Uncovering the Work of Normative Orders:
A Critical Discourse Analysis of Research Interviews of Gangster Youth
Angel M. Y. Lin, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Department of English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong
83 Tat Chee Ave., Kln., Hong Kong
E-mail: enangel@cityu.edu.hk
T. Wing Lo, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong
83 Tat Chee Ave., Kln., Hong Kong
E-mail: sstwl@cityu.edu.hk
Paper presented at the International Conference on Language and Social Psychology,
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, July 10-13, 2002.
Abstract
In this paper we present a critical analysis of the normative work that is implicitly
accomplished (and sometimes contested) discursively in some social work research
interviews of teenagers who had joined gangs and/or gangster activities in Hong Kong.
By critically analyzing the deployment of discourse formats and discourse sequencing in
these research interviews, we aim at uncovering the ways in which the normative orders
that saturate the consciousness of adult social work practitioners might have led them into
discourse practices (often pre- or unreflectively) that impose, or coerce interview
participants into co-constructing, the adult world’s normative views of what has
happened to these teenagers. Rather than providing a discursive space for a genuine
dialogue between the interviewees and the interviewers, between the so-called “deviant”
teenagers and “corrective” adults, these research interviews might serve merely to
reproduce the mainstream adults’ versions, or the social work disciplinary “knowledge”,
of what is happening when a teenager engages in gangster activities. The potential
consequences of the discourse tools and the potential value of them for use by social
work practitioners and researchers in counselling, “corrective” and/or research
interactions with gangster teenagers are discussed, with the aim to heighten social work
practitioners’ critical awareness of how their own normative worldviews might shape
their interactions with teenagers and the possible consequences of such encounters.
While recognizing the normative nature of the social work discipline, we believe that a
raised critical awareness of their own normative orders will help social work practitioners
to be more reflective and perceptive in their interactions with teenagers.
Key Words: critical discourse analysis, social construction of knowledge.
1
A. The Research Interview: A Special Speech Event
The research interview is not simply a neutral, transparent means of obtaining
information from informants, as is sometimes assumed in the positivist sciences. Being
a method of research data collection, it is at the same time constitutive of the data it
collects (Mishler, 1986, 1999). The research interviewing process is itself a highly
interesting interactional phenomenon worthy of detailed analysis in its own right.
Epistemologically, understanding the discourse structure and strategies in the research
interview will contribute to our understanding of how interview research data are shaped
and constituted in particular ways. Ontologically, understanding the interactional
process in the research interview will contribute to our understanding of how different
subject positions are created or excluded and how particular identities are imposed,
resisted or co-constructed in the interviewing process.
The research interview is distinguished from other speech events (e.g., ordinary
conversations, debates, lectures) by its typical discourse structure of a series of
question-answer pairs. The interviewer occupies the questioner speaking turns and the
interviewee the respondent speaking turns most of the time. Conversation analysts have
long noted the strength of the question-answer sequence or adjacency pair (Sacks, 1972).
The interviewer and interviewee take turns to speak and the interviewer's questioning
turn exerts strong interactional pressure on the interviewee both to respond and to
respond with material relevant to the question in the immediately preceding questioning
turn. No response or irrelevant response will pose high interpersonal pressure on the
interviewee. For instance, the interviewee becomes perceived as
un-cooperative/unreasonable, the relationship breaks down and the interview cannot
continue. Given this special discourse structure of the speech event of the research
interview, the interviewer typically possesses much more power than the interviewee in
decisions regarding selection, initiation, continuation or change of topics.
In the following sections, we shall present the results of a discourse analysis of 14
audio-recorded research interviews of gangster youth in Hong Kong. The interviews
were conducted in community youth centres in the interviewees' neighbourhood by a
social worker and/or a college student majoring in social work. Usually the social
worker who had befriended the teenager(s) and who introduced the teenager(s) to the
interviewers was also present in the interview. The number of interviewees was usually
one or two but there were also two interviews, each of four teenagers, and one interview
of six teenagers. The interviews ranged from one hour to one and a half hours long.
The interviews were conducted as part of a university social work research project with
three major aims:
(1) to understand why adolescents join gangs,
(2) to identify the typical activities of gangsters, and
(3) to identify different kinds of effect on adolescents after joining the gangs.
