Performativity and referentiality in research interview: epistemological implications

Abstract

Starting with an excursus on the so-called pragmatic turn in language studies, this article
discusses the epistemic implications of a pragmatic approach to language when used as a
research tool. It analyzes examples of one of the most commonly used methods in educational
research, the interview, and discusses some implications of foregrounding the
performative and emergent properties of talk-in-interaction which occur between the researcher
and his/her informants. I contend that applying a pragmatic view of language
use to the specific forms of talk adopted for doing research, requires a substantial change
in how we conceive and what we expect from scientific knowledge in applied social sciences:
What would interview-based data be if we consider referentiality as a dialogic, interactive
achievement? I advance that the resistance to adopting a pragmatic perspective
when analyzing interview data is coherent with the enduring empiricist evidential culture
that characterizes application-oriented social sciences.