This article considers the possibilities offered by linguistic pragmatics and rhetoric for the analysis of research interviews. Using examples, the article shows how it is possible, through the form of the discourse and the ways of saying, to disentangle the meaning of the discourse, from the implicit content to the unconscious content of the subject’s speech addressed to the researcher. Travelling through words also calls for the passage through the assignment of places for the researcher and the interlocutor who speaks to him: a conversational exchange where thought is developed.