57

The aim of this article is to deepen the methodological reflexivity of qualitative sociological inquiry. Starting from the objectification of a research practice, in which the researcher occasionally mobilizes “personal narrative” in the course of interviews or observations, we aim to defend the notion that it can be useful for researchers to use their own biographical experience in order to encourage interviewees to “tell their own story”. Starting with the observation that available methodological literature remains silent with regard to these personal narratives, while implicitly inciting researchers to resort to them (1), we analyse our own “personal narrative” practices within similar survey contexts, i.e. surveys carried out by young female researchers among populations that are largely female, and on subjects that generally belong to the private sphere (2). Thus we show that the “personal narrative”, because it is based on a certain connivance, contributes to establishing a common discursive register which helps to balance the relationship between interviewer and interviewee and to encourage a more open discourse on the part of the latter.