Research for Mutual Knowledge Development - Stockholms … · 2012-06-27 · Research for Mutual Knowledge Development Crossing professional and disciplinary boundaries: Collaborative

Research for Mutual Knowledge Development

Crossing professional and disciplinary boundaries: Collaborative research as marriage

SRIKANT SARANGI

Cardiff UniversityNTNU (Norway), Aalborg University (Denmark), The University of Hong Kong

Stockholm University, 30 March 2012

THE KEY ARGUMENT

• Different research paradigms, and associated researcher positionings

• Profiling professional discourse studies

• In favour of collaborative, ‘consultative research paradigm’ (Sarangi 2005) – going beyond the problem-solving ‘jobbing linguist’ model (Crystal 2004; Brumfit 2004).

• Such a shift towards collaborative research is not just a territorial gain but brings with it theoretical, analytical and practical challenges: joint problematisation; negotiation of interpretive procedures but also tensions.

THE KEY ARGUMENT

• Communities of Interest – an extension of the notion of ‘Communities of Practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991), which can be normative, with provision of socialisation that lends itself more to educational/training settings than to research settings.

• ‘Communities of interest’ concerns scenarios where one crosses different Communities of Practice – one may initially share ‘interests’but not ‘practices’ – but over time and despite tensions – may come to belong to a new ‘community of practice’.

RESEARCH PARADIGMS AND RESEARCHER MOTIVATIONS

PURE

ENLIGHTENMENT?

APPLIED

ENGINEERING?

CONSULTANCY

PROBLEM-SOLVING?

CONSULTATIVE

REFLEXIVE?

ENGAGE

MENT

MOTIVATIONS

Watson (1997) reporting the challenge he faced when carrying out an interview-based study in an organisational setting, focusing on the middle management (M1 and M2 are managers; TJW is the academic and the interviewer):

01 M1: I don't think we've had a lot of professors working with us down here before.

02 M2: I suppose you're really just another consultant, in academic guise.

03 TJW: Absolutely not. I am not a consultant. I am here to work as part of management. I've got to earn my keep here at Parkside. I shall not be writing a report for the company at any stage - or recommending anything. I shall

BEING IMPOSED UPON OR INVITED?

write a book, after I've left - using my experience here to reflect on what is happening to managerial work in modern organisations.

04 M3: Oh ho. So we are going to be in a book then. That's a good laugh. All of us blokes are hairy-arsed factory managers. I don't think that you'll get a lot from us. We don't go on for your fancy management - you know, business college - talk.

05 M2: We can easily tell you how not to do it though. We know all about fuck-ups. But Terry's right. I dare say we won't use the sort of language you want for your posh book.

(Watson 1997: 211-212)


• The researcher’s identity as an impartial, ‘professional stranger’ (Agar 1980) is being challenged; the managers' strong feelings about outsiders posing as consultants are being ventilated;

• A distinction is being made between the posh academic researchers and the managers/workers on factory floors (lads, blokes); two different languages (discourses) –marking the boundary between the researcher and the researched – are evident in terms of presentation of selves and priorities, with attendant concerns about trust and credibility.


• Study of marginalised communities: heroin users (‘pinched’ ; Stoddart 1974); convicts (the convict code e.g.’do not snitch’ in the half-way house; Weider 1974); homosexuals (the tearoom trade, Humphreys 1970)

• positioning oneself at the door!

• Humphrey’s (1970) study of the tearoom trade(tearoom is men’s conveniences in the American homosexual slang) is concerned with analysis of private encounters in public settings. He manages this by taking on the role of watchqueen to watch out for the arrival of police or intruders:

BEING COVERT

• “A man who is situated at the door or windows

from which he may observe the means of

access to the restroom. When someone

approaches, he coughs. He nods when the

coast is clear or if he recognises an entering

party as a regular.” (Humphreys 1970: 27)

BEING COVERT

• Such a researcher stance is very different from the traditional notion of participant observation. This is more like a participation activity as observation here slides into some form of participation in the activity, which is not unproblematic in itself as it can disrupt the very activity one has set out to observe.

• However, as Humphreys points out, it is an essential commitment not only to be able to continue observing clandestine homosexual behaviour, but also to be able to draw on this experience for purposes of interpreting the specialised argot and the practices of those being observed.

