Afterword: Narrative Inquiry and the Researching of Academic and Professional Genres

Transcription

1 BRIAN PALTRIDGE Afterword: Narrative Inquiry and the Researching of Academic and Professional Genres This volume contains a range of analyses of academic and professional genres. Each of the studies reported on in the various chapters gives us a deeper understanding of how people in different academic and professional settings use language to achieve their particular goals. What we know less about, however, is how people who work in these areas develop their expertise in the use of these genres, how students learn to participate in them, and the issues they face in doing this. One way in which this might be explored is through the use of narrative inquiry (Clandlinin/Connelly 2000; Riley/Hawe 2005; Webster/Mertova 2007), an approach that has the potential to help us further understand how academics, professionals, and learners engage with genres in the process of learning to acquire and engage with them. Narrative inquiry is increasingly being employed in TESOLrelated research (see Bakhuizen 2011; Bell 2002, 2011; Murray 2009; Phillion/He 2007; Pavlenko 2002) as well as in research into academic genres (Casanave 2005; Cho 2010; Pomerantz/Kearney 2012), although less so in research into the acquisition and use of professional genres. Narrative inquiry involves the collection of stories for the purpose of research to enable us to see the world through the eyes of others (Riley/Hawe 2005: 226). The stories might be in the form of journals, letters, autobiographies, memoirs, interviews and orally told stories. These stories are then interpreted with reference to the research literature in the field, leading to implications for pedagogy, further research or theory building (Murray 2009). Narrative inquiry is more than just the re-telling of stories, however, but rather an exploration of the underlying insights and assumptions that are illustrated by the stories (Bell 2002). One key feature of narrative inquiry, then, is that it is able to provide insights into people s beliefs and experiences.

2 500 Brian Paltridge As Bell (2002) points out, people construct stories that support their interpretation of themselves, leaving out events and experiences that do not fit with the view they have of themselves. This can allow the researcher to uncover views, values and assumptions that the storyteller themself is often not consciously aware of. Narrative inquiry, thus, is a research approach that focuses on the lived experiences and personal knowledge of people. Study participants tell (and re-tell) stories to the researchers who then construct their own story of the participant s stories for the research report (or book or article) on which they are working (Casanave 2005). Casanave (2002), thus, for her book Writing Games gathered the stories of multilingual writers which she then used to create a literacy portrait of each of the writers. She then used these portraits to reflect on the writers experiences in order to gain both practical and theoretical insights into their experiences of learning to write in higher education settings. Murray (2009) and Phillion and He (2007) provide summaries of research that has employed narrative inquiry in the area of English language teaching and learning. Work that will be of special interest to readers of this book include Pomerantz and Kearney s (2012) examination of a Taiwanese student s attempts to work out what counts as good writing in her studies at a large US university, and Cho s (2010) study of Korean scholars academic writing experiences, also in the US. Casanave (2010) examines the experience of graduate students in Japan writing a doctoral dissertation in English that employs narrative inquiry, while Bell (2011) discusses the challenges and rewards of publishing narrative inquiry in the area of TESOL. Pomerantz and Kearney s (2012) study aimed to get insights into the conversations that second language students have with people about their writing and what these conversations reveal about them as multilingual writers. In their article Pomerantz and Kearney focus on the case of a writer from Taiwan, whom they name Victoria. For the analysis of their data they drew on a framework proposed by Ochs and Capps (2001: 2) that aims to demystify life events and establish coherence across past, present, and as yet unrealised experiences. Through their analysis of the narratives that Victoria told, Pomerantz and Kearney were able to get a view of her sense of good academic

3 Afterword 501 writing as well as how she saw herself as a multilingual academic writer. In Cho s (2010) study, narratives were analysed to explore how Korean scholars who had moved to the United States negotiate their multilingual identities, what factors they associate with their academic biliteracy development, and how their views of academic writing in Korean and English relate to each other. The participants in the study used English largely for scholarly purposes and Korean for personal purposes. Cho s study gives us insights into why this was the case and what the impediments were for the scholars in having the same level of academic literacy in Korean as they had in English. Casanave s (2010) study helps us understand the issues second language students face when writing up research that employs narrative inquiry. She found that writer identity and the use of personal elements in their texts were things that the writers struggled with. For example, when and how could they use I in their texts and to what extent could they include their personal experience in their writing? While Casanave, herself, is an experienced and well-published writer (and able to use I and draw on personal experience in her writing), she wonders to what extent doctorial students who are new to a field of study can do this and whether, for them, they are taking a risk in doing this. In a recently completed doctoral thesis, Zhang (2012) employed narrative inquiry to explore the acquisition of professional identities by Business English students in a Chinese university as they learn to write the genres of their profession. He found that diverse professional identities were taken up by the students and that these were related to different configurations of professional goals, values and perspectives on what it means to be an international business professional. Zhang's research and the other work reported on in this chapter show the strong potential narrative inquiry has for helping us understand how learners acquire and use professional and academic genres. Bell (2011) discusses the challenges that narrative inquiry presents for researchers wanting to publish their work in peer-reviewed academic journals. She draws on her own experience as someone who has carried out and published this kind of research over a period of twenty years. While publishing this work has its challenges, it also,

4 502 Brian Paltridge she argues, has its rewards. Amongst these are the ways in which the research resonates with its audiences and, as a result, appears to be well remembered. If one can overcome the challenges that arise in the publication of the work, she argues, it will not easily be forgotten, and have an ongoing impact on the field. Narrative inquiry, thus, has a lot to offer research into academic and professional genres and is an approach that we should hope to see a lot more of in the future. References Barkhuizen, Gary Narrative Knowledging in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 45/3, Bell, Jill Sinclair Narrative Inquiry: More Than Just Telling Stories. TESOL Quarterly 36/3, Bell, Jill Sinclair Reporting and Publishing Narrative Inquiry in TESOL: Challenges and Rewards. TESOL Quarterly 45/3, Casanave, Christine Pearson Writing Games: Multicultural Case Studies of Academic Literacy Practices in Higher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Casanave, Christine Pearson Uses of Narrative in L2 Writing Research. In Matsuda, Paul Kei / Silva, Tony (eds) Second Language Writing Research: Perspectives on the Process of Knowledge Construction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, Casanave, Christine Pearson Taking Risks?: A Case Study of Three Doctoral Students Qualitative Dissertations at an American University in Japan. Journal of Second Language Writing 19/1, Clandlinin, D. Jean / Connelly, F. Michael Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cho, Sookyung Academic Biliteracy Challenges: Korean Scholars in the United States. Journal of Second Language Writing 19/2,

5 Afterword 503 Murray, Garold Narrative Inquiry. In Heigham, Juanita / Croker, Robert A. (eds) Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, Ochs, Elinor / Capps, Lisa Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pavlenko, Anita Narrative Study: Whose Story is it, Anyway? TESOL Quarterly 36/2, Phillion, Joann / He, Ming Fang Narrative Inquiry in ELT Research. In Cummins / Jim, Davison, Chris (eds) International Handbook of English Language Teaching. Part Two. New York: Springer, Pomerantz, Anne / Kearney, Erin Beyond Write-Talk-Revise- (Repeat) : Using Narrative to Understand One Multilingual Student s Interactions Around Writing. Journal of Second Language Writing 21/3, Riley, Therese / Hawe, Penelope Researching Practice: The Methodological Case for Narrative Inquiry. Health Education Research 20/2, Webster, Leonard / Mertova Patricie Using Narrative Inquiry as a Research Method. London: Routledge. Zhang, Zuocheng Business English Education in China and the Construction of Professional Identities. PhD thesis, University of Sydney.

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