Tag: methods

Verbing Method

/ dmueller

In 691 Method~ologies this morning, we re-traced some of the semester’s
where have we been: history, discourse analysis, ethnography and now
theory. Obviously there’s overlap aplenty–blends and
interplays among these methodological orientations. In supershort form, history considers memory, record, retrospectives and recovery; discourse analysis works primarily with language and corpus (linguistic objects of study); ethnography notices people, culture and pattern/dynamics; and theory (small-t)
accounts for a wide variety of stuff not limited to reading, writing, and
thinking. Assemble, arrange, re-arrange, and answer curiosities, solve
problems. No, these aren’t my complete notes, and perhaps these few lines
aren’t very good as thin representations of ten weeks of work.
There’s a whole lot more to say here. But I wanted to raise a side
question or two about method and methodology. When the subject of
method~ology comes up, I’m increasingly tuned in to the part of speech invoked
in the conversation. This has especially been the case with ethnography. The noun positions the method as a thing already done by others; it acknowledges a tradition and model projects against which we measure the edges defining the activity involved with doing ethnography. Is it like documentary? Must it feature human subjects? If we look to a set of nouned ethnographies (things, already-existing objects), then answering is possible. But the answer is set against a generic backdrop of the stuff already done.
I don’t know that we have a good verb for doing ethnography (ethnograph?
ethnographize? um…no). The chosen term, however, has bearing. Consider the
difference between using use the noun–ethnography–or the
adjective–ethnographic–to account for the way of doing, ultimately the
way of describing the research activity. And consider the verbs that we could collect under the broad (or is it narrow) rubric of ethnography: notice, observe, etc. What does this all come to?
Well, I’m finding it more and more appealing to talk about methods as verbs, and
I’m also wondering whether the methodology-as-noun departs from (or, on the
other hand, refers to the same thing as) genre. Near enough as to be thought the same thing?

Program notes: The
fall symposium on
visual and digital rhetorics is happening on Thursday and Friday–two days
of workshops and talks with Anne Wysocki, Jeff R.,
and Jenny E. What’s not to look forward to?

CCC Online as Teleidoscope

/ dmueller / 4 Comments

Inside Higher Ed is running
Collin’s piece
today about CCC Online called

"Mirror, Mirror on the Web."  The column puts a
beam on CCC Online
and introduces a few of the features of the site, but beyond that–and more
importantly, I’d say–it makes explicit some of the ways blog-based thinking
influenced the creation of the site.  As the article makes plain, the three
of us working on the project are active bloggers;  I think it’s safe to say
that the practice of blogging made the current iteration of CCC Online conceivable. 

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Sidewalk (1999) and Method

/ dmueller / 2 Comments

Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk is a multi-year ethnographic study of the
informal mercantile and social activity covering a three-block zone in Greenwich
Village.  Duneier, now a professor of sociology at Princeton, overhauled
his study after his initial project focused too heavily on a singular "public
character"–Hakim, a respected book vendor who often acted as a leader, an "old
head" who mentored others, who advocated for GED completion, and who eventually
co-taught a course at UCSB with Duneier.  Although Sidewalk reads
easily as a sociological research project unto itself, we could view it as an
update to Jane Jacobs’s 1961 project on the complex social, spatial, economic
and architectural dynamics of the street in New York City,

The Death and the Life of Great American Cities.

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Banal Features Analysis

/ dmueller

Alt. title: "Dull Feature Analysis."  Today I’m working on a small-time
application of discourse analysis for Method~ologies.  We’re looking at a
corpus of eight student essays.  Initially, I considered how I would graph
Bazerman’s concept of "intertextual reach," which he defines as "how far a text
travels for its intertextual relations" (89).  How far is that?  How
do we account for the span of these traces–meters, leagues, years, decibels,
lumens?  Maybe referential density could draw on network studies. 
How?  We could establish a near intertextual reach as
reference-gestures that share another source.  This would involve a
triangulation of citations: Bazerman–let’s say–cites Porter and Prior. 
But Porter also cites Prior.  Porter is intertextually nearer than Prior
(who does not cite any other source in common with Bazerman).  I’m making
this up.  The far reach would describe the solitary reference–the
singular text-trace that is not shared by any other source cited in the primary
text (the text whose traces and reaches we are surveying).  But I wanted to
think about intertextual reach as a quality that could be determined by
triangulating citations.  Applied to a batch of student essays where
works-to-cite are predefined, intertextual reach seems wobbly–a stretch,
as in…look at how they reach alike.

I’ll need something else. 

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“We Are Coming” – Logan (1999)

/ dmueller / 2 Comments

In 691 (Method~ologies) this week we’re considering historical methods and
reading for such methods specifically through the Shirley Wilson Logan’s work in
"We Are Coming": The
Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women.  In the
preface, Logan speaks briefly to her method: "Since rhetorical analysis requires
an understanding of the formal features of a text in conjunction with its
historical context, I consider pertinent historical details–biographical,
social, political and cultural.  Moving from the historical, I address
various characteristics of a chosen text in the light of these details. 
The selection of characteristics is informed by classical rhetoric and its
twentieth-century reconstructions.  My hope is that these discussions might
also add to a clearer understanding of nineteenth-century culture and of the
ways in which the persuasive discourse of nineteenth-century black women adapted
itself to its multiple audiences and multilayered exigencies" (xvi).  As
well as any passage I could locate, these few sentences give a fairly complete,
succinct overview of the project.

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How to do things with boxes

/ dmueller / 2 Comments

Rather than diving into John Austin’s How To Do Things With Words
tonight, I’m refueling.  Presented on Foucault–again–tonight; that
went well.  Tomorrow I carry on about Ways of Reading in an online
distance curric. for FYC–talk and talk until folks are yawning or fifteen
minutes passes, whichever comes first.

And to restore my creative groove tonight, I knew what I’d do at the moment
D. pulled the last Puffs tissue from the box here in the office: box
bot.  I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember the sequence of links that
led me to this the other day (Metafilter?  Slashdot?  Some kind,
unattributed blogger on my roll or one degree removed?).  Shameful, but I’m
filled with gratitude if it’s worth anything.

Here’s the bot.  Unremarkable, perhaps, but carved, scissor notch by
scissor notch, from a drab, empty Puffs box–a box pulled empty of its puffy
softness by the whole family’s first cold in Syracuse. 

Box bot

You really should try one–even especially if it
turns into something you never imagined.