The Role of Qualitative Interviews in Discourse Theory Copyright © 2012 Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines http://cadaad.net/journal Vol. 6 (1): 38 – 52 ISSN: 1752-3079 JØRN CRUICKSHANK Institute for Development Studies jorn.cruickshank@uia.no Abstract In discourse theoretical studies the qualitative interview is scarcely treated as a method, but as empirical data. Some important methodological challenges for discourse theory are thereby being obscured. In this paper the role of the qualitative interview in discourse theory is therefore discussed. The paper outlines the roots of the discourse theoretical project and its approach to language as a reality-producing force. Furthermore, I discuss the role of the discourse theorist in the interview and the status that is assigned to actors and structure in the analysis of qualitative interviews. Discourse theoretical studies do not take advantage of the interview as a way to reveal social forces beyond the influence of language and discourse. It is therefore argued that further efforts should be made in order to reveal the limits to discourse theoretical studies, but then it is the necessary to be more explicit on the distinction between method and empirical data. Keywords: Qualitative interview, discourse analysis, discourse theory, methodology 1. Introduction Linguistics has gained increased attention in the philosophy debates of the last century. We have also witnessed a cultural and linguistic turn in the human and social sciences in the 1980s and 1990s. Many scholars have subsequently altered their theoretical lens to study society using language as the departure point in what is normally labeled discourse analysis (Alvesson and Sköldberg 1994: 272; Tannen, Schiffrin, and Hamilton 2001; Winther Jørgensen and Phillips 1999; Åkerstrøm Andersen 2003). The meta-theories of how society go about producing our economic, social and material reality is thoroughly developed in this research tradition, but the question of scientific method is far less well explained (Kvale 1997; Søndergaard 2000; Torfing, Dyrberg and Hansen 2000b; Åkerstrøm Andersen 2003). This is a weakness when the validity of a discourse analysis is considered by other social scientists, who may ask: ‘Can we trust the findings and how can we evaluate the relationship between empirical data and the analysis of these data?’ In this paper I will therefore turn the attention towards the process of producing knowledge in discourse theory.