Contextual deconstruction

Deconstruction, as it is used in this thesis, is not a new idea. The term is met in the writings of Foucault (1978) and Derrida (1981), and of theorists of the post-modern like Cohen (1985), Cooke (1990) and Featherstone (1993) who use it to describe the notions of progress and globalisation. In contemporary deconstructive writings, Derrida’s position is a commanding one. For Ellis (1989), who questions the use and the validity of deconstructive criticism, there is a growing tendency to assume that an interest in theory of criticism automatically means an interest in the work of Derrida. Derrida’s position on deconstruction, although ambiguous at some points, can be summarised as a mode of textual theory and analysis. Many critics of deconstruction believe that for Derrida, contemporary deconstruction subverts almost everything in the tradition, putting in question received ideas of the sign and language, the text, the context, the author, the reader, the role of history, the work of interpretation, and the forms of critical writing. Deconstruction undoes the comforts of mastery and consensus that underlie the illusion that objectivity is situated somewhere outside the self. It is the active antithesis of everything that criticism ought to be, if one accepts its traditional values and concepts. Ultimately deconstruction effects revision of traditional thinking (p.153).

The advocates of deconstruction believe that deconstruction is a bold, provocative, and innovative movement, which challenges the status-quo with radical, disturbing ideas and that it is a new mode of criticism far more sophisticated than anything in criticism heretofore. The opposition to deconstructive criticism claims that if we attempt to abstract the most persistent and widely held conceptions of the character of criticism and critical activity, the

results will be anything, but the belief in a single, clear, statable textual meaning that is deconstruction’s target.

Norris (1983) suggests that the most frequent charge against deconstruction is that it merely takes texts apart in a spirit of perverse and negative zeal (p.21). Ryle suggests an analogy between deconstruction and a structural engineer whose tests are carried out at the physical limits of tolerance exhibited by their material. Engineers stretch, twist, compress and batter bits of metal until they collapse, but it is through such tests that they determine the strains which the metal will withstand. In somewhat the same way, philosophical arguments bring out the logical powers of the ideas under investigation, by fixing the precise forms of logical mishandling under which they refuse to work. Ryle’s procedures are built upon this sense of language as a multiform and tensile medium, and deconstruction as the lever which raises that tension to breaking-point (see Ellis, 1989).

At this stage of the research I use deconstruction in its practical form to compress, stretch, collapse and dismantle the transcriptions in a way that enables me to create comparative units. Perhaps deconstruction is not an appropriate term to use, but since the literature around concept formation and the critique on issues that concern reading of the text lead me there, I cannot avoid using it. Reduction or fragmentation would be better terms since I initially reduce the number of words in each transcript.

Discussants Vicky Eleni Miguel Vangelis Sylvie Justin Andreas Justina Erika Gregorio

Number of words in the transcribed text 11,589 7,162 9,917 8,079 8,254 9,973 11,754 9,043 7.083 7,870 Table 2

Total number of words in the transcriptions

In the analysis I do not deconstruct students‘ experiences. I deconstruct the transcriptions. I find many similarities in terms of how deconstructionists take texts apart and the way I reduce the number of words in the transcriptions.

This process helps me to break-down the text to its ultimate stage of reduction, in a way that brings out new ideas and new concepts for investigation. This is why I call the first stage of the analysis contextual deconstruction, because it is the way in which I use the reduced text to extract ideas, opinions and concepts which are verbally expressed in the conversations. Reduction of the number of words in the transcriptions is not something that is done on the spur of the moment. It is developed systematically and it is done with a quantifiable precision (Table 2 & Graph 1).

The text is divided in paragraphs, the paragraphs are broken down to sentences and then to single words. I keep an hierarchy in the whole process. I begin with the longest and more elaborate phrases and end with the minimum amount of words in a sentence. Verbs, adjectives and nouns constitute separate entities in each sentence. Isolating a single word from a phrase may change the whole meaning of it. I do not overlook this change since I revisit the text at a later stage, but my aim is to create new meanings from those entities. I do this by breaking down this first level of analysis into three stages (Figure 11). Each stage is a further step to deconstruction and aims to create the comparative units. Deconstruction takes place in the background, but it helps me to categorise my evidence in order to reach the final product. I do that not just because I want to create a basis for comparison, but because I want to follow the logic behind every phrase that is used by the students to express their emotions ideas and opinions.

As Lofland (1970) suggests, much social research suffers from analytic interruptus. This means that in their development of categories many analysts fail to follow through to the implied logical conclusion to reach the initially implied climax. Taking the example of typologies of strategies, Lofland argues that the

investigator must take the time and trouble to assemble self-consciously all the materials on how a problem is dealt with by the persons under study.