BEING COVERT

• Being invited also has its problems (Bosk1992): the issue of expectations

• Whose side are we on? (Becker 1967): the issue of neutrality and value-free judgment

• Research on, for and with – the ‘with’ as empowering (Cameron et al 1992)

• We can extend the ‘with’ dimension beyond researcher-informant relations to role-relations and division of interpretive burdens between researchers inhabiting different professional, disciplinary – and therefore ontological and epistemological – orders.

BEING INVITED OR IMPOSED UPON?

PROFILING PROFESSIONAL DISCOURSE STUDIES

• Historically, interest in language use in social context, rather than professional practice per se

• Rich linguistic/interactional accounts as outputs

• Issues of ideology, power, hegemony etc. in exploring the interrelationships between discourse and social change – but from a distance (Fairclough 1992; Sarangi & Slembrouck 1996)

• Attempts at ‘thick description’ in Geertz’s sense, based on collaborative participation (see Cicourel2003)


• Professional discourse studies (e.g., Language for Specific Purposes), focusing on language features, including metalinguistic dimensions, making connections at ontological and epistemological levels

• These ventures have led successfully to teaching interventions, including remedial teaching (engineering, management, healthcare) but has not necessitated the need for collaborative research.

• The written bias and narrow circumference of research sites/topics (e.g. research articles; business annual reports) in the absence of collaboration.


• Talk/interaction-based sociolinguistic studies also fall into the same category.

• The pitfalls of an early ‘collaborative’ exercise in comprehensive discourse analysis (Labovand Fanshel 1977), but driven by a linguistic interest.

• Professional discourse studies, like many other applied linguistic research endeavours, operate with a deficit model of researcher-researched relationship, couched in a ‘first-find then apply’ mentality.

THE BLACK BOX OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

• Professional practice/habitus cannot be reduced to language and interaction.

• Lynch and Sharrock (2003:xxxix): ‘Although the sequential procedures that make up what conversation analysts call “talk in interaction”are evident in, and important for, the organisation of practices in a variety of social institutions, it is not enough to say that, for example, a jury deliberation or a medical diagnosis is an “organisation of talk”’.

Freidson (1970): Professions are constituted in differentiation of specialised knowledge:

• Specialised knowledge (combination of scientific/technical and clinical/experiential) as the lynchpin of professionalism: Both these knowledge systems are interactive, cumulative, and systematic.

• Two other forms of knowledge: organisational; and communicative – professional ways of seeing and acting (Goodwin 1994; Sarangi 2005, 2007)

• Professional vision can be seen as a form of blindness, incapacity to see things differently (a form of ‘terministicscreening’ or ‘trained incapacity’ [Burke 1965, 1966]) – which has consequences for clients.

PROFESSIONAL BEING: KNOWLEDGE-BASED PRACTICE

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AS EXPERT SYSTEM

• Possible relationship between professional theories and interaction theories as in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy (Peräkylä et al 2005).

• Professionals’ knowledge of interaction is more sophisticated than what textbooks and training programmes suggest. Interaction is an essential component of the healthcare expert system. (Sarangi 2005, 2010)

• Reflections ‘on’ and ‘in’ practice (Schön 1983)

CHALLENGES FACING THE OUTSIDER QUALITATIVE

RESEARCHER

ACCESS

Observer’s Paradox

INTERPRETATION

Analyst’s Paradox

PARTICIPATION

Participant’s Paradox

TENSIONS IN NEGOTIATING RESEARCH BOUNDARIES

THREE PARADOXES

• Observer’s Paradox (Labov 1972): how the act of observation itself can contaminate the data being gathered. By extension, we only get authentic data when we are not observing (or, minimise observer’s paradox by asking ‘danger of death’ questions).

• Participant’s paradox: the activity of participants observing the observer (cf. Goffman `sphere of participation’ vs `sphere of focused interaction’).

• Analyst’s paradox: the activity of obtaining members’insights to inform analytic practice, including collaborative interpretation.

(Sarangi 2002, 2007)

MINIMISING THE PARADOXES

• The observer’s paradox is more about collecting ‘pure’ data, with the assumption being interpretation of such data is unproblematic. In other words analytic expertise pre-exists data collection.

