Interviewing is a common method of producing data sets in many academic disciplines. The subsequent conversion into writing of the spoken discourse thus produced is an essential process, but it is neither simple nor straightforward. In our presentation, we will identify various critical phases in this process and relate them to the first author's own social-linguistic research, which uses interview data to examine the discourses of school teachers' professional identities.
First, the spoken discourse produced by the informant in the interview – and, more broadly, the discussion between the researcher and the informant – must be transformed into analyzable form. The research tradition in general and the research questions in particular define the accuracy with which the linguistic and non-linguistic elements should be transcribed.
Second comes the reporting of the research, insofar as it is supported and illustrated by excerpts from the data. On the one hand, these excerpts should be sufficiently detailed to provide the necessary information about the course of the analysis, but on the other hand, readability and conciseness are also important here. In today's international and widely English-speaking academia, it is worth noting that the process becomes more complex if the data is produced in a different language than the one in which the study is reported.
In addition, a third stage can be identified in our research design. An individual's identity can be perceived as a tangle of non-verbalized and vague perceptions and feelings, so in talking about identity, the informant in a way transforms his or her non-verbal understanding into a linguistic form.
The questions asked in a research interview affect what kind of information and results are obtained. In terms of the quality of the research results, we argue that it is also – and equally – important to focus on how the discussion between the informant and the researcher in the interview is transcribed into analyzable written text and how the extracts taken from this transcription are reported to readers.
