Language fluency and cultural knowledge create rapport before interviews begin

Evidence

Given the rich heterogeneity across my research sample (inclusive of participants’ mixed-race backgrounds, gender, sexuality, religiosity, and socioeconomic status), it would be inaccurate to assert that, even across these differences, I shared a sense of cultural currency and heritage with all of the respondents included in this project. But my ability to move between casual Persian and fluent English, along with my familial-based knowledge of Iranian customs, folkways, and history, presented each interaction with a degree of rapport and, in most cases, goodwill before the formal interviews even began. In these ways, I was read as an “insider” by some of the research participants. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 585

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Language fluency shapes what an ethnographer can actually learn overseas — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1181

Related

• Language fluency shapes what an ethnographer can actually learn overseas (similarity 0.87)