Cherry-picking and anecdotalism: How not to report research
Dr Ema Ushioda
This workshop will discuss problems and pitfalls in representing qualitative research data
when writing up a thesis. Examiners have been known to pounce on cherry-picking reporting
practices where analysis seems based on particular data excerpts chosen to illustrate a point,
thus verging on anecdotalism. The workshop will consider how analysis and reporting
practices can achieve greater transparency and represent the data in more rigorous and
systematic ways.
Reflexivity of researcher's role: how should researchers present themselves in their
theses?
Dr Steve Mann
This workshop invites you to consider issues of reflexivity in the collection, analysis and
representation of data. It focuses primarily on issues of presentation and representation in the
final paper/thesis. Drawing on examples, the workshop opens up issues which are best not
swept under the carpet. The session looks primarily at interview data. If you can read Steve's
article in 'Applied Linguistics' (32/1 6-24) on interviews, it will help prepare you for this
session. If you can bring a section of your own interview data it would also be helpful.
However, this is optional and you can still attend without either reading the paper or bringing
data.
Dilemmas in conducting research with younger language learners?
Dr Annamaria Pinter
This workshop will address some methodological and ethical dilemmas in applied linguistics
research focussed on child participants. The content will be tailored to the audience’s relevant
experience in teaching and researching younger language learners in a variety of contexts.
The workshop will also focus on reviewing published case studies and on negotiating
solutions to address methodological and ethical difficulties in future studies.
Exploring professional discourse
Dr Stephanie Schnurr
Starting from the premise that discourse (in its various forms) plays a crucial role in most
professional practices, we explore what professional discourse is and how it may be
approached from different angles. We will work with various authentic examples of spoken
and written data in order to explore some of the specific features of professional discourse
and discuss some of the current trends and topics of research in this area. This workshop is
open not only to those students who work on professional discourse but to everybody who
has a research interest in working with authentic data.
A short history of systems of thought - and their consequences
Dr Malcolm N. MacDonald
From a naive modern purview, we understand the world through ever-evolving forms of
knowledge, such as biology, sociology and history which, by way of the development of
technology and research techniques within the disciplines of the empirical and human
sciences, yield more and more transparent insights into the human condition and our place in
the universe. In this spirit, our own discipline of applied linguistics is also regarded as
providing the basis for knowledge about how people learn and use languages in particular
social contexts. However, for some time the narrative of unhaltable scientific and
epistemological progress has been questioned by thinkers such as Michel Foucault (1970,
1972) and Thomas Kuhn (1972). The first part of this workshop will draw in particular upon
the work of Michel Foucault in order to problematise the modernist version of the history of
the empirical sciences, and considering them instead as ‘discursive formations’ through
which relations of power are constituted. It will consider in particular Foucault’s contention
that different ages, or ‘epistemes’, manifest their own historically contingent paradigms, or
’systems of thought’. Furthermore, transitions from one episteme to the next are not
characterised by the orderly march of knowledge, but rather by ‘ruptures’, ‘discontinuities’
and fissures. The second part of this workshop will return closer to home to consider our own
discipline of applied linguistics. Arguably, the origins of modern linguistics dates back to
Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour in 1959. The seminal texts of the different
strands of applied linguistics were mainly written in the 1970s –transformational-generative
grammar (e.g. Chomsky, 1965), which informs mainstream SLA; speech act theory and
systemic-functional linguistics, which informs ELT methodology (e.g. Austin, 1962;
Halliday, 1973); and postructuralism (e.g. Foucault, 1977), which informs CDA. Arguably,
the last minor ruction in our field took place with the publication of Bonny Norton’s (1995)
classic paper in TESOL Quarterly; and our field has been performing variations on a set of
increasingly predicable themes ever since. The workshop will conclude by suggesting that we
may be witnessing the dying days of our own particular, historically located, paradigm and
will pose the question – what happens next?
References
Austin, J.L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, N. (1959/1967) A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior. In Leon A. Jakobovits and
Murray S. Miron (eds.), Readings in the Psychology of Language, Prentice-Hall, pp. 142-143.
Chomsky, N. (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Foucault, M. (1970).The Order of Things. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth:Penguin.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1973). Explorations in the Function of Language. London: Edward Arnold.
Kuhn, T. (1970). Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
Peirce, N. B. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1), 931.