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Tradition: An Interview (exercise developed by C. Darrah and modified by L. Porter and K. Nordahl)

This movie or podcast should be 5-8 min. It should be edited for what is important with an introduction giving us an impression of the person and goal and a conclusion (1-2 minutes) discussing your conclusions. I Traditions and Cultural Values Guidelines

Finding Someone to Interview This interview allows us to learn about culture and traditions by interviewing someone and directing the conversation more towards their ideas on culture. Your objective in this project is to learn about culture and traditions that you may not already be aware of by interviewing another person (maybe twice, for a follow-up). To get started, think about who you want to interview. We ask you to try to find an individual that is at least 15 years older than your parents whether grandparent, person in your building, friend of the family. Choose an individual: who you believe is relatively open, honest and reflective about personal matters;

who is interesting to you and who think would be interested in the project;

who is accessible and available for a follow-up;

who has passed through several phases of life and has many life experiences; and

who is a relatively good narrator and is able to talk about him or herself.

An important issue is whether the person should have a prior relationship with you. It can be advantageous to choose someone you know since you already have rapport with them. They may be helpful precisely because you will get to know each other better through the interview process. If you do not know anyone you can interview, try asking a friend about older relatives that may be available for interviewing. If you have problems identifying someone, come talk to me.

Interviewing

Your goal in interviewing the person is to get them talking about their memories of tradition and culture. THIS IS NOT THEIR LIFE STORY. Do not ask questions that can be answered with a yes or no, since to do so is guaranteed to stop the interview and bore both you and them. Here are some guidelines: It is often easiest to begin by collecting concrete, neutral information, although you just never know what is neutral for a person. But asking about places they lived, schools they attended, jobs they held, people they lived with is usually a good way to begin. You can guide them by age, if you desire. For example, “Where did you live when you were nine? What school did you attend? Who did you live with?” Remember that the ideal is to ask the fewest questions and get them to talk the most.

After you get the concrete descriptive information you can ask them to elaborate. I strongly recommend giving yourself time for a follow-up interview, because (1) you often miss things in the first interview that need more attention and (2) the person generally starts thinking about their life after being interviewed and elaborates more later. Move to greater descriptive detail in subsequent talks and also ask for judgements about the concrete description.

Do not interrupt except to ask for clarifications or expansions (“Can you tell me more about that?”). They may well take some detours or go off on what appear to be tangents, but be careful about trying to get them “back on track.” You may inadvertently offend them and ruin the rest of the interview, and you may miss out on crucial data. Be patient. Remember that people often jump around in recounting their life, moving effortlessly from teenage years to their first birthday to getting laid off their job to breaking a neighbor’s window with a baseball. You can always sort the chronology out later, so do not constantly admonish them to put it in the right order.

Do not judge the person. “Why in God’s name did you eat that?” is not a good way to build rapport. Even a raised eyebrow or a roll of the eyes can be interpreted as criticism, so be careful. This does not mean you have to become a robot, only that your goal is to get them to provide a rich picture of their rituals and traditions and they may not do that if they believe there are right and wrong answers to your questions.

The Video or Podcast You will compose a video which will document your interview and conclusions. The video/podcast should be between 5-8 minutes in length. It will need an introduction, cropped version of your interview, and a conclusion. The focus, as stated previously, is to get your interviewee to share some of their thoughts on a tradition within their culture. Check with your interviewee prior to recording them to make sure that it is okay with them to do so. If they don’t agree to it, then you may have to dictate back some of the conversation at a later time or find an alternate method of presenting the information from the interview. The first thing your audience will need to know is some of the general background information about your interviewee such as: What is their name? How old are they? What culture did they grow up in? What is your relationship to that person? Perhaps it could also be useful to mention the particular area of tradition that you will be discussing with that individual. However, if the interview goes on a different course than planned, then it may be necessary to edit this bit of information. The next phase will be to edit the interview down to a few minutes. Remember, the video/podcast should be no longer than 8 minutes, and you’ll need to devote some time to the introduction and conclusion. Hence, it will be imperative that the conversation is cropped into its most meaningful sections. The final section of the video/podcast is to wrap it up with your own conclusions drawn from the interview. Is the tradition of which your interviewee spoke still being passed on today? Has it fallen out of use? Do you practice it? What are the implications of this tradition on your/his/her culture? Has this tradition shaped your life like it has theirs? You should take some time to synthesize that information with your own analysis. Then, present it in a concise manner to tie your project together. Remember to polish your final interview. Are your transitions between sections smooth? You may want to refer to other professional sources for some examples in modeling possible ways to edit and transition between bits. One useful source is NPR (National Public Radio). Dates to keep in mind: Thursday, April 15 - Must show me evidence of your interview Monday, April 19 - Video/Podcast is due

TURN IN: You may either post it to the wiki or deliver it to me in some other format by the time you walk into class on Monday, April 19.