I finished this book yesterday at my favourite coffee shop. Lo and behold, I had neither computer nor paper to jot down my notes. So, I pulled out my HTC TYTN II and hand-wrote some notes [I have not yet succumbed to the i-Revolution of the evil geniuses at Apple]. I sometimes carry a little fold-out Bluetooth keyboard and type notes in mobile Word, but alas I was completely unprepared.
James and Busher’s (J&B’s) book did not treat interviews in the same ways as Olson and Fontanas & Prokos did. There were some similar themes regarding ethics and the balance of power between the interviewer and the participants. And, J&B discussed the importance of the researcher understanding his/her ontological and epistemological stance. But, the main focus of this book, in my opinion, on the nature of the online environment and how it affects the construction and understanding of discourse in online interviewing. As such, the book is ideal for those of us who are studying online identity formation and maintenance. Including this book amongst my readings of interview methods was a good way to round out my investigation.
The authors regularly use the word disembodied in referring to the human experience online. The word crept into much of their text in each chapter possibly indicating their own private orientation towards online interaction. For example, J&B write:
This chapter [four] therefore discusses how knowledge is constructed in a disembodied, anonymous and textual environment . . . (p. 43)
Further, the body itself is discussed:
The centrality of the body plays a critical part in developing and maintaining social encounters. It influences the ways in which researchers and participants construct their identities and those of the other (Giddens, 1991) and how they assert their agency to make sense of the ‘territory’ (social space) of the social interaction in the face-to-face encounter. (p. 32)
I do not disagree with the importance of the body as we are all physical beings “thrown” into a physical world. Interaction within the physical world shapes how we understand life. However, I grow concerned when social scientists suggest that the ways humans interact online is fundamentally different from how they interact in other environments. Interaction in any environment is mediated—in a face-to-face milieu, this might be through light and sound waves. Mediation will affect the cues people perceive and their sense of time and space (p. 10). Sense of time and space will alter how they interact: what people say, how they say it, and why they say it—when, where . . . The meanings of interaction will shift for the actors as they send and receive cues through different times and spaces. These factors are of much interest to qualitative researchers (p. 23).
So, normally, I would take the repetition of the word disembodiment as a warning sign. Gladly, I found that the authors also offer different perspectives of the online experience:
. . . if researchers are to understand life online, they have to understand that participants’ experiences are connected and shaped by cultural and social elements that are both real and virtual, public and private and online and offline. (p. 11)
Some online researchers have argued that to understand life online you need to understand the broader context because ‘being online and being offline are intersecting and interweaving experiences’ that are influenced and shaped by cultural and social elements (Rybas and Gajjala, 2007 cited in J&B, 2009, p. 34). Identity is fluid and potentially multiple on the Internet, but people similarly engage in these practices in other areas of their lives and did so prior to the existence of the Internet. In other words there is a ‘connected space’ in which individuals exist online and offline simultaneously (Kendall, 1999, p. 6 cited in J&B, 2009, p. 34).
Why is it important to avoid (or acknowledge) the online-interaction-is-disembodied-bandwagon? Because it has significant underlying implications for the way researchers and practitioners shape their online research and online learning environments. By recognizing that the humans-behind-the-screen are actual beings with continuous identities rooted in physical, cultural, and social environments, we can begin to understand why they might react to given situations the way they do. (Note: I do not suggest that we can ever fully understand the intentionality of others.) J&B warn researchers about the “false notion of sameness”, the idea that because people share time and space online they also share values and understanding (p. 47).
. . . participants are likely to assign different valences (strengths) of power to each other, possibly incorrectly. This is because the valence they assign will depend on the cultures from which they come, not the culture in which the others are located. (p. 45)
Further, (and I love the terminology):
“A person’s understanding and presentation of self is related to his/her ‘here and now’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1966 in Zhao, 2006, cited in J&B, 2009, p. 45).
“The lived reality of a person’s ‘here and now’ is now supplemented by her/his immediate experience of the ‘there and now’ (Giddens, 1990 cited in J&B, 2009, p. 46).
But, one should not forget that the lived reality of a person is also supplemented by ‘there and then’. Everyone carries with him/her a physical, cultural, and social history.
A related, but equally important and oft-abused word is fragmented. The disembodied folks often also suggest that people interacting online have fragmented identities:
The identities that emerge from these interactions—fragmented, complex, diffracted through the lenses of technology, culture and new technocultural formations—seem to be . . . more visible as the critters we ourselves are in the process of becoming, here at the close of the mechanical age. (Stone, 1996, p. 36 cited in J&B, 2009, p.72)
Fragmentation is a notion that I would also flag as problematic. The fragmentation is really only from the perspective of an audience for a given performance—not that of the actual individual typing on his/her keyboard. As I write this, I assure you, I have a very integrated sense of identity; my whole history is at my disposal. Just because I don’t share all of my history does not mean I am in any way fragmented. But, I do acknowledge that your computer monitor might show me as somehow diffracted.
Thankfully, J&B offer alternative views from that of Stone (1996, above). In referring to Kendall (1999), they indicate that identity is “stable and unified” and that “This stability is constructed through the ongoing dialogues and discourses emerging online” (p. 73). And, that whilst people can create different online personas, they can and do integrate these personas into their unified selves. In my view, this suggests support for a constructionist perspective of how online and offline presentations of self integrate and influence each other in a constant movement towards becoming.
