Boys talk

Abstract

Carrying out in-depth, relatively unstructured interviews with boys might seem in many ways to be an ambitious undertaking. On the whole, boys in the early teenage years do not have the reputation of being good and compliant talkers. As well as boys being commonly seen as control problems, more likely to mess about when free of the disciplinary constraints of strong teachers, the popular view is that boys (and men) are ‘emotionally inarticulate’, lacking the capacity to ‘name’ and therefore even to experience feelings and emotions, and particularly to engage in sustained and reflective conversation about their feelings for and relationships with others. Indeed, this might be seen as part of the general ‘moral panic’ about boys, related to their difficulties of socialisation and educational achievement. It certainly seems, at times at least, to be a view adopted by teachers. For instance, teachers sometimes expressed surprise that we wanted to conduct interviews lasting an hour, implying or explicitly warning us that the boys might not be able to sustain concentration for that long. In one school, the teacher who introduced the interviewer to the prospective interviewees told the boys not to misbehave and to take the interview seriously, as if without that warning they were likely to be difficult to manage. In four other schools, teachers encouraged the boys to ‘think carefully’ and to try and talk ‘fluently’, again expressing a worry about their natural inclination to not do so.