• Attempts to overcome the observer’s paradox (e.g. covert recording) are indicative of problems of analytic practice.

• The use of key informants is also indicative of analytic tensions.

• The three paradoxes can be minimised in collaborative, consultative research.


To overcome some of the challenges I propose strategies such as joint problematisation, long-term communication ethnography (‘thick participation’ as a condition of ‘thick description’), collaborative interpretation, hot feedback and critical reflexivity.

This can also be framed as striving towards ecological validity (Cicourel 2007): how we seek to convince others of the viability and authenticity of our claims and can be understood by our use of primary and secondary data sources. Ecological validity can only be approximated in the social and behavioural sciences.

Triangulation in two senses: accessing and utilising different kinds of primary and secondary data; validating interpretative procedures by seeking respondents’ insights.


Revisiting the earlier data setting involving the academic researcher and the managers, we can see how the three paradoxes are at work.

The observer’s paradox can be minimised or heightened depending on how the managers choose to speak, whether they speak as before or adopt the language of business management.

The participant’s paradox can be minimised or heightened depending on whether the academic researcher continues to talk in his academic genre or chooses to appropriate the language of his informants, although the latter strategy may be viewed with suspicion.


• The analyst’s paradox pertains to the difficulty the academic researcher may face when confronted with the local managers’context-specific knowledge schema framed in an opaque vernacular style.

• In a sense, the managers’ threat to use their vernacular in the presence of the researcher is compatible with the researcher’s search for authentic, naturalistic data, which is preferable to the informants appropriating the ‘fancy management and business college talk’in an attempt to ‘play’ or ‘play at’ the research game.

THE ANALYST’S

INTERPRETIVE BURDEN

ANALYST AS A FLY ON THE WALL!

• “A ‘fly on the wall’ who did not know we were doing psychotherapy would not necessarily suspect that that was what we were doing: he would see and hear only an ordinary conversation. What defines the conversation as psychotherapy is simply our goal in conducting the conversation.”

(O’Hanlon and Wilk 1987:177)

ANALYST AS A FLY ON THE WALL!

• The case of ‘cigarette lighting and looking up’ as unit of analysis in psychotherapy, marking the transition to patienthood (Scheflen 1966).

• The components of cigarette-lighting:

1. Taking out a cigarette and bringing it and a pack of matches to her lap.

2. Waiting until the patient has finished a story.

3. Putting the cigarette in her mouth.

4. Waiting until the patient looks away.

5. Lighting up.

6. Discarding the match.

THE ANALYST’S INTERPRETIVE BURDEN

• Topic/Resource Dichotomy

• “All natives take their native knowledge for granted, take it to be nothing other than the nature of the world (Geertz 1975). But how could the conversation analyst recognise an utterance as a pre-invitation, for example, without trading on covert native knowledgeof dating practices and the special significance for them of Saturday night?”

(Moerman 1988:4)


• “One solution is to have a local assistant who works with you on the analysis and who will tell you what it is in what he/she hears or perceives that leads to the interpretation. That gives you information at two levels, content and form. The more one works with such interpretive analysis, the more native-like one’s interpretations can become.” (Gumperz 1997:20)


• Who counts as a member in terms of access to insider, tacit knowledge (including members’ own access to personal knowledge [Polanyi 1958])?

• The position that member’s method allows one to categorise events is no longer tenable, especially when the knowledge gap between analysts and participants increases, as is the case in new sites of professional and organisational discourse studies.

ANALYST’S PARADOX AS A CONTINUUM

• Analyst’s paradox as a continuum: it is at its most extreme when interpreting different professional and organisational practices, that is the backstage activities, e.g., case records, peer-centred talk/text as in case presentations, case conferences, source texts, guidance notes etc.

• Professional-client encounters are easier to interpret, because we can put ourselves in clients’ shoes and draw parallels to similar experiences – in Geertz’s terms we have access to ‘experience-rich’ insights.

LOOKING THROUGH THE MICROSCOPE

• A fine-grained analysis is only appropriate for answering some sorts of questions, and a full understanding will not necessarily emerge from describing and analyzing behaviour at the most detailed level. While a microscope is an invaluable tool in some circumstances it would be useless, say, for reading a novel.

