The respondents are a minority and marginalized community
They have suffered injustices and discrimination
They were driven out of their land and are homeless
They cannot fully participate in governance and political participation
Their language is classified by UNESCO as critically endangered
My assumption is this is because they remained silent
I would like to be guided on questions that would elicit why they opt to remain silent rather than speak up.
The issue is not finding a question or set of questions. One needs to establish a relationship with the people in question before any of them are likely to open up. If their past interactions have shown outsiders not to be sympathetic, the researcher would have to show that he/she is sympathetic. If the researcher does not speak their native tongue, this makes it harder to establish a relationship. It would be a good idea to try to find an insightful and analytic informant in the group. One can hardly hope to do this without spending some time living and interacting with the group. Trust must be earned in such situations and this can take time. Regards, Bruce
Voilà a most sensitive question, indeed. I would recommend to look for esoteric logic - one of the non-classical logics. Erotetic logic is a logic of questioning. This produces a great shift in the analysis of discourse. One question can be answered with another question, and even silence can a sound reply to a question.
Thank you Bruce Fortado. You have taken the words right out of my mouth. If you dont have a relationship, no disclosure...simple...
Yes, the relationship is important. But What do you do once you have attained a certain level of trust. My own research deals a lot with issues of violence, and it seems that broad, very open questions are the ones that work best. Life histories, or asking people to tell you about the history of their group or community are good ways to start the process. The goal should be to encourage the production of narratives, not "answer" that the researcher would see are more "to the point". This way, sensitive topics are approached in a much more gradual way.
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