In this chapter, I will address the methodological considerations for the methods chosen for this study, study design, rationale for choosing participants, recruitment, data collection method, and the data analysis procedures in relation to the purpose of the study. The study concentrates on how through the use of humor in their professional settings – university classrooms – ITAs co-construct their identities with their students.
I apply qualitative research methodology to examine how, moment-by-moment, ITAs negotiate their identities in the humorous exchanges with the students they teach and interact with in the classroom. I am interested in humor as a social action: what it means for
conversationalists, what type of interaction takes place among participants during humorous sequences, and how through the use of humor they construct their identities. Since I attempt to understand the meaning of humorous activities in the classroom, qualitative inquiry is
appropriate: it is used to “study things in naturalistic settings, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meaning people bring to them” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 3).
The interpretive paradigm, or “basic set of beliefs that guide action” (Guba, 1990, p. 17), that I chose for this study is constructivist. Taking a constructivist approach to this study is important because together with the participants, I build the knowledge of the phenomena I investigate. According to social constructivists, the meaning-making activities “shape action (or inaction)” (Lincoln & Guba, 2000, p. 167) and, based on our experiences gained from these activities, we construct our knowledge, test it against our new experiences and against understanding practices of others (Schwandt, 2000).
A constructivist perspective is rooted in the ethnographic approaches (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). While ethnography fosters an array of methods and approaches, this study fits best with microethnography. I will discuss this methodology in the next section.
Microethnography
Microethnography is a method of studying naturally occurring interaction which rests on the “model of a practical speaker-hearer” (Erickson, 1985, p. 294). According to Erickson, face- to-face interaction engages speakers and hearers in an active process of making sense of each other’s performance, moment-by-moment as it occurs in real time. Listeners attend to what speakers are doing at the moment of speaking, while speakers focus on how listeners react to what they say. In other words, microethnography is the study of the interactional competence of “a practical speaker-hearer” or how the speaker-hearer verbal and non-verbal behaviors
complement each other during interaction and how speaker-hearer verbal and non-verbal actions affect the outcome of the encounter.
Reciprocity and Complementarity
The key feature of the microethnogaphic theoretical perspective is that conversationalists take into account each other’s actions during interaction. Erickson and Schultz (1982) maintain that the organization of face-to-face social interaction is two-dimensional. The social action is reciprocal in terms of changing and sequencing in real time when conversationalists react
retrospectively to something that was done in the past and prospectively by foreseeing something that will happen in future. The social action is complementary in that participants are taking account of each other’s verbal and non-verbal actions simultaneously and synchronically thus “completing (complementing) the actions of the other” (p. 215).
Contextualization Cues
Erickson’s notion of reciprocity and complementarity builds on Gumperz’s (1986; 1992) proposition that conversationalists interpret and make meaning of on-going interaction by means of contextualization cues defined as implicit signals, which could be verbal, non-verbal, or prosodic. A partial list of contextualization cues compiled by Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, and Shuart-Faris (2005) includes paralinguistic/prosodic and verbal cues, kinesics, and
proxemics. Paralinguistic/prosody cues are pausing, changes in volume, tone, rhythm, pace, and intonation patterns as well as stylizing patterns of intonation and stress, which are an application of intonation and stress patterns not typical for the situation in which they are actually used. An example of stylizing patterns of intonation and stress could be a serious tone of voice while performing a humorous utterance. Verbal cues include change of register and syntactical shifts. Kinesics involve facial expression, eye movement and eye gaze, eye contact and lack of it, shifts in eye contact, facial direction, posture, and parakinesic shifts which involve body movement and changes in body movement styles. Proxemics incorporate postural configurations and distancing.
In Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, and Shuart-Faris’s (2005) interpretation,
contextualization cues communicate the action that has just occurred and provide the ground for the reaction to this action; therefore, contextualization cues should be noticeable and provide a “material basis” for making sense of what has happened because “in order to react, a person or a group must have something to react to” (p. 9).