How is this relevant to interviewing methodologies?
It is relevant because it suggests that there is authenticity in data collected through online interviews (synchronous and asynchronous). The concern we have with demonstrating the validity/authenticity/truthfulness of this form of data collection is similar to the validity of interview data collected in face-to-face interviews”
Individuals do not leave the body, and all its material inequalities behind when they enter cyberspace (O’Connor and Madge, 2003 referred to in J&B, 2009, p. 78).
Oh, and this is an interesting comment (great quotes in this book):
. . . we may underestimate the presence of the body in electronic communication, and over estimate the power of the body to facilitate the fact-to-face situation (Seymore, 2001, p. 162, cited in J&B, 2009, p 108).
So what have I learned?
Similar rules-of-thumb apply to both online and offline interviewing:
Understand your own epistemological position;
Establish a rapport with interview participants;
Share power with the participants;
Provide a safe interview context;
Locate and listen to the dominant and peripheral voices of the target population;
Document all your procedures and reflections before, during, and after the interviews.
So, why am I still grinding on about interview methods?
These were my main concerns prompting my investigation about interview methods:
To what extend would I contaminate the interviews by expressing opinions?
If I am co-constructing the discourse, then I need to document it and acknowledge it.
Do I want pre-reflective responses? (See p. 26)
Pre-reflective responses more valid than more reflective responses.
If you allow the participants to ponder the interview questions prior to the interview, document it.
Consider why you might want your participants to respond without prior thought. In my study, I am interested in the richness of their experience. So, a little thinking beforehand would likely generate much richer descriptions.
In referring to the setting of some interviews: “One might have to disrobe and casually stroll in the nude if one is doing a study of nude beaches.” (Douglas and Rasmussen, 1977 cited in Fontana & Prokos, 2007, p. 43)
It was the perfect day to spend reading on the deck. I sat in the shade of my umbrella with my kettle, teapot, silver tea strainer I purchased at the Mittal tea shop in Sunder Nagar Market in New Delhi in 2003, and a fresh book on interviewing. Fontana and Prokos’ (F&P) book is really only 113 pages in length. It’s a pleasant read replete with interesting examples.
I appreciated their quick highlights of the history of interviewing. The historic background can help readers understand some of the philosophical issues behind the selection of interview types and how a given researcher believes she must conduct her interviews and her analysis of them.
As I continue to explore the literature on interviews, I am becoming more and more comfortable with my own style. My concern for contaminating my results by inadvertently “participating” in the interview whilst playing the researcher role is dissipating. The domain of the structured interview seems to rest with those taking a more realist ontology and objectivist epistemology. Locating “pure” responses from participants to pre-formed questions and limiting the interviewer from co-constructing the conversation seem to be of greater concern in structured interviews. (Hmmm . . . The post-modern unstructured polyphonic interview (p. 53) also attempts to minimize the influence of the interviewer, but involves recording multiple participants speaking freely to a topic. According to an example, the participants seem to be recorded separately. The researcher is expected to avoid using her own words and interpretations. The reader must do his/her own interpretations.)
I am more of a relativist and constructionist. As such, I am comfortable with the notion that my very presence is a valid part of the process. The important thing is to recognize it, acknowledge it, and document it. The researcher must be reflexive (p. 63) and transparently so. F&P in referring to the work of Hertz (1997) note that “we (as authors) express and write our stories, which data we include and which data we exclude, whose voices we choose to represent and whose voices we choose not to represent” (p. 63).
Whilst Hertz (1997 referred to in F&P) acknowledges that the researcher brings many selves to the field of research, Behar (1996 referred to in F&P) “made us see that interviewer, writer, respondent, and the interview itself are not clearly distinct entities” (p. 64). (Pardon my poor citations, but I’m a little tired tonight.) The researcher must decide how to present herself knowing that the self she shows will impact upon the relationship and the co-creation of the dialogue. Then, she must reflexively work through sorting out (or accepting) the hopelessly intertwined entities that formed the discourse—and which continue to shape the discourse well after the contact between the interviewer and the participant has ended. These notions suggest a complexity to the qualitative interview that, again, must be reflected in the final report.
F&P do a clean sweep of structured, group, and unstructured interviews. F&P do not make the same distinction between semi-structured and guided interviews as Olson does (see previous entry). They simply refer to them generally as unstructured and list a number of different types. These types are listed within the categories of creative and post-modern. Within the post-modern category of unstructured interviews, one type really caught my eye: interpretive interactionism (p. 54). F&P suggest that interpretive interactionism is related to polyphonic interviews (see paragraph above), but focuses on “epiphanies” derived from transformational experiences: “Thus, the topic of inquiry becomes dramatized by the focus on existential moments in people’s lives, possibly producing richer and more meaningful data” (p. 54). What is of interest to me here is whether or not this form of interviewing would be useful in studies involving threshold concepts and liminality (see Meyer & Land’s work). In my own PhD thesis, I will be exploring identity positioning thresholds (coined this phrase for my study) experienced by doctoral students.
