Post 8： Disoriented in CA data sessions

Halfway through the CA course, I find myself disoriented in the data sessions. How can this bottom-up qualitative research method lead us anywhere? I am still in serious doubt. As far as I’ve learned, CA is highly data-driven in that the starting point for any discussion or paper is always an audio or a video clip that features some form of social interaction. So it is common in this approach to organize data sessions where researchers invite colleagues to jointly view selected data clips. In data analysis, one should stay close to the selected clip and any claim one make about what happens in the recorded interaction should always be grounded in observations in the clip. And we don’t draw conclusions until a scrutiny of all the details. For trained eyes, detecting structures out of the messy data would be easy because they have experience in where to focus their attention. But our present data sessions strike me as afternoon tea time gossiping—everything seems interesting and no one has a purpose as to what the data can be used for. And I feel more and more bewildered by and lost in the interesting fabric of the data.

I’ve recently read a research report (Honan et al., 2000) that suggests a top-down method. No one could look at the world in pristine eyes. Nor could researchers, who are equipped with a preconception of their own in the form of theoretical frameworks with which to examine the data, to locate their focus and to interpret what they see. In the study, the four researchers (Honan, Knobel, Baker and Davies) are divided into three groups, using their respective qualitative method to examine the same set of date to “portrait” Hannah, a school girl, in what they think are her most relevant and authentic identities. The study is intended to demonstrate the idea that “different analytic approaches radically influence what can be found in the materials,” and that “studies of methods of inquiry are at least as informative as studies of documentary materials for showing the constitutive force of theory in qualitative data analysis (p.30-31).” In the study, Knobel uses the D/discourse theory proposed by Gee, who claims that Discourse is the set of words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, social identities, gestures, glances and so on that can be acquired by enculturation into social practices. By acquisition, we gain membership to a Discourse and as we grow up we gain one membership after another. But some times the Discourses are in conflict with each other. This preconception lends itself to seek particular patterns of ways of talking, acting, valuing, believing, etc. that constitute Hannah’s memberships. The Discourse theory also enables Knobel to see the conflict between Hanna’s two identities: Hanna as a model student who reads quietly during a class and Hanna as a bawdy teen performer. However, conceptualized through the poststructuralist feminist lens, the conflict is readdressed as an agreement because all those identities Hanna assumes are no more than social positions constructed for her to accept and take advantage of. For that matter, Honan and Davies portrait Hanna as a subject who succumbs to the designated social roles for her but goes further to surpass the limits of power assigned to her. Another portrait of Hannan is presented by Baker from the perspective of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, a method that sees our daily mundane conversations not simply as a means to exchange ideas but as accountable social activities. That is why Baker is most concerned with the teacher’s talk and the interview dialogue between Knobel and Hannah. It is not surprising that Hannah is interpreted as a participating member of interactive research under this framing.

I am citing this article to bring forward my question. Is CA a research theory or method? It is common in qualitative research to mix method and theory as far as I have humbly observed (e.g. DA, MDA, Multimodality, etc.). If CA is a theory, is it supposed to be used to guide data collection, to lead us to see the special part of the data and finally, to interpret the data as is illustrated by the qualitative research experiment documented in the paper I mentioned above? If CA is a method, as the nature of this course denotes—an inquiry course, should it be employed to serve certain theoretical framework before significant findings can be made? During the top-down and bottom-up endeavors charactering qualitative field work, how can CA help us to make the two ends meet?

As I have never received any form of comments on my posts, I am not sure whether these questions are to be addressed. Or are they legitimate at all? Or are they just my own illusions that don’t seem to concern others at all?

Reference

Honan, E., Knobel, M., Baker, C., & Davies, B. (2000). Producing possible Hannahs: Theory and the subject of research. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(1), 9-32. doi:10.1177/107780040000600102