transcripts (I have translated all the transcripts right after transcribing), in order to provide an account for the data analysis in English as accurate as possible. Examples of the English transcripts are presented below.
Image 4: Example of Yu’s interview transcript in English(1)
Image 5: Example of Yu’s interivew transcript in English(2)
In image 1 and 3, Yu and I were talking about her personality, during which she shared her experience (small stories) with people, “get along with people well”, “cheer them up”, etc., to support her claim as an “interesting” person. So this section was
summarised and coded as “personality”, which is highlighted in grey. Then as the transcript suggests, she considers herself to be an interesting person, who brings happiness and fun to people around her, thus a sub-theme was generated, coded “interesting – personality”, and highlighted in yellow. After coding the sub-themes of the whole transcripts, I started to look for similar sub-themes in other sections. And Images 2 and 4 show a similar sub-theme to that in Image 1. When we were talking about the language style online, Yu suggested that she prefers the stickers rather than emojis, since they are “fun”, and she elaborated on a practice she usually engages with
(another small story), “sending the stickers to ease the awkwardness in conversations”. So after identifying and coding this theme as “language style”, I proceeded to code the sub-theme as “fun – online language style”. After identifying the two similar sub-
carefully. Comparing the “interesting” and “fun” in the two themes (sections), I come to the conclusion that they all denote the “playfulness” in her personality and daily
practices. So one salient feature of her identity is identified.
4.4.1.2 The researcher’s reflexivity
As discussed in Section 4.3.3.3, the researcher is an inevitable part of ethnographic research, which makes action possible and shapes the research (Scollon, R. and Scollon, 2007). Especially in interviews, the interviewee’s contributions are always produced in negotiation with the interviewer (Rapley, 2001). Thus qualitative research is considered as knowledge construction, where meanings are negotiated between researchers and participants in particular social settings (Finlay, 2002). Consequently, scholars in ethnographic research have been arguing for the importance of maintaining reflexivity throughout the research process and using it as a tool to legitimise, validate and question research practices and representations (Finlay, 2002; Pillow, 2003; Stæhr, 2015).
As a qualitative researcher myself, I am fully aware of my influence in the collection, selection and interpretation of data, especially of interview data. So following the “small stories” approach in data analysis is one of my ways to address this issue, which emphasises on how the stories are elicited by interactions between the researcher and the researched. Adding to the guiding principle in data analysis, I also follow Pillow’s (2003) suggestion in the presentation of analysis and findings. According to him, to address the researchers’ subjectivity and the intersubjectivity between the researchers and the participants, it is better for the researcher to disclose himself/herself to the audiences.
As stated in the previous section (4.3.6.1), I have elaborated on my endeavour to prompt answers from the participants during the interviews, and critically reflected on the problems I encountered, as well as the possible influences on the participants. Bearing this in mind, I keep refining my interview schedule and interview skills, in order to acquire quality data.
As for the analysis and representation of data, I also try to disclose my role in
generating data to the audiences. In the coding and interpretation process, I not only analyse the response from the participants, but also explore the dynamics between me and the participants, in order to provide a comprehensive account of both what the knowledge is, and how the knowledge is achieved (Pillow, 2003). Therefore, the
of merely presenting the participants’ response, I present the full excerpt of the conversations we engaged in, and discuss my interpretation based on that.