Moving to the online interview
As I near the first of my pilot interviews, I am wondering how the following non-verbal factors will play out online:
Proxemic communication is the use of interpersonal space to communicate attitudes, chronemic communication is the use of pacing of speech and length and of silence in conversation, kinesic communication includes any body movements or postures, and paralinguistic communication includes all the variations in volume, pitch and quality of voice. (Gordon, 1980, p. 335 cited in F&P, 2007, p. 71)
Next blog entry will focus on the online interview . . .
Gee, J. P. (2011). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (3rd ed., p. 224). New York, NY: Routledge.
Gee lists 42 questions that a researcher can ask when conducting analysis on a given text or set of texts (p. 121). I will put them into a simple table.
Tools of Inquiry
Building Tasks
–>
Significance
Practices
Identities
Relationships
Politics
Connections
Sign systems & knowledge
Situated meanings
Social languages
Figured worlds
Intertextuality
Discourses
Conversations
In the table, each row represents what he calls a tool of inquiry. The columns represent the building tasks. To understand how to ask the questions, first one must understand the terminology:
Tools of inquiry
Gee refers to tools of inquiry as thinking devices.
Situated meanings – may also be referred to as utterance-token meanings (p. 63). Form = “morphemes, words, phrases, or other syntactic structures” (p. 64). Function = what the utterance is intended to say or cause. If form and function are not in balance, then we might question what is happening. “Situated meanings arise because particular language forms take on specific or situated meanings in specific different contexts of use” (p. 65). Gee notes that analysis is complex because context is always changing. But, we can view an utterance from the viewpoint of different contexts and potentially gain insights into the meaning of the interaction (p. 68).
Social languages – “different styles of varieties of language for different purposes” or different social situations (p. 28). Social languages can have their own “distinctive grammars” (p. 50). They help people recognize and create their social contexts.
Figured worlds – typical, often taken-for-granted, stories or simplified pictures of situations with “typical participants, activities, forms of language, and objects and environments” (p. 71). Holland (1998) defines them as “socially constructed realm[s] of interpretation” (cited in Gee, 2001, p. 71). They are not static. Figured worlds “mediate between the ‘micro’ (small) level of interaction and the ‘macro’ (large) level of institutions” (p. 76). People can use figured worlds to construct simulations of situations to help them understand or act in the given situation(s). People also use figured worlds to evaluate appropriateness of social activity in the world (p. 90). They can be nested, incomplete, inconsistent, and changing. (An examination of figured worlds can help to uncover taken-for-granted assumptions that guide social behaviours—review previous blog posting on Ian Hacking’s book, The social construction of what?”)
Intertextuality – the act of referring to or quoting texts outside of one’s immediate discourse. It is a “sort of cross-reference to another text or type of text” (p. 29). Words may be borrowed or switched from one social language and used in another (p. 58).
Discourses – linguistic and non-linguistic elements that combine into “characteristic ways of thinking, acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, and believing” (p. 28). They combine to produce a “socially recognizable identity” (p. 29). [Note: big “D” discourse.] On page35, Gee emphasizes the importance of recognizability. Discourses do not necessarily have clear boundaries; they can overlap, split, meld, die, mutate, etc. (p. 38).
Conversations – Gee uses this word with a big “C” to refer to “all the talk and writing that has gone on in a specific social group or in society at large around a major theme, debate, or motif” (p. 29). He adds later, “They are the products of historical disputes between and among different Discourses” (p. 56).
Building Tasks
For each building task, Gee suggests that a researcher can ask the following questions:
Given what the speaker has said or the writer has written, and how it has been said or written, what
[things, people, practices, identity(s), relationships, connections, disconnections, sign systems, languages, social languages, ways of knowing]
in this context are relevant and significantand in what ways are they significant? How is the speaker or writer trying to
[give significance to things, enact things, depict things, recruit things, use things, connect things, disconnect things, privilege things, disprivilege things]?
Note: From my perspective, the building tasks of identity, relationships, and connections can be very difficult to separate. In particular, I see identity as highly integrated with relationships.
Questions from combining the tools of inquiry with the building task
Here is how Gee phrases the questions from the table of 42:
Significance: “How are situated meanings, social languages, figured worlds, intertextuality, Discourses, and Conversations being used to build relevance or significance for things and people?” (p. 121).
He asks the same question for each building task.
So, my question is what elements of this do I take with me when I do my phenomenographic study? It is definitely helpful in expanding the way I will read the interview transcripts. Gee’s book is also helpful for me in developing my transcription protocols. Now onto Wetherell et. al.
Here in North America, many people talk about constructivism and constructionism, but mostly from the Piaget vs. Papert perspective (also note their focus on child development). (Oh, some excellent links here: The Nature of Constructionist Learning, MIT.) In Europe, constructionism seems to focus on dialogue and relationship. The following comes from my notes mostly on Vivan Burr’s book:
All forms of social constructionism see language as “performative and constructive” (p. 176).
For both critical realists and constructivists, I believe (as per the European take on it), they both see dialogue as leading to the arrival at a common Truth (leading towards an Essentialist viewpoint of some underlying, foundational reality). But, constructionists would hold that there is no ultimate Truth; rather, everyone has their own perspective on truth. Although individuals can construct ideas together, no two people will hold the exact same view on it.
From Gergen’s book (see my previous posts):
“. . . the constructivist movement, which has been centrally concerned with the way in which the world is constructed or construed by individual minds. The central message here is that our actions are based not on the way the world is, but on the meaning it has for this individual” (Gergen, 2009, p. 26).
