“Deep Theorizing”: Closing the Gap Between Text and Context in Academic Writing Research (by Theresa Lillis)

Ethnography as Method, Methodology, and “Deep Theorizing”: Closing the Gap Between Text and Context in Academic Writing Research (by Theresa Lillis)

And a good deal of what she is saying is helping me to think through the problems with my study. For example, something I have wondered about for some time: what IS the difference between METHOD and METHODOLOGY??? Well, here is Lillis on this question:

Interestingly for the discussion in this article, they list ethnography as a method, alongside categories such as interviews, observation, and case studies, rather than as a methodology constituted by multiple methods such as those they mention separately. (355)

And here's a passage which really resonates with me for the way it exposes the limited nature of my own study:

The point here is not that their classification is incorrect (classifications and taxonomies always involve a range of compromises) but rather that their positioning of ethnography in this way says much about the way in which ethnography is currently (often) framed in academic writing research.First, it tends to be viewed as a method rather than a fully developed methodology. Second, this conceptualization of ethnography as method in academic writing research often gets operationalized as one specific method—notably, the interview, or more precisely, talk around texts—which while offering the researcher an additional lens from which to understand the text, leads to only a truncated engagement with “context.” Third, this reduction of ethnography to method means that the value of other levels of ethnography, that is, as fully fledged methodology and as a specific epistemology and ontology, are still often overlooked in academic writing research. (355)

So, yes, a confusion about method and methodology that lead me to focus not enough on context. I never visited a workplace, never sat and listened and observed. I never visited a class, never sat and observed. I have had to try to imagine those contexts. We talked about students' lives and writing and we looked at the documents in isolation and while that was incredibly useful for me, personally, and I learned a lot and I might even argue that I've been engaged in the inevitable steps of an inevitable process, it doesn't allow me to DO a good deal with the data.

A useful definition:

...ethnography as methodology: the weaving together of data in order to understand a particular phenomenon. (356)

Another moment that has really helped me with the Lillis article is seeing her "Table 1:

Overview of Two Projects: Student Writing and Professional Academic Writing" (357). This table is so useful--to see the outline of these two projects and the data sources. It is the data sources piece which I find most useful.

And this passage resonates for me (I've changed it around a bit):

...core characteristics of ethnography: the importance of lengthy or sustained engagement over a significant period of time and the value of multiple data sources. (358)

This passage comes at the conclusion of a long bulleted list in which Lillis attempts to articulate a "broad working definition of ethnography."

What she does from there I find really interesting--she talks about the different METHODS within the METHODOLOGY called ETHNOGRAPHY and describes the constraints and affordances of each method (limits and opportunities) so that we can see a) that research methods have limits in terms of what they can tell us, b) to make the case for the triangulation of methods or data sources. The picture emerges from the triangulation, not from single methods or sources.