2
The interviews were semi-structured with the interviewers following a schedule of basic
items to be elicited from the teenagers but the interviewers could be flexible and ask
other open-ended questions as well. The list of items reflected the three major aims of
the research project mentioned above. Among the 30 teenagers interviewed, 23 were
male, 7 female, aged from 13 to 19. Some were studying in secondary schools, some
working and some unemployed. Most of them had joined gangs for more than one year
and some for as long as seven or eight years. Most of them started joining gangs young,
in primary school or secondary one (i.e., grade 7). In the next section, we shall analyse
the recurrent discourse format and strategies used by the participants in the research
interviews. In the final section we shall discuss the implications of the analysis for
social work practitioners as well as researchers.
B. Discourse Formats and Strategies in the Research Interview
A discourse format is a recurrent discourse structure characterized by a patterned
sequence of speaker-turns each with specific discourse functions (Heap, 1988). For
instance, a typical discourse format in the school classroom is
Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975; Mehan, 1979). The
teacher typically does the initiation by asking a question. The response speaker-turn is
typically taken by a student or students and the student response is invariably followed by
the teacher's feedback turn in which the teacher typically comments on the student
response. Most school lessons are organized by the use of a series of IRF formats.
The use of the IFR format enables the teacher to have the power of topic selection,
initiation, continuation or change. It also enables the teacher to monitor student
attention, understanding and performance. It gives the teacher the opportunity to
provide feedback that is tailor-made for a specific student response, and typically it
allows the teacher to "have the last word" on a lesson topic. It marks the school lesson
as a special speech event in which participants do not have equal power regarding
decisions on topic selection and change.
The research interviews analysed in this study are characterized by a recurrent discourse
format that somewhat resembles the school lesson IRF format. Let us look at an
example to see how the format is used in the interviews. The following example is
taken from the early part of a research interview of two gangster girls, Candy (C) and
Winnie (W)1, 15 and 16 years old respectively. In this interview, a social work college
student was the interviewer (I). The social worker who had introduced Candy and
Winnie to the interviewer was not present in the interview.
Excerpt (1):
(From Data Set 261093A)
(Cantonese utterances are transcribed in the Yale system and English translations are
given in pointed brackets immediately following the Cantonese utterances)
1. I: Gum Winnie neih ne? Neih gaa-yahp-jo ji-houh, di friend yauh dim-yeung tai
neih aa?
1
. All personal names are pseudo names.
3
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
<Then what about you Winnie? After you had joined the gang, how did your
friends look at you?>
W: Waaih-jo.. gok dak ngoh!
<Changed bad.. felt that I had!>
I: Gok-dak neih waaih-jo, heui-deih gok-dak neih waai-jo, daahn gok-dak neih
gok-yeuhng-yeh yauh-mouh bin-dou?
<Felt that you had changed bad, they felt that you had changed bad, but did they find
changes in the other aspects of you?>
W: Yauh!
<Yes!>
I: Dim-yeung?
<How?>
W: Yauh-haih ok-jo! Chyun-jo gum-yeung!
<Also more violent! And arrogant!>
I: Gum heui-deih yauh-mouh beih-hoi neih, dihng yihng-yihn gum jip-juk neih?
<And did they avoid you, or did they stay in touch with you?>
In the above example, we see that the interviewer asks a question about how Winnie's
friends saw her after she had joined the gang (1). This question is followed by Winnie's
answer that her friends felt that she had changed bad (2). The interviewer acknowledges
Winnie's answer by restating it two times and then asks a follow-up question which
requires Winnie to further elaborate the changes perceived by her friends (3).
We can schematically represent the discourse format in use in the above example as
follows:
1. Interviewer: Question
2. Winnie: Answer
3. Interviewer: Acknowledgement of Answer
This cycle is repeated many times in all the 14 research interviews albeit with some
variation in the acknowledgement slot. Sometimes, there is a short acknowledgement
particle (e.g., Mh. <Yes.>) or a comment in the place of restatement of the answer.
Sometimes the acknowledgement is omitted altogether and a new question is asked
immediately.
