Revisiting interview data : analysing turn-taking in interviews with Thai participants through 'layers of insight'

This thesis has investigated a small number of transcribed interviews taken from an educational setting in Thailand. It has shown how systems of coding spoken discourse can be used to interpret that data but has also stressed the necessity to employ tools of analysis, especially those which carry Thai-specific means of assessment, to gain better insights into the turn-taking behaviour. In this respect, it is a multi-layered investigation into intercultural communication, employing what I have termed as 'layers of insight' for that process of interpretation.;The research undertaken also has an added element of using data which was originally collected for the purpose of investigating learning strategies. This is in contrast to the present objective of looking at how the interviews themselves were constructed by both participants. I have argued that this 'double focus' requires the researcher to carry forward the contextual information about the participants and interview as a speech event to the present research in order to help better interpret the data. This process has been useful, but, at times, prone to some overlap and redundancy. In order to organize the multitude of 'layers' and potential insights into the turn-taking of the interviews, much emphasis has been placed upon the methodological process streamlined into two steps.;The results of the data analysis have revealed that the turn-taking coding system requires further experimentation and that a future 'revisiting' of the data may require careful re-organising of the 'layers of insight', but also that there is much potential in the combination of contextual information in those layers with the detailed codification system.