“Although resonant with constructionist views, constructivists tend to place meaning within the mind of the individual, while social constructionists locate the origin of meaning in relationships” (Gergen, 2009, p. 26).
From my discussions with [unnamed professor]: Constructionism suggests that there are multiple valid views, but there is no ultimate truth/reality. Our understandings are shaped by language—which is an imperfect vehicle for expression. The problem with language is in the inability to accurately transmit meaning. This explains the close relationship constructionism has with “dialogue”. Derrida and Leotard (post-modernists) propose that all human concepts are relative; we can never really understand how another human being thinks, experiences, etc.
All that said, there are also different flavours of constructionism. Burr outlines the following:
“Discourses produce all features of being a person” (pp. 179-180)
Concerned with power relations and social positioning
Production of subjectivity
Power and ideology is important (p. 156)
Leans towards social determinism
Criticism: neglects the speaker
Interpretive repertoires
The difference between discourses and interpretive repertoires is scale (p. 169).
Micro Social Constructionism
Discursive Psychology
The “person is the user of discursive devices” (p. 179)
Discursive psychologists study the devices themselves and their effects
Privileges agency of the person (p. 183)
Concerned with argument and rhetorical devices
Analysis of talk in interaction
Interviews are a key way of gathering data
Less concerned with power
Criticism: only considers the text
Conversation Analysis (p. 151)
Smaller scale than discursive psychology
Gather data through observation of naturally-occurring interactions
Attempt to detect regularities and patterns in language use
Talk achieves effects
Less concerned with power
Micro and macro social constructionism need not compete with each other, but may be complementary (p. 175). All forms of social constructionism see language as “performative and constructive” (p. 176).
Page, R. (2010). Interactivity and interaction: Text and talk in online communities. In M. Grishakova & M.-L. Ryan (Eds.), Intermediality and Storytelling (pp. 208-231). Berlin: De Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110237740.208. URL:http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/9783110237740.208
As our technologies change, so does the human story and our ability to tell it. Many researchers in educational technology suffer an unending interest in how digital technologies are affecting human interaction and learning. In this chapter, Ruth Page takes draws upon the field of narratology. She looks at interaction by “bringing together sociolinguistic, discourse-oriented and literary approaches” (p. 208).
Page views interaction from three main perspectives: modes of feedback, the audience, and the storytelling process. The chapter offers an interesting table showing how exploratory and ontological factors interplay with user-text and user-user interaction. Don’t let the jargon bother you. The results of her analysis are not only accessible, but very interesting.
When someone mentions narrative, we expect text-based narratives to proceed from start to finish. We expect the text to progress through a beginning, a middle, and an end—a linear path presumably as the author intended. Many websites are, in fact, set up in such a way. We start at the top left (in Western culture), eyes moving back and forth, targeting the bottom right. The latest technologies including the ever-so-fashionable social networking sites, blogs, and wikis, enable the reader to post comments, enter into story-related discussions, click on links to related topics, and even co-author a narrative-in-progress. Now, as in more ancient times, storytellers are once again in communication with their audience whose expressions and suggestions at times shape the story itself. As Page writes: “The affordances of computer mediated communication thus blend the written mode with the conversational style and near instantaneous responsiveness characteristic of oral discourse” (Rettberg, 2008 referenced in Page, 2010, p. 209). (Page mentions Ong’s concept of secondary orality (as per his book, Orality & Literacy (1982)—a great read in itself).
Feedback Channels
Interaction with digital texts (includes audio, video, graphics, and text) can involve the manipulation of the interface through the mouse, keyboard, joystick, or other input devices. Through such means, a reader can manipulate what they see, when, and how quickly. However, additional creativity is now available in the form of content creation. Page refers to Ryan’s (2006) categorizations of interaction which is made up of four dimensions: internal vs. external and exploratory vs. ontological. “According to these parameters, a reader can participate internally as a member in the storyworld (for example by role-playing an avatar in a simulated story scenario), or they can remain situated outside the storyworld in the external mode” (p. 212). Indeed, online narratives can fit on a continuum between the following dimensions:
Exploratory interaction: readers cannot change the storyline. They can only explore. The reader has “minimal navigational control of the narrative content” (p. 221).
Ontological interaction: readers can change the story or follow different options leading to a different path. In some cases, “the reader can control the content of the narrative itself” (p. 221). Wikis that offer full administrative/write access to participants are an extreme example of this form of interaction.
Page compares the characteristics of comments fields and message walls (as seen in social networking sites such as Facebook).
Comments Fields
Message Walls
“Always text-adjacent” (p. 216). That is, they cannot stand alone. They are always posted alongside the narrative to which they refer.
Can stand alone. May or may not refer to a particular narrative.
Implication: “The closer the commentary’s textual and thematic connection to the narrative segment, the greater the potential the reader’s interaction has to shape the evolving narrative text” (p. 216).
Audience
In highly interactive environments the relationship of the audience (reader) to the text is altered. Participants become creators and co-constructors of stories. The personal characteristics of the audience members influence narrative development. “Interpersonal and identity work achieved by conversational storytelling may vary according to the speaker’s gender, age, ethnicity; the social distance between speaker and listener and the cultural or institutional context in which the story is being told” (p. 213). As Page, suggests the readers come into relationship with the author, text, and other readers. We might say that authors and readers periodically exchange roles.
