Questioning quotation: Writing about interview experiences without using quotes

Abstract

RITA: So the thing is that when I had the accident, oh, my god, this is my only form of income. For fuck … What have I done?Interview quotes have a sacred quality. Through the pages of our essays, articles, and reports, quotes like the one above are the part of the text that can seem beyond the remit of readers' interrogation. As readers, though we might challenge the author's interpretation of the quote, or suggest that more quotes are required to justify the argument, the presented quote itself can feel sacrosanct and strangely off-limits, out of reach. Akin to the presentation of photos in our write-ups, interview quotes stand out on the page, transporting us to the timespace of the interview itself and, as we read them, our mind's eye tries to conjure a vision of how that part of the interview encounter might have taken place. As human geographers in the qualitative tradition, we routinely use this conjuring device in our write-ups. We present a quote much like we'd present a photo, and we follow this with analysis of what was said, often in terms of how the quote concurs with or diverges from previous understandings of our topic. Though quotation is an invaluable technique in our write-ups, in this short piece I suggest that human geographers should consider those occasions where it might be advantageous not to use interview quotes.