Since the pre-set list of questions referred to by the interviewers during the interview
includes a large section on how different kinds of people (e.g., parents, neighbours,
friends, classmates, teachers) see the teenagers after they have joined gangs, the teenagers
are in effect led to actively co-construct with the interviewer a corpus of more or less
negative statements about how other people see them after they have joined gangs. The
interviewer’s power to determine/shape the choice of the topic through the use of this
discourse format in effect induces the teenagers into active participation in the
co-construction of a corpus of negative statements about themselves and their image that
comes with gang membership. Examples of this abound in all the 14 research
interviews analysed. For instance, in the following excerpt taken from the second half
4
of another interview, Aah-Mouh (A-M), a 19-year-old male who has joined a gang since
grade six, is led to state in his own words that in the eyes of his neighbours he and his
gangster friends were not good guys and would cause fear in the neighbours:
Excerpt (2):
(From Data Set 201193A)
1. I: Di gaai-fong gin-dou neih-deih waahk-je heui-deih goh-di yat-kwahn yih-dong
yauh di mat-yeh faan-ying aa?
<When the neighbours saw you guys or other gangsters, what were their response?>
2. A-M: Sehng daaih baan yahn cho haih-douh, mh-fong hou-yahn lo!
<Such a big group of people squatting there, (and they) certainly won't be good
people!>
3. I: Wui geng aah?
<Would be afraid?>
4. A-M: Wui geng ge ngoh lam!
<Would be afraid I guess!>
In the above excerpt, the discourse format of question-answer (with the optional
acknowledgement slot omitted) is repeated in the co-construction of statements about the
negative, unwelcome image that Ah-Mouh and his gangster friends gave to their
neighbours.
In many similar examples, the question-answer(-acknowledgement)2 discourse format is
used quite skilfully by the interviewers (perhaps not consciously) to lead the teenagers
into expressing in their own words the negative effect and image that come with gang
membership. However, some defiant teenagers might contest or resist collusion in
co-constructing negative statements about themselves and gang membership, especially
when the interviewer does not ask apparently factual questions but uses conspicuously
value-laden words in the questions. For instance, in the following excerpt, Aah-Huhng
(A-H), a 19-year-old male who has joined a gang since twelve, refuses to directly answer
the interviewer's questions:
Excerpt (3):
(From Data Set 271093A)
1. I: Gum yauh-mouh gok-dak gan-jo yahn go-di pahng-yauh hou-chih waaih-jo di?
<Then do you think those friends who have joined gangs seem to have become a bit
bad?>
2. A-H: Gong gwaai neih dou mh-seuin laa!
<If I say they're good, you won't believe it!>
3. I: Mh mh... heui-deih haih dim-yeung waaih faat aa?
<Yes yes... they are bad in what ways?>
4. A-H: Dim-yeung waaih faat aa?
<Bad in what ways?>
5. I: Je-haih heui-deih gan-jo yahn ji-hauh wui heui si-haah
<That is after they have joined a gang they would go to try (drugs)>
2
. The brackets around "acknowledgement" indicates that this functional part of the format is optional.
5
6. A-H: Do-jo yi-di yeh cheuit aa-maa, neih pihng-sih bin wuih waah yauh ho-yih hai
sau je!
<More of these (drugs) become available that is; otherwise, usually how can you have
them in hand!>
7. I: Mh mh.
<Yes yes.>
8. A-H: Taam dak-yi, maih si leuhng haah.
<For fun, might try a couple of times.>
9. I: Mh mh... gum-yeung, je-haih yauh-mouh waah, gan-jo yahn ji-hauh, tuhng uk-kei
yahn ge gwaan-haih, wui-mh-wui chaa-jo?
<Yes yes... in that manner, that is after having joined gangs, would the relationship
with family members become bad?>
10. A-H: Go-biht gwaa.
<It varies (from person to person).>
11. I: Go-biht. Gum neih ji-gei ne? ....
<It varies. But what about you? .... >
In the above excerpt, we can see that Aah-Hung does not directly answer the
interviewer's obviously value-laden, leading question (1: "Then do you think those
friends who have joined gangs seem to have become a bit bad?"). Instead of saying
"yes" or "no", Aah-Hung exposes the hidden assumption that seems to be already firmly
held by the interviewer by saying that if he says they are good the interviewer will not
believe it (2). This statement of Aah-Hung is remarkable because it seems to have
achieved multiple functions:
(1) It enables him to avoid giving a direct answer of either "yes" or "no" to the
interviewer's immediately preceding question. If he says "yes", he's condemning
his friends, which most probably he does not feel comfortable doing. If he says
"no", he is likely to be pestered further with questions about why and how he
thinks these friends have not become bad and probably he knows he cannot gather
enough warrants acceptable to this mainstream authority figure (the interviewer
from the university).
(2) It exposes the assumption hidden in the interviewer's leading question.