Writers often write with a kind of audience in mind. Anticipating one’s audience can be difficult in the online environment as many readers will leave little if any trace of their visit. When, a reader does leave a trace, it will likely follow expected social conventions (p. 217). Consider, for example, the acceptability of pseudonyms, avatar-selection, and expectations of authenticity in some networked environments.
Of course, audience can be controlled somewhat by access restrictions. However, Page acknowledges that “even if the storyteller has delimited the scope of their readership to persons they know, the audience might still conflate groups of individuals normally segmented in offline contexts” (p. 217).
So, how does an author choose a tone and style appropriate to an audience that she cannot anticipate?
Storytelling Process
Page discusses the difference between serial versus episodic storytelling.
Serial Narrative
Episodic Narrative
Posted in its final, completed form
Unlikely to be revised and reposted
Comments posted after-the-fact are not likely to influence its shaping
Evolve over time
Commentary may influence revisions, reposting, and new directions
Fan-fiction, collaborative writing, wikis, autobiographies (episodic in nature)
I found this section particularly interesting and so I will quote it at length:
In online contexts, the serial nature of the discourse creation is assumed to keep approximate pace with the personal events being reported. Thus blogs usually report on the near (rather than distant) past events while status updates of sites like Twitter and Facebook are even closer to the present moment in their public announcement of what the author is doing ‘right now’ (p. 219).
I very much agree with Page when she suggests that the immediacy of these “autobiographical fragments” is illusory as they are not reported in “exact real time”. Further they lack “retrospection” and
. . . a pre-determined narrative design arranged around a fixed teleological [purposeful] focus, the reader’s feedback is experienced as an intervention in the present moment which stimulates the ongoing production and anticipation of future updates from the author (p. 219).
As she considers serial and episodic narrative, Page notes that “the editorial interaction afforded by wiki technology would seem to be at odds with the factors which promote the creation of coherent narrative patterns” (p. 225). Such editing is non-linear and the identities of the authors can be concealed allowing degrees of authenticity. She gives the example of A Million Penguins. As the Wikipedia article here states, it remains undetermined as to whether or not the contributors succeeded in writing a novel. (Link: The final report for A Million Penguins.) The biggest problem was that the authors did not agree on social-editing rules resulting in “wiki wars” (p. 226).
References
Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group.
I’ll start at the end of Gergen’s comments: “. . . while fascinating in its implications, and deeply social in its perspective, this is scarcely an acceptable alternative to individualism” (p. 91). What is so disturbing about Goffman’s dramaturgical approach to identity, you ask?
In my own earlier work on identity, I used Goffman’s dramaturgical strategies extensively and found them very helpful in potentially understanding how people interact. See for example: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/organisations/netlc/past/nlc2010/abstracts/Koole.html (Also, a book chapter on this should be coming out this year.)
Gergen correctly summarizes that “Goffman’s approach . . . paints a picture of social life as a stage, where we all perform for each other, knowing at the same time that what we seem is never quite who we are” (p. 91). But, I’m not in complete agreement when he writes “Goffman’s analysis suggests that we are much like con artists, trying to con others into believing we are who we present ourselves to be . . . sincerity itself is just like another con . . .” (p. 91).
In my reading of Goffman’s book, Goffman seems to take a more neutral stance with regard to performances, recognizing that the performers may choose to be honest or dishonest:
“A status, a position, a social place is not a material thing, to be possessed and then displayed; it is a pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well articulated. Performed with ease or clumsiness, awareness or not, guile or good faith, it is nonetheless something that must be enacted and portrayed, something that must be realized” (Goffman, 1959, p. 75).
While Goffman acknowledged the possibility of performances being intentionally misleading, he also acknowledged how difficult it would be to do so. Overt performances, let alone duplicity, are difficult to accomplish and demand personal energy. Overt performances require interpretations of not only how people express themselves, but also interpretations of their actions, histories, and contexts:
Performance takes energy: “The problem of dramatizing one’s work involves more than merely making invisible costs visible. The work that must be done by those who will fill certain statuses is often so poorly designed as an expression of a desired meaning, that if the incumbent would dramatize the character of his role, he must divert an appreciable amount of his energy to do so” (Goffman, 1959, p. 32 ).
An example: “‘The attentive pupil who wishes to be attentive, his eyes riveted on the teacher, his ears open wide, so exhausts himself in playing the attentive role that he ends up by no longer hearing anything.’ And so individuals often find themselves with the dilemma of expression versus action” (Goffman, 1959, p. 33 ).
This quote is particularly poignant in expressing the seriousness of presentation mistakes: “When an individual appears before others, he knowingly and unwittingly projects a definition of the situation, of which a conception of himself is an important part. When an event occurs which is expressively incompatible with this fostered impression, significant consequences are simultaneously felt in three levels of social reality [personality, interaction, and society], each of which involves a different point of reference and a different order of fact” (Goffman, 1959, p. 242 ).
In my notes on Goffman’s book, a significant aspect of his dramaturgical approach is that duplicity is accomplished through the same relational acts as authentic portrayals:
“. . . a successful staging of either of these types of false figures involves the use of real techniques— the same techniques by which everyday persons sustain their real social situations. Those who conduct face to face interaction on a theater stage must meet the key requirements of real situations; they must expressively sustain a definition of the situation: but this they do in circumstances that have facilitated their developing an apt terminology for the interactional tasks that all of us share” (Goffman, 1959, p. 255).
