In our time and place, when we hear “interview” we probably first think of job interviews, since that is the interview experience most of us have had.

But there are also more formal, more professional kinds of interviewing, interviewing requiring training and practice. Anthropologists, linguists, and sociologists use interviews in their research to gather data about other cultures. Perhaps the most familiar professional interviewing, though, is done by journalists.

The kind of interviewing exemplified in this chapter—a journalist interviewing someone of general interest to a journal’s audience—evolved along with the emergence of mass media during the 19th and 20th centuries, and it continues to be an important way of gathering and focusing the information we need (or think we need) to live our lives as private people and as public citizens. But interviews of this kind cross between public and private in another way: they are often public efforts to catch a glimpse into someone’s private life. Because of the inherently voyeuristic nature of interviewing for the media, issues of control—who sets the agenda for the interview and who controls its flow—are unavoidable. We can see such issues operating in the interviews in this section.

The interviews in this chapter were all done by journalists and appeared in magazines, but even with this narrow focus, the range is startling. Some are short and some are longer and require more attention and effort on your part to hold onto the line of questioning and the argument being made. In every case, though, we ask you to consider how interviews are shaped to accomplish certain purposes, how the interviewing process influences the kinds of strategy available, and how relations between interviewers and interviewees can vary. You will see a range of possible uses of the interview. And you will see how interviews, once written up, direct attention and present arguments.

What is important to keep in mind while analyzing printed interviews
If you’ve ever taped a conversation and then typed it up, you’ve seen that speaking is not writing. When we write, we correct and modify and build long coherent sentences if we wish. When we speak (unless we have a script or are reading a paper) our thoughts rarely flow from our mouths like literature: as in the quotation above—a direct transcript of speech—we might use expressions we excise from writing (“Like, you know...”); we start to say one thing but change our minds three words in; we lose track of a thought and stumble around until we remember or find a new way out.

After finishing an interview, interviewers transcribe from notes or tape. They change the recorded speech to written words, and so they change what sounds normal in speech to what looks right on the page. They may try to keep a conversational tone, but they smooth it over by taking out hesitations or mis-steps or “Hmmmms” and “Uhhhhs.” They shorten responses or rearrange the sequence of questions and responses to make some sort of sense.

In other words, when you read an interview, it is almost nothing like what was spoken. And yet the form of the interview asks us to imagine we are hearing two people speaking.

As you read, keep in mind that what is on the page has been as much shaped to direct your attention as any piece of writing.

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