Vicky Eleni

Miguel

Vangelis Sylvie Justin

Andreas Justina Erika

Gregorio 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000

Number of words in the transcribed text

Number of words

Graph 1

To tease out the variations among the assembled range of instances of strategies. To classify them into an articulate set of types of strategies, and to present them to the reader in some orderly preferably named and numbered manner (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983: 42-43). For Hammersley & Atkinson (1983) however, there is a little point in developing highly systematised typologies and models if they provide little purchase on the evidence. My typology is not a purely logical or conceptual exercise. It is a constant recourse to the evidence. This is further justified with the use of reconstruction. As the categories of the analysis are clarified and develop in relation to one another, so the links between concepts and the transcribed text are specified and refined. This applies in the perspectives from which postgraduate students of human and social science view the world.

In many cases the number of words in a transcription is reduced from nearly 12,000 words (Graph 1) to only 200 (Graph 2). The reduction is done in a simple way that I call contextual representation (Tables 3 & 4). At this stage of deconstruction I number each paragraph of each transcription individually. Then I make a numbered list of the paragraphs in each transcription. There are

transcriptions which have 100 paragraphs and others with more than 300 paragraphs. DE CO NS T R U C T ION Contextual Representation Conceptual Input Contextual Dialectics Ob servational Un its TEXT Figure 11

Contextual deconstruction of the transcriptions takes place at three stages: contextual representation where I rephrase the transcribed text to shorter phrases, conceptual input where I

choose the most representative words and concepts that relate to an emotional or psychological situation and contextual dialectics where I create pairs of these concepts based on the opposite or

corresponding qualities which they represent.

Numbering each paragraph separately is not an easy task. The conversations are transcribed verbatim and in many cases the paragraphs are interrupted by words like ‘yeah...’ and ‘mmm...’ or short phrases like ‘I see...’ or ‘I know what you mean...’. In cases like these I read the whole paragraph again to see to what these words refer. In other cases I listen to the recorded conversation again to recall the voice and the manner of the discussants as they speak and decide if they mean anything by using single words or short phrases. Some of these words and phrases just confirm what we discuss previously. In many cases the discussants are trying to avoid a question while in others they are just giving time to themselves to think or they imply that they agree with what I say.

After this the paragraphs are divided into smaller sentences that are numbered individually in relation to the paragraph to which they belong. For example the first sentence of paragraph §4 in a transcription, is numbered as §4a (Table 4).

Discussant: Yeah, the weird...oh what I hate in those part-time jobs. The thing is that they’re so menial that people don’t ever give you respect. Oh! bloody expect my respect...you know... hmmm, you know people look at you working in a bar and I just got my bachelors and I knew that all these hours I was coming in all I was interested in was to do some research work...so...

Researcher: And they don’t care about it?

Discussant: Come on I don’t get paid more than you are the last couple of years love...

Researcher: I see, I see...

Discussant: So...I don’t know...professional...professional for me is something like my dad did

which is managing your own work. You know. I think the professional bit is when I will have my doctors and I can be a professional historian. Right now I’m trying to be...maybe will be one day, I mean...only the bachelors in history, it doesn’t make you a professional historian to have a doctorate it does now! And to actually have the job and writing books and publishing. Maybe it’s the publishing as well. You know, but it’s official, this is you, it isn’t just something to tell to the university, it’s out to the world what you have to say about history that makes you professional.

Researcher: You mean that you are professional when you’re exposed...

Discussant: Yeah! It’s out...you have a book...this is out for the historical community, at large, to

meet not just the internal tutors within your own space, that’s like you long for an approval, you know going like, oh, that was nice dear or oh God that was a bit terrible wasn’t it? It is about being out to the world. Open to criticism. That’s my professional, there’s money, there’s...expanding I think your territory...expanding...

Table 3

Abstract from my conversation with Vicky.

Paraphrasing demands great control of the text. When I read each transcription separately I realise that it is not only I who is in control over what it is said and how it is said. The experience of the discussants as it appears in the text contributes greatly as well. The suggestion that the author cannot be in control of the text is resolved in my case by interpreting the ‘dialogical’ mode of the text in a dialectical way. The text is envisaged as the product of multiple voices. This activity provokes an interrogation of the world through the word (Okely, 1992: 13).

For Barthes (1982), addressing the question of ‘how’ to write about the world is not solely a matter of experimentation with style, it is a rediscovery of the world (cited in Hastrup, 1992: 118).

This is much what I do simply by mediating between the transcription and its analysis by paraphrasing or rediscovering the experience of the discussants. I simply fit what the students say in the conversations to the analysis. I do not transfer their voices, but I translate their experience by rephrasing the transcriptions. I gradually come to terms with my new role as the mediator between the discussants’ words in the transcriptions and the new paraphrased text that I create. In the next stage of contextual deconstruction I realise that I

intervene in the cultures of the discussants, but at the same time I feel that they intervene in mine.