Читать книгу Bilingual Couples in Conversation - Silja Ang-Tschachtli - Страница 32

The couples were interviewed in their place of choice, either at their home or at mine; I avoided public places as I needed excellent recordingrecording quality for the purpose of my study (for instance, to be able to distinguish voice quality). Furthermore, I wanted them to feel as comfortable as possible, so that their conversation would closely resemble their usual manner of speaking to each other, and so that they would feel open to sharing their experiences. Therefore, recording the couples in a laboratory was not an option either. The interviews were recorded digitally with a high-quality stereo recorder. They took place between May 2008 and February 2013 and lasted between a little less than an hour and an hour and a half. This resulted in a corpus of 11.25 hours of conversation (see Table 48 in Appendix II for a detailed overview of the individual recording times). On average, the interviewees spoke 5154 words during the interviews (see Table 49 in Appendix III for a comparison of the number of words and intonation units each participant used during the interviews). The male partners used a greater number of words than the female partners (5529.9 vs. 4777.6 words), and the native speakers of English spoke more than their Swiss partners (5414.1 vs. 4893.3 words). The questions which the couples were asked do not account for this imbalance, as both partners were addressed equally often (see section 4.4, “Questionnaire”, and Appendix I, “Complete questionnaire”).

The interviews were all conducted in English; the couples were encouraged to switch to Swiss German if they felt more comfortable speaking about a certain subject in this language, but they hardly ever chose to do so. Before the interview, I told the couples that I was interested in hearing them speak to each other and discussing the questions from the questionnaire with each other, rather than in having individual answers directed at me. The couples were informed that I was going to write about the manner in which bilingual couples communicate, but they were not told which areas I planned to analyse. Aside from when I asked questions or gave some backchannel signals, I tried to keep in the background during the interviews. Of course, my presence was noticeable nonetheless, and potentially heightened by the fact that I share some essential biographical elements with the couples. I am a native speaker of Swiss German, studied English at university like many of the participants, and like them, I am also in a bilingual relationship. In my opinion, having these things in common was a considerable advantage, as it seemed that many of the interviewees were happy to tell their experiences to someone who could relate to their situation.