(Martin and Bateson 1993:9)


• Rethinking the microscope metaphor: avoiding under- and over-interpretation

• “The analyst must steer between the Scylla of decontextualisation and the Charybdis of over-generalisation. A microscopist would remind us of the need to use a lens of appropriate magnification – neither too high power (removing essential context) nor too low power (revealing insufficient detail)” (Clarke 2005:189).


• “Studies of talk-in-interaction, whether labelled as CA or DA, would align more readily with the perspective of professionals if they could examine episodes of interaction as long as the whole consultation… Professionals will perhaps be more enthusiastic about collaboration if the lens used to study their activities could be switched to even a slightly lower power, so that the give and take of discussion over a longer period – perhaps even during the whole of a consultation –could be examined.” (Clarke 2005:191)


• “Researchers often have real difficulty in understanding complex patterns of professional work – including especially the interpretation of conversations among colleagues – without recourse to professional informants.” (Clarke 2003: 383)

• The challenge of crossing boundaries – of ‘going professional’ – and the danger of bus-stop research

• “As with love and friendship, the relationship will only flourish where there is trust and goodwill on both sides; tolerance and a willingness to put effort into an active engagement in the collaboration are both required.”(Clarke 2003: 384)

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

THE MARRIAGE METAPHOR

MILESTONES IN PARTNERSHIPPING

• Interest at first sight: Accidental meeting under the auspices of The Partnership Board

• The first date: Follow-up agenda – shared but unfulfilled interests

• Stalking: Motivated shadowing and appropriating each other’s practice (visits to clinics; learning to be social scientist)

• Engagement: Successful research grants

MILESTONES IN PARTNERSHIPPING

• Marriage and honeymoon: Publications and presentations across disciplinary boundaries, even risking RAE configurations

• Long-term commitments and compromises: negotiating coding and interpretive practices; hot feedback; teaching and supervisory input (including joint ESRC-MRC studentship); collaboration with the next generation of professional practitioners

• Uptake of research (Continuing Professional Development [CPD] questionnaire, Journal of Genetic Counselling)

CONCLUDING REMARKS

CONCLUSION/1

Two types of interpretive burdens/limitations when working on one’s own, including over- and under-interpretation

• Scientific-technical knowledge-specificity (know-that)

• Discourse analysis-specificity (know-how)

• Analytic expertise or interpretive licence?: Where do we place ourselves – as craftsmen or as critics? What are the boundaries/limitations of interpretation?

• Research-led discovery is not to be equated with practical relevance!

CONCLUSION/2

• Being eclectic and against disciplinary self-indulgence: more generally, researchers of professional discourse will have to remain committed to a research site rather than to a research tradition, so that they understand professional practice through ‘thick participation’, that is, ‘know that’ and ‘know how’ – (knowledge of things, facts and method).

• Breaking the sequential mould: moving from ‘first find and then recommend’ to ‘joint problematisation’ and provision of ‘hot feedback’.

• Breaking the individual mould: in search for cumulative evidence, based on clusters of projects/findings.

• Trading between academic/disciplinary reflexivity and practical/professional relevance: Realignment of ‘discovery’ and ‘usefulness’ leading to problem/practice-led (consultative) research.

• Research-led teaching & professional development at the sites of research: findings arising out of a given site and nominated topics are more likely to lead to uptake (fulfilling both ‘discovery’ and ‘usefulness’ criteria) – translational research.

• Towards practising ‘appreciative inquiry’

CONCLUSION/3

• Becker et al (1961) capture the tension between researchers’ analytic stance and their obligation for disseminating research findings:

• “But our purpose is not criticism, but observation and analysis. When we report what we have learned, it is important that we do so faithfully. We have a double duty -to our own profession of social observation and analysis and to those who have allowed us to observe their conduct. We do not report everything we observe, for to do so would violate confidences and otherwise do harm. On the other hand, we must take care not to bias our analyses and conclusions. Finding a proper balance between our obligations to our informants and the organisation, on the one hand, and our scientific duty, on the other, is not easy.”

CONCLUSION/4

Agar, M. (1980) The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography. New York: Academic Press.

Becker, H. S. (1967) Whose side are we on? Social Problems 14: 239-248.