(3) It asserts his observation that the real point of the interviewer's question is not one of
obtaining information but one of forcing Aah-Hung to take a stance that aligns
with the mainstream societal assumption that gang membership causes one to
become bad.
By subverting the normal question-answer cycle, Aah-Hung seems to have succeeded in
resisting to participate in co-constructing a negative statement about his gangster friends.
In turns 3 to 8, he further subverts the question-answer cycle by changing the
question-answer sequence into a question-question sequence. When the interviewer
asks in what ways his friends are bad (turn 3), Aah-Hung simply asks the same question
back (turn 4: Bad in what ways?). The interviewer answers by suggesting that after
joining gangs they would try drugs (turn 5). Notice that this is no longer formulated as a
question but as a statement or a claim. Aah-Hung then offers another statement/claim
6
about how this is facilitated by the greater degree of availability of drugs (turn 6).
Notice also that he does not directly link gang membership to drug-taking. In turn 7, the
interviewer acknowledges Aah-Hung's statement and in turn 8, Aah-Hung offers another
statement claiming drugs are tried for fun. Turns 6 to 8 are rare instances of utterances
that do not fit the question-answer format recurring in the research interviews. These
two turns resemble more ordinary conversation between equal interactional partners than
research interview conversation.
Aah-Hung's substitution of a question-answer sequence with a question-question
sequence (turns 3-4) is quite remarkable as it rarely occurs in research interviews. In
fact the interviewer resumes his questioner role soon. In turn 9, she asks another
obviously value-laden, leading question about the effect of gang membership on one's
relationship with family members. In turn 10, Aah-Hung answers by saying it varies
(across people), thereby avoiding giving a definite answer. However, the interviewer
zooms in by forcing Aah-Hung to answer the question about his own relationship with his
family members. What follows (not shown in Excerpt 3 above) is another lengthy
negotiation process between Aah-Hung and the interviewer with Aah-Hung refusing to
collude with the interviewer to cast himself and his gangster friends in a negative light.
C. Implications for Social Work Practitioners and Researchers
The above analysis shows that the question-answer discourse format in interviews can be
used to induce gangster youth to come face-to-face with the effect of gang membership
on the image that others have of them as well as the social and personal consequences
that come with gang membership. They can be led to express in their own words what
happened to them after they have joined gangs. However, this discourse strategy has to
be used judiciously and tactfully. Explicitly value-laden questions that already cast the
teenagers and their friends in a negative light can incite resistance and might put the
teenagers on the defensive.
Moreover, the seemingly one-sided questions (e.g., asking much more questions of how
others see them than how they see others after they have joined gangs) put the teenagers
into a narrow range of subject positions that render them as more or less passive objects
of ridicule or inspection by others. They are positioned as more or less passive victims
on the receiving end of the effects of gang membership or positioned as contagious
objects who can pass on the effects to other teenagers rather than as actors with agency
who choose specific life styles and kinds of friends sometimes for reasons other than
concretely formulated advantages (e.g., money, companionship, confidence, fear of
violence, assurance of protection). A more comprehensive and in-depth picture of the
psychological history and journey of the gangster teenagers as seen by themselves (and
not by judgmental adults) can be gained by asking a wider range of questions that do not
prioritize a narrow range of subject positions. This is important if our aim is not just to
reproduce what mainstream adults assume they already know about gangster youths, but
to genuinely try to imagine and understand the Other, and still see normality in it (Gayatri
Spivak, personal communication, June 3, 2002). Without such attempts at genuine
7
dialogues and understanding, we might not be able to achieve much genuine
communication with teenagers whom mainstream society labels as “deviant or victim
youths”.
However, the statements made above must be taken as tentative and further interaction
data obtained from social work researchers as well as gangster counsellors who try out
different formats of interactions with these teenagers will further inform, revise or enrich
our current understanding of how particular discourse formats and discourse strategies
can be fruitfully employed with gangster teenagers in different contexts for different
purposes, and how the adult world’s normative orders might figure in these interactions.
While recognizing the normative nature of the social work discipline, we believe that a
raised critical awareness of how their own implicit normative orders might shape their
discourse patterns will help social work practitioners to become more reflective and
perceptive in their interactions with teenagers.
Acknowledgements
This discourse study has been funded by a small-scale research grant awarded to Angel
Lin and T. Wing Lo by the City University of Hong Kong.
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