Short Analysis Rough Darft

Rikki Frischman

Dr. Chandler

English 3029 Section 01

3/21/13

Question: At what point during the interview did the interviewee’s personality change? What aspects of the interview let you know that he was uncomfortable/comfortable?

Interviews are helpful way to gather information on how a specific person thinks/feels about a certain subject. In this particular interview the interviewer and interviewee are discussing gaming literacies. It talks about how gaming literacies work and comparing them to regular software. Throughout this interview it was easy to tell when the interviewee felt comfortable talking to the interviewer and when the interviewee did not. During the beginning interview you can easily noticed that the interviewee was nervous. Certain ways he was answering question and presenting himself show that he was not fully comfortable with the interviewer yet. Towards the end, however, he began to gain more confidence in his answers and the conversation between him and the interviewer began to flow easier.

At the beginning of the interview the interviewee refers to himself as a "software novice", this tells me that he is uncomfortable in showing his confidence of software to someone that he does not know. When the interviewer asks him what software he uses he simply states “you know, what everyone else knows how to use”. This phase tells me that he is uncomfortable giving himself credit when it comes to software because he compared his knowledge of it to “everyone elses”. Throughout the entire interview he uses phrases/words such as; “you know” and “ah” quite a bit which can clarify that he is insecure/nervous talking to the interviewer and even though he knows what he is doing he is still having trouble putting it into words without sounding like a know it all. For example; “well, just in learning how to learn a program, I just see buttons, tool tips and ah I make a go at it.” This sentence says to me that he was trying to explain something to the interviewer and but did not know the right way to say it, got nervous, paused with “ah” then stated “I make a go for it”.

 Something else that he does in this interview is blame his knowledge of software on the help of menus, "well like a lot of games, in the beginning, there's menus. You don't just start playing." He states this after the interviewer says; “that's literacy - you have the basic tools, the right basic set of assumptions for how to read, understand, interpret a program.” It almost seems to me that the interviewee feels uncomfortable accepting this compliment so he blames his success with software and gaming on the menus. He blames his navigation through menus on his success with software. He mentions using menus four times by the end of the interview.

Although, I have stated many reasons why I feel like the interviewee was uncomfortable talking to the interviewer, there are also part towards the end of the interview where I can tell the interviewee was beginning to feel comfortable. Towards the end of the interview the interviewee states to the interviewer “you know what, you’re right” when referring to gaming as a type of software. He proceeds to say “games are still software”. In my opinion that is a drastic change from the beginning of the interview when he states; “yeah, but it's just games” when the interviewer asked about different software.

At the very end of the excerpt of this interview the interviewer asks the interviewee if he is comfortable completely messing around with software and starting from the beginning and he replied, “oh yeah” very bluntly and without further explanation. To me this shows that as the interview progressed he became comfortable enough with the interviewer that his confidence began to show and he was not holding back as much.

Aspects of Gee that were present in this interview were the big "C" conversation, big "D" discourse and intertextuality. The big "C" conversation in this interview that was talked about was how gaming and computer software relate. This interview talks about a "D"iscourse community because computer software is a specialty that not everyone is familiar with. The intertextuality that is used in this interview to proves that this is a discourse community. Some of the words used in this interview are Microsoft, word, powerpoint, excel, speadsheet, DOS system, menus and software. These types of words would only be used if someone was talking about computer systems and how they compare to gaming literacies.

To answer the posed question I would say the interviewee became comfortable with the interviewer towards the end of the excerpt. Overall, however, it is clear to see that it took him a while to become himself with the interviewer. At the beginning/middle the interviewee was very hesitate and lacked confidence but as the interview progressed his confidence began to show and he was able to express his knowledge of software to the interviewer.