Interviewing can be helpful for instrumental reasons
But interviewing, by itself is never enough to the extent that it is taken purely as a different ways of asking questions that are answerable in the very terms in which they are asked (as they are constructed in questionnaires);
given that this situation is constrained (and enabled) by everything that we have learned about human beings together? In particular, what must be the consequence of our awareness that "the interview" is a cultural (arti-)fact that has been made up even before two persons sit together around a tape-recorder?
Briggs on getting to know how to ask in the forms of the informants will recognize or, more technically, how to ask through the forms that are the common sense of the informants.
"My approach is to study transcripts ... as a whole to ascertain exactly what was said (the linguistic forms), what each question and reply meant to the interviewer and interviewee, and what the research can glean from these date. This technique reveals the points at which interviewer and interviewee had misunderstood each other." (Briggs 1986:4)
Whether it is ever possible to determine this is the essence of the problem, and not one that can be addressed methodologically. This is not a technical issue.our task is precisely to highlight that which is said that "we" (academics, professionals in the field, curious onlookers) might not have noticed was being said and, on this basis, and eventually (after some analysis), asking the questions the informants may have wanted us to ask. That figuring out these questions is why ethnographic work is necessary).