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Field Methods
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Fieldworker or Foreigner?

Ethnographic Interviewing in Nonnative Languages

Michaela R. Winchatz

DePaul University

Ethnographers working in research areas devoted to understanding culture through language (e.g., ethnoscience, linguistic semantics, ethnography of communication) must often conduct fieldwork in societies and languages foreign to them. Although the ethnographic interview plays a significant role in this kind of linguistic-oriented research, there is little discussion in the methods literature about the special strategies and techniques needed in the foreign-language interview. The author takes an interactional approach to analyzing the ethnographic interview conducted in the researcher’s nonnative language. She focuses on the possible misunderstandings that can arise between researcher and participants when the researcher’s lexical knowledge of the foreign language does not suffice. Data stem from three interview situations in which the researcher (a native English speaker fluent in German) is unable to understand the particular words and expressions used by the native German participants. The author argues that communicative misunderstandings during the ethnographic interview are possible tools that can ultimately result in the attainment of richer ethnographic data.

Key Words: ethnography • foreign language • interviewing • misunderstandings • research methods

Field Methods, Vol. 18, No. 1, 83-97 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1525822X05279902
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