ABSTRACT
Sociology has become the science of the interview, and that in two senses. In the first sense the interview has become the favoured digging tool of a large army of sociologists and in the second sense sociology is the science of the interview in a more essential way. Some face problems of large-scale standardised interviews; others tell of the peculiar problems of interviewing special kinds of people. The interview is of course merely one of the many ways in which two people talk to each other. The role of the interviewer then is one governed by conventions rather than by standards, rules or laws; it is a role that is relatively lightly held even by professionals, and may be abandoned in favour of certain alternative roles if the occasion arises. But there is another important characteristic of the interview which serves to differentiate it from other modes of human interaction – the convention of comparability.