Becker, H., Geer, B., Hughes, E. C., and Strauss, A. L. (1961) Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Bosk, C. (1992). All God’s Mistakes: Genetic Counseling in a Paediatric Clinic. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Brumfit, C. (2004) Coping with change in applied linguistics: David Crystal and Christopher Brumfit in conversation. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1 (3): 387-398.

Burke, K. (1965 [1935]) Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. Indianapolis: Bobs-Merrill.

Burke, K. (1966) Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature and Method. California: California University Press.

Cameron, D., Fraser, E., Harvey, P. and Rampton, B. (1992) Researching Language: Issues of Power and Method. London: Routledge.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Cicourel, A. V. (1974) Cognitive Sociology: Language and Meaning in Social Interaction. New York: The Free Press.

Cicourel, A. V. (2003) On contextualising applied linguistic research in the workplace. Applied Linguistics 24 (3): 360-373.

Cicourel, A. V. (2007) A personal, retrospective view of ecological validity. Text & Talk 27 (5): 735-752.

Clarke, A. (2003) On being an object of research: reflections from a professional perspective. Applied Linguistics 24 (3): 374-385.

Clarke, A. (2005) Commentary 1: professional theories and institutional interaction. Communication & Medicine 2 (2): 189-191.

Crystal, D. (2004) Coping with change in applied linguistics. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1 (3): 387-398.

Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Freidson, E. (1970) Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96 (3): 606-633.

Gumperz, J. (1997) A discussion with John J. Gumperz (C. Prevignano and A. Di Luzio). In S. Eerdmans, C. Prevignano and P. Thibault eds. Discussing Communication Analysis 1: John J. Gumperz. Lausanne: Beta Press, 6-23.

Humphreys, L. (1970) Tearoom Trade: A Study of Homosexual Encounters in Public Places. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co.

Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press.

Labov, W. and Fanshel, D. (1977) Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991)Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lynch, M. and Sharrock, W. (2003) Editors’ Introduction. In M. Lynch and W. Sharrock eds., Harold Garfinkel, vii-xlvi. London: Sage.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Martin, P. and Bateson, P. (1993) Measuring Behaviour, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moerman, M. (1988) Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversation Analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

O’Hanlon, B. and Wilk, J. (1987) Shifting Contexts: The Generation of Effective Psychotherapy. New York: Guilford.

Peräkylä, A., Ruusuvuori, J. and Vehviläinen, S. (2005) Professional theories and institutional interaction. Communication & Medicine 2 (2): 105-109.

Polanyi, M. (1958) Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Sarangi, S. (2002) Discourse practitioners as a community of interprofessional practice: some insights from health communication research. In C. N. Candlin ed. Research and Practice in Professional Discourse. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 95-135.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Sarangi, S. (2005) The conditions and consequences of professional discourse studies. Journal of Applied Linguistics 2 (3): 371-394. Also published in R. Kiely, P. Rea-Dickins, H. Woodfield and G. Clibbon eds. [2006], Language, Culture and Identity in Applied Linguistics, 199-220. London: Equinox.

Sarangi, S. (2007) The anatomy of interpretation: Coming to terms with the analyst’s paradox in professional discourse studies. Text & Talk 27 (5): 567-584.

Sarangi, S. (2010) Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system: An activity analysis perspective. In J. Streeck ed., New Adventures in Language and Interaction, 167-197. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Sarangi, S. and Slembrouck, S. (1996) Language, Bureaucracy and Social Control. London: Longman.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Scheflen, A. (1966) Natural history method in psychotherapy: Communicational research. In L. A. Gottschalk and A. H. Auerbacheds., Methods of Research in Psychotherapy, 263-289. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.

Stoddart, K. (1974) Pinched: Notes on the ethnographer’s location of argot. In R. Turner ed., Ethnomethodology, 173-179. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Watson, T. J. (1997) Languages within languages: a social constructionist perspective on multiple managerial discourses. In F. Bergiela-Chiappiniand S. Harris (eds.) The Languages of Business: An InternationalPerspective, 211-227. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Wieder, D. L. (1974) Language and Social reality: The Case of Telling the Convict Code. The Hague: Mouton.

SELECTED REFERENCES

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Research for Mutual Knowledge Development - Stockholms … · 2012-06-27 · Research for Mutual Knowledge Development Crossing professional and disciplinary boundaries: Collaborative