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"Response Work": Approaching Answers to Open Interviews as Readings

University of Amsterdam

Two approaches to the analysis of textual data—exposition of the meaning of texts and interpretation by the researcher—are evaluated m a reanalysis of Oakley's (1980) research. Three assumptions of these approaches are established: (1) that a formulation's meaning can be located in the words of the formulation; (2) that a researcher can read the meaning; (3) that a theory can be used to clarify the meaning. All three assumptions are unacceptable in the field of empirical sociology, which regards social meaning not as being situated in the words of a formulation but instead as being realized in responses to, or readings of, previous formulations. Instead of exposing or interpreting the respondent's words, readings of formulations make it possible to describe the meaning of what the respondent is saying, first, by regarding the answer as a reading of the interviewer's question, and, second, by seeing it as an internal reading of the respondents' earlier formulations.

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