I interpret this last sentence in the above quote to imply that even falsehood is based upon some premise of social “reality” (pardon the use of the word reality). So, the question is to what degree is a misleading performance an untrue performance? Is this not just another element of relationship?
References
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books.
I’m not going to spend too much time on this. I am just finding it interesting to see someone else’s take on Mead’s work—someone more knowledgeable on these subjects than I.
“As Mead proposed, there is no thinking, or indeed any sense of being a self, that is independent of social process” (p. 89).
“Language becomes possible when people share a common set of mental symbols” (p. 89).
The generalized other: “a composite of others’ reactions to me across situations” (p. 89).
Gergen acknowledges Mead’s focus on social roles and human interdependency, yet his presentation of Mead’s body of work is highly condensed. As a result, I find myself having to consider more carefully Gergen’s criticisms of Mead’s work. Here are Gergen’s criticisms:
“In spite of the relational emphasis, symbolic interactionism retains a strong element of individualism” (p. 90).
“Symbolic interactionism leaves us without any way to explain how it is that a person is able to grasp others’ states of mind from gestures” (p. 90).
“Finally, there is a strong flavor of social determinism in symbolic interactionism” (p. 90).
My first observation is that points 1 and 3 are somewhat contradictory: there is a strong element of individualism, yet it is highly socially determinant. This sounds to me like the two aspects are balanced. So, I’m not too sure where to go with these two points.
My second observation is that in my own reading of Mead’s work, I thought he went to great lengths to explain how we learn what others are thinking through a sort of dance of gestures. In fact, as people interact, we might say they empirically experiment with gesture and imitation. They interpret and internalize the feedback they get from actions and observations of actions. Here are some relevant quotes from Mead’s book:
In the introduction, Charles Morris writes: “Philosophically the position is here an objective relativism; qualities of the object may yet be relative to a conditioning organism. A certain portion of the world, as experienced, is private; but a portion is social or common . . .” (p. xix).
“The individual has, as it were, gotten outside of his limited world by taking the roles of others, being assured through communication empirically grounded and tested that in all these cases the world presents the same appearance. Where this is attained, experience is social, common, shared; it is only against this common world that the individual distinguishes his own private experience” (Morris, intro to Mead, 1934 p. xxix).
In Mead’s words: “It is not essential that the individuals should give an identical meaning to the particular stimulus in order that each may properly respond. People get into a crowd and move this way, and that way; they adjust themselves to the people coming toward them, as we say, unconsciously. They move in an intelligent fashion with reference to each other, and perhaps all of them think of something entirely different, but they do find in the gestures in which there is a co-operative activity without any symbol that means the same thing to all” (p. 55).
In this last quote, this seems akin to Gergen’s contention that “meaning is achieved through coordinated action. Thus we may say that we understand each other when we effectively coordinate our actions—drawing from traditions in ways that are mutually satisfactory” (p. 111).
At this point in my reading, I see the foundations of Mead’s work and social constructionism more commensurable than suggested by Gergen.
References
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self & society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. (C. W. Morris, Ed.) (Vol. 13). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Do social constructionists take a relativist stance? Yes. Do they argue that there is no underlying or foundational reality? No. According to Gergen, our relationships allow us to make sense of our world(s). “Relationships stand prior to all that is intelligible” (p. 6). There is a reality. But, it is through our cultural and linguistic traditions that we perceive and interpret it. The exact nature of the reality or Truth is not what is sought (or possible to discover).
His example of the desk is helpful: “In my world the desk is solid, mahogany coloured, weighs some 180 lbs, and is odourless” (p. 7). But, depending on one’s traditions, these statements are arguable. He provides these examples:
Atomic physicist: The desk is not solid.
Psychologist: The desk has no colour as colour is merely our interpretation of light waves on our retinas.
Rocket scientist: The weight of the desk depends on the gravitational field.
Biologist: To a dog, the desk is likely a cornucopia of scent.
All of these hypothetical individuals come to these views by virtue of their traditions—that is, their relationships within their socio-linguistic cultures: “Understandings of the world are achieved through coordinations among persons—negotiations, agreements, comparing views and so on” (p. 6).
Gergen appears to agree with Hacking in that our understandings of the world may be expressed in many different ways. (Hacking refers to this as contingency (1999, p. 72)). There are multiple options. We need not call a quark a “quark”. We may have chosen a different word or taken a different approach to describing the quark-phenomenon. There are or could be equally viable alternatives: “. . . no particular language is privileged in terms of its picturing the world for what it is; innumerable accounts are possible” (p. 22).
Our relationships affect how we perceive the world because they influence what we look for and what we consider possible. Gergen mentions Berger and Luckmann’s phrase “plausibility structures” which lead us to view some things as “natural, taken for granted reality” (p. 23).
Gergen also broaches the issue of Cartesian dualism: internal vs. external, mind vs. body, individual vs. collective, etc. In the dualist way of thinking, the mind (subjective) is separate from the world (objective). Along this line, our mind (as we express it through language) mirrors the experience of the external world (p. 42). This way of viewing the world has become accepted in much of the Western tradition as the common sense way to approach the world and guides what we take for granted.
