Theorizing and practicing the discourse-based interview in research on multilingual writers

Discourse-based interviews are a method developed by composition researchers Lee Odell, Dixie Goswami, and Anne Herrington (Odell et al., 1983) in which research participants are shown a text and asked to comment on certain features. They have since been adopted by applied linguistics writing researchers to explore multilingual writers’ perspectives as both writers and readers of texts; however, they have received little attention in the applied linguistics methodological literature. This article explores how discourse-based interviews have been conceptualized and used in research on multilingual writers though a review of 45 articles and book chapters that cited Odell et al. (1983) as the source of the interview method. These studies were reviewed to identify (a) the topic or focus of the research, (b) researchers’ stated purpose for using this method, (c) how and by whom texts and focal features were selected, (d) how interviews were conducted, and (e) how researchers dealt with subjectivity. Findings indicate that studies of multilingual writers have used the term discourse-based interview to refer to a wide range of interview purposes and procedures that often deviate considerably from those of Odell et al. The article concludes with a reflection on areas requiring further attention if applied linguistics writing researchers are to best exploit the potential of discourse-based interviews as a research method.