Interactional formats and institutional context: a practical and exploitable distinction in interviews

This paper applies practically oriented discourse analysis to focus group interviews using conversation analytic principles to show how interactional qualities demonstrably different to analysts are also treated as such by participants. We take a grounded practical theory perspective to claim that the empirical and practical distinction is an exploitable resource for participants, with important implications for the goals of research interviewing, interviewee participation in focus groups, and analyses thereof. We identify participant techniques for doing and attending to conversational and institutional interaction formats, including turn-taking organization, embodied acts, addressivity, and emotion displays, and how those techniques allow participants to co-construct emergent stances alongside answering questions.