Common-sense categorizations presumably capture the basic essence or “intrinsic qualities” of sets of individuals or aspects of our reality (p. 52). In our day-to-day, practical experience, these categories can be very useful and allow us to interact quickly and without thinking. But, they can also be constraining and imprisoning, locking us into certain modes of behaviour. Consider, for example, what happens to people who are labeled mentally-ill. Social constructionists seek to examine taken-for-granted concepts. When they do, they often cause discomfort. As anti-essentialists, they open up to scrutiny to categorizations of people and the world.
Gergen also indirectly alludes to Hacking’s looping effect: “if informed of a research hypothesis in the human sciences, people can typically choose not to confirm it” (p. 60). Hacking would say that people are of an “interactive kind” (1999, p. 32)—that is, they are aware of what is said about them and react to that knowledge.
More significant to my own work so far, Gergen also mentions Harré’s Positioning Theory.” The concept of positioning calls attention to the fact that you are positioned to be a certain kind of person by each of these individuals [within specified contexts] . . . your identity is dependent upon how you are positioned” (p. 70). [Note the importance of relationships in the development and maintenance of identity.]
The flight home from London yesterday was uneventful—always a good thing while crossing the ocean. Because we were following the sun, it felt like one long, sunny day affording more hours of reading time. So, I tackled Hacking’s work:
Although written by a philosopher, this book is fairly accessible for non-philosophers such as myself. (No offense to philosophers.) To my own joy and appreciation, the book is sprinkled with some good-natured humour in its pokes at other thinkers, both past and present.
I will try to summarize the main points that I am taking away from this reading. But first a quote to mollify the more extreme positions that can be take for or against social constructionism:
Many social constructionists about the natural sciences appear to dislike the sciences. Nevertheless, constructionists do not maintain that the propositions received in the natural sciences are in general false. They do not believe that artifacts, such as airplanes, engineered in the light of scientific knowledge, usually fail to work. Constructionists are creatures of Humian habit. They expect airplanes to get you there, and know that science, technology, and enterprise are essential for air travel. (p. 67) [Needless to say, I took this to heart during the flight.]
To some, this quote might indicate a lack of commitment to the social constructionist project. I would prefer to think of it as demonstrative of the complexity and ongoing misunderstanding of this philosophical approach. Further, as Hacking points out that constructionists are not always clear on what is being constructed: objects, ideas, types of people?
Local vs. overarching claims
Hacking argues that much of social constructionism (SC) is focused on the local rather than the universal.
Local
Overarching
Raises awareness of an issue, label, and category within a given context. Local claims can be independent of one another and may be related to an overarching claim (p. 6). Examples of local claims discussed in the book include gender, child abuse, schizophrenia, women refugees.
Extreme view: Our world and all our conceptions of it and knowledge about it are [all] socially constructed (p. 6).
Many local claims are predicated upon the rationale that the claim, X, is not inevitable. That is, the current state of things is not the result of an essential underlying nature of the thing being brought into focus. Rather, this state has been shaped by “social events, forces, history, all of which could have been different” (p. 7).
For some, this position is enough. Others might naturally move on to two more propositions: the current state of X is bad. And, that X should cease to exist or be transformed to a better state. That said, Hacking spends some time discussion different types of social constructionists: historicists, ironics, reformists, those who unmask, rebels, and revolutionaries (p. 19). [I’m not sure that my use of the word “proposition” is correct in the field of logic—any advice on this is much appreciated.]
Subjectivity and objectivity in ontology and epistemology
To progress to some of the most significant aspects of this book, it seems necessary to acknowledge some of Hacking’s definitions.
Objects
In our local matrices, objects are often ontologically subjective. Hacking provides the example of rent. Rent is a concept that has come into existence through human interaction and institutions. But, it is epistemologically objective in that you must pay your rent: you pay a specific sum at a certain, expected time (p. 22).
My Oxford-Canadian Dictionary (2 nd ed.) defines objective as “concerned with outward things or events; dealing with or stressing what is external to the mind”. Subjective is defined as “proceeding from or belonging to the individual consciousness or perception; partial, misconceived, or distorted”. These definitions, with regard to internal/external, might come in handy a little further down.
Ideas
According to Hacking, ideas refer to “conceptions, concepts, beliefs, [and] attitudes to theories” (p. 22). A note I wrote in the margins: Are ideas epistemologically subjective? Are they ontologically objective? I’d like to consider these questions in more depth.
Elevator words
He also refers to “elevator words” (EWs) which he distinguishes from objects that you can perceive in the world. EWs are circularly defined in that they cannot be defined without somehow referring back to themselves (to their synonyms and other EWs). Examples include “facts, truth, reality, and knowledge” (p. 22). As an example, my dictionary defines fact in relation to truth and reality as well as various synonyms of truth and reality. (Hacking also describes a cheeky game that you can play with EWs, but I digress.)
Some examples
Baseball: balls and strikes
Ontologically subjective – depend on human rules and institutions (p. 30).
vs
Quarks
“Not self-evidently ontologically subjective.” The phenomenon that we refer to as a quark is scientifically independent of human rules and institutions (p. 30).
Interactive kinds vs. Indifferent kinds
What I am presenting here is a summary. Hacking does spend some time explaining his selection of these classifications/titles to express the kinds.
