'You can't stand on a corner and talk about it …': Medicinal cannabis use, impression management and the analytical status of interviews. Issue 1 (April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Morris, Craig
• Is Part Of: Methodological innovations. Volume 11:Issue 1(2018)
• Publication Date: 2018-04
• Subjects: Medicinal cannabis use -- impression management -- self-presentation -- discourse analysis -- narrative -- Goffman -- Bourdieu -- drugs; Research -- Methodology -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Methodology -- Periodicals; 300.72
• DOI: 10.1177/2059799118768422
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2059-7991

Abstract

In this article, I examine how four medicinal cannabis users used impression management during in-depth, qualitative interviews to attend to self-presentational concerns. I examine the rhetorical strategies and narratives articulated by the participants while also attending to the role that I played in co-construction as the interviewer. Later I discuss how, although the participants' accounts are occasioned by the interviews, they can still provide significant insights into the social worlds of the participants beyond the interviews. While discussions about whether to treat interviews as topic, resource or both are not new, I argue that we can treat interviews as both topic and resource because impression management is a product of the individual's habitus and it and the accounts it produces are part of their social world.