voices in the text:

the ethics of interviewing

When you’re transcribing an oral interview into written prose, you’re making editorial decisions—whether it’s shifting around text or creating stylistic choices with punctuation. 

Is there ever a time when you wonder where your voice takes over, entangles with that of the interviewee?

e d i t o r s'  n o t e

b a c k g r o u n d s

e a r l y  i n t e r e s t s

s u p p o r t

j o u r n a l s

n u t s  &  b o l t s

r e c e n t
  &  f o r t h c o m i n g

l o c a t i n g  s u b j e c t s

c o u r t s h i p

q u e s t i o n i n g
  &  c o l l a b o r a t i n g

t r a n s c r i p t s
  &  e d i t i n g

e t h i c s  &  v o i c e

g e n r e  &  m e t h o d

r h e t o r i c
  &  c o m p o s i t i o n

c o m m u n i t y

Wade MahonWe try to cut the verbiage down a little bit in the editing process, but usually we don’t cut content. A lot of times we’ll edit out references to the interview process itself. 

For instance, we send along a copy of the questions to the person ahead of time. Sometimes in the course of the interview they’ll refer to the questions and say,Oh, yeah, in Question #4, I really liked the way you put this.” Or when we ask a question and say,Okay, now we’re going to move on to Question #7. It says here. . . .” We’ll partially read it, partially add things to it. We usually just edit all that out, and just put the question—either the original question or the revised version. 

I guess we figure that the reader doesn’t want to know about it. But I guess it’s all a part of the illusion.

Eric Schroeder: That’s a great question because I really do worry about that. John Boe and I agree that the people who read Writing on the Edge, read for the interviews. They care about the people. We’re constantly trimming our own lines, and with material that I get submitted from others doing interviews, I’m constantly trimming them. They’re often horrified because they think they’re having this brilliant conversation with somebody and this eight-line question comes back as,What got you started as a writer?

That’s the nature, again of what we do. [laughs] Because I have the notion that I don’t really belong in the interview, I’m constantly watching to make sure that somehow I’m not slipping into the other’s person role either—that what they are saying is what they are saying and not something that I want them to be saying.

I asked Michael Herr once to talk about his style and he said, “Well, how do you talk about your style? It’s like talking about your looks.”  I saw what he was saying and I sort of feel the same. If somebody said to me, “Try to extract yourself from the lines and say which part of you is in there and how it’s in there,” I’d be hard pressed to do it, yet I’m convinced I probably am in there.

Even if you’re working with an articulate interviewee, are you making the same punctuation or paragraphing decisions?

Wade Mahon I was actually thinking about this question. It made me think of Johnson trying to give a faithful transcription of what Boswell said, but putting it into writing changed it, transformed it. He almost had to shape it into a way that still communicated his persona. It’s a persona that really gets between other possible personas, the persona that actually comes across in the actual spoken interview. On the one hand, raw, unedited, written transcript, and the way the author of that interview actually presents himself or herself. For Boswell and Johnson, each was identical to the actual person. But doing transcription this way, working along the same lines, you have to think about the persona.

Eric Schroeder: In some cases, I try to get as close as I can to the person's voice. As part of the process, you are changing things and that is one of the reasons why, in Writing on the Edge (I did this in my book too) we take what we think of as the finished version and always send it to the subject. In part, it is a matter of getting the facts right. It is also part of,Did we get your voice right? What aren’t you happy with? Again, people’s responses cover a vast continuum from those who look at it for five seconds and go,Oh, it looks great. Don’t change anything” to people who almost rewrite it.

Do you run across the latter very often?

Eric Schroeder: When we interviewed Anne Fadiman a couple of years ago, she didn’t actually rewrite it, but she would change a word here or there. She would add a whole sentence or take one out. She is so meticulous about punctuation that she completely re-punctuated it. 

We have a slightly different style. I tend to be very, very light on punctuation, using a kind of journalistic style although there are certain conventions of punctuation I adore. I adore dashesI think I learned that in graduate school and it’s always been with me. So I tend to be a little bit heavy with them but light with commas. 

But Anne Fadiman went through and marked everything up and sent it back to us sayingOkay, type set it again and then send it to me again,” which we didand we actually did it three times for her. Each time more stuff came back marked. She was at that other end of the continuum. She didn’t change huge bits of text but she constantly tinkered with it to get it just right as she saw it. 

In a case like Anne Fadiman, I don’t worry about misrepresenting her. She’s been so integral to the process. In the case where writers say,Yeah, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” then I do worry a little bit that they haven’t looked at it closely enough. Obviously, with interview, any interview, I want the subject to be one hundred percent happy and to think,Yeah, this is me.”

Should subjects have a voice in producing the final product?

Do you return the transcripts to the interviewees?

e d i t o r s'  n o t e

b a c k g r o u n d s

e a r l y  i n t e r e s t s

s u p p o r t

j o u r n a l s

n u t s  &  b o l t s

r e c e n t
  &  f o r t h c o m i n g

l o c a t i n g  s u b j e c t s

c o u r t s h i p

q u e s t i o n i n g
  &  c o l l a b o r a t i n g

t r a n s c r i p t s
  &  e d i t i n g

e t h i c s  &  v o i c e

g e n r e  &  m e t h o d

r h e t o r i c
  &  c o m p o s i t i o n

c o m m u n i t y

Wade MahonWhen we have an edited draft, we’ll send a copy to the person we interviewed, and ask them to read through it and make changes, add things if they want to, clarify points. A lot of times if they mention the names of people, and articles, and things like that, we’ll want to make sure that we heard the right person and spell the name right. Some people spend more time with that than others. Some people just say,Hey, looks great, go with it!” and don’t suggest any changes. Some people will read it and suggest a few minor stylistic changes here and there, or add a little bit more clarification various places, or add some sources or suggested readings and things like that. 

We’ve rarely had anyone look at a transcript—at least I don’t think we’ve had anyone that I remember—look at a transcript and say,You can’t print this. I didn’t say this.”

Eric Schroeder: Well, I just think we should. With journalism, for instance, you’d never do that, but maybe part of it is the ethics I got from being in composition studies for years.


Cross-Conversations on Writing, Interviewing, and Editing:
A Meta-Interview with Wade Mahon & Eric Schroeder

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 10.1 (2005)
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/10.1/