Interactive Kind
Indifferent Kind
People
Self-aware: “aware of what is said about them, thought about them, done to them” (p. 31). Aware of their classification.
Modify their behavior accordingly.
(Also see p. 103).
vs
Objects
Not self-aware in the same way as people. Do not know of their classification.
Objects do not modify their behaviour in reaction to awareness of their classification.
There is no “looping effect” (p. 59).
Constructionism vs. Structuralism
With reference to constructionism and the sciences, hacking differentiates these concepts as follows:
Constructionism
vs
Structuralism
Nominalist in nature
Stability comes from factors external to overt representations (“external to the preferred content of science” (p. 92)) such as social factors, interests, networks, etc.
The way of the world is not inevitable. Other choices could have been made. Example, physics did not have to develop in a “quarky way” (must find page). Note how our conceptions have been changed by the theoretical work of Einstein.
There is an underlying structure to the world and the objects within it.
Stability comes from evidence within / supported by science itself: internal (i.e., not dependent upon social factors, interests, and networks outside of the scientific experiment/observations).
It is inevitable that the world is the way it is.
Hacking’s definition of constructionism
“Social constructionists teach that items we had thought were inevitable are social products” (p. 47).
Constructionism: “. . . various sociological, historical, and philosophical projects that aim at displaying or analyzing actual, historically situated, social interactions or causal routes that led to, or were involved in, the coming into being or establishing of some present entity or fact” (p. 48).
Social constructionism in my work
I struggled initially with the apparent emphasis on the stance of social constructionists to change society through the unmasking of concepts. As I conduct my own research into identity in networked learning, I had to ask myself what my stance is. My intent is not to be rebellious, revolutionary, nor ironic. My interest is to understand how we form and manage our identities online. More importantly, I wish to understand how such self-conceptualization affects how we learn. I suppose that effecting change is still my end goal: to reform teaching practices by demonstrating the importance of personal identity management in networked learning. Therefore, I would contend that our online identity/ies is/are not inevitable; we can construct it/them as active learners directing our own future.
As indicated in the title for this blog posting, this was just a start. More to come . . .
I’m in a bit of a hurry today to catch a flight, so this is simply a compilation of quotes to think about with regard to language and the nature of reality.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951)
Realist: “A statement can only have meaning if that statement refers in an obvious way to things actually in the world” (p. 156). (Related to Frege’s reference.)
“Wittgenstein saw the world as a totality of facts, not of things. Facts are logical entities; they can only be asserted or denied. They are not hard, red, round, etc. Things exist in space and time: they have shape, colour, consistency, etc.” (p. 158).
“We cannot demonstrate the limits of language or of the world” (p. 159).
“He decided that what a sentence meant (what language means) is not what the words refer to in the world outside, but the way in which words relate to each other. The way language works is not because it acts like an ideal logic, but because it follows its own working, which is the way people agree language works. This is not something that happens formally, but something the people in a language community grasp automatically” (p. 159).
“We can never get outside language to the reality ‘outside’ language. We can only use language in order to talk about language. All language is shared by at least two people. There is no such thing as a ‘private’ language” (p. 160).
“We cannot think unless we possess language” (p. 161).
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
“His greatest insights include the notion that whenever language expresses an idea it changes it” (p. 184).
Structuralism: “Its main teaching is that reality is composed of relationships rather than things” (p. 187).
“Structuralism tends to divide our perceptions of the world into binary categories, minimal pairs: good/bad . . . etc. It analyses the structures that lie behind or beneath things. It tends to distrust history and concentrates instead on the web of patterns holding at any given time. Derrida reacted against this outlook” (p. 188).
“Speaking is a sign of presence. When we speak to somebody they are with us. Writing is a sign of absence. We write to somebody because they are at a remove. The more words are shut away in writing, logocentrism maintains maintains, the more they are copies than the real thing” (p. 189). –>
“Derrida attacked this theory of presence and origins by attacking the notion than speech has priority over writing. He was not making an historical claim here; he was not saying that our primitive ancestors could write before they could speak. He was saying that both forms of language are signs; both exhibit partial absence and partial presence, which is to say that both are relational” (p. 189).
“Writing is always eventually cut free from its sender and the person to whom it is addressed. It is then read, frequently with different results, by third parties for whom it could never have been intended” (p. 192).
“. . . we only have access to what is beyond language through this new notion of text. This is the meaning of his dictum: ‘There is nothing outside the text’ (p. 193).
Derrida’s “différance” (not “différence”): “. . . meaning is never immediate; it is always deferred” (p. 189). –> “This new word does not stand for a new concept; rather, it plays around the notion of undecidability. Language, thought and meaning are now all in an uncomfortable position; they are unstable. They force us to ask ourselves if language can be relied upon” (p. 192).
“Comfort is restored with the reinstatement of binary order. But what if this binary order cannot be recalled; what if undecidability is the norm?” (p. 190).
“Once language enters the public domain, the speaker or writer loses control over it” (p. 191).
Reference
Johnston, D. (2006). A brief history of philosophy: From Socrates to Derrida (p. 211). London, UK: Continuum Books.
Fontana, A., & Prokos, A. H. (2007). The Interview: From Formal to Postmodern (p. 148). Left Coast Press, Inc. 
Gergen, K. J. (2009). An Invitation to Social Construction (p. 200). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. Retrieved from 