A microethnographic framework is suitable for the purposes of this study. Since the meaning of the exchange is constructed based on the immediate interpretation of signals locally by both parties participating in the exchange, the initiation and the reaction to humor should be
emphasized by contextualization cues signaled by the conversationalists. If the participants interpret each other’s intentions accordingly, the outcome will match the intentions, e.g., to entertain the audience, even if this entertainment occurs at somebody’s expense. Any breach of reciprocity and complementarity could be somehow noticed and negotiated or for some reasons ignored. All of these outcomes carry meaning and help construct the participants’ identities, or more specifically, attributes of their identities, at this point of interaction. In other words, conversationalists disclose who they are at this point of time. Overall, microethnography delves into “how, behaviorally, the what of social action gets done” (Erickson, 1982) in real time. It tends to illuminate listener-speaker coordination of social action as well as to identify the relationships between speakers’ social identity and their speech (Erickson, 1982, 1992, 1996).
Study Design
When conducting qualitative studies, researchers believe that the reality perceived by people inside and outside the study “will be social, cultural, situational, and contextual – and they want the interactivity of functioning and context as well described as possible” (Stake, 2005, p. 452). Qualitative researchers combine several types of data and several types of methodological approaches to the data collection and analysis (Denzin, 1970; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Stake, 2005). The technique of combining several types of data and several methodological approaches is called triangulation, which helps researchers to avoid personal researcher’s biases that can stem from using only one methodology (Denzin, 1970) and “to clarify meaning, verifying the repeatability of observation and interpretation” (Stake, 2005, p. 454). I followed Denzin’s (1970) guidelines and combined three types of triangulation: data triangulation, participant triangulation, and methodological triangulation. I describe these types of triangulation in the next section.
Methodological, Data, and Participant Triangulation
The design of this study incorporates methodological, data and participant triangulation. According to Denzin (1970), participant triangulation refers to the data collection from different participants. Methodological triangulation is a combination of several methods/techniques of data collection, or how, by means of what procedures, the data were collected. Data triangulation integrates the data collected from different sources.
Participant Triangulation
Since both instructors and their students were involved in the identity construction, both instructors’ and students’ interpretations of events were necessary in addition to my own. I also needed the participants’ confirmation whether the situations were humorous because laughter is not always a signifier of humor (Coates, 2007); likewise, humor is not always signified by laughter (Drew, 1987; Jefferson, 1979). Also, what seems funny to some conversationalists, may not appear to be funny for others participating in exchange, and what seems funny to me, may not turn out to be funny for the participants. Therefore, I could not rely on my own judgments as to whether the situations I had chosen were humorous or not. Neither could I rely only on the ITAs’ or only on their students’ judgments.
Background knowledge was another reason for involving both ITAs and their students. Since I planned to videotape four or five classes of each of the participants, I would not have enough background knowledge of what would be happening in class. ITAs and their students, on the other hand, would be able to provide me with the background knowledge that I would miss. Also, I anticipated that humor could be related to the subject matter of their classes with which I was not familiar.
Finally, similar to ITAs, I am a non-native speaker of American English, while most of the students spoke English as their first language. The ITAs, their students, and I had different cultural backgrounds and could treat the same situation differently. Because of our cultural differences, I needed native speakers’ perspectives on the humorous situations. Nevertheless, I decided not to ignore the opinions of the non-native speaking students who would participate in humorous exchanges either because humor is not always rooted in general culture; it could be rooted in the local culture of the classroom as well. Because of these reasons, both ITAs and their students were involved in the interpretation of humorous situations during stimulated recall sessions.
Methodological Triangulation
I used three methods of data collection: videotaping, my own observations, and
stimulated recall sessions, which were also videotaped. While videotaping provided me with the video data that I could store and revisit at a later time, using only this method of data collection is not sufficient because humorous situations that occur during the videotaped classes have to be interpreted.
To get an emic perspective on the humorous exchanges, I supplemented the video data with the data from the stimulated recall sessions with the ITAs and their students. Stimulated recall facilitates better access to the participants’ memory because the video-taped information of the participant’s performance is available and this prompt accelerates recollection of the situation (Gass & Mackey, 2000). One of the purposes of this methodology is “to uncover cognitive processes that are not evident through simple observation” (p. 20). A similar methodology, playback viewing sessions, was used in the study of identity by Erickson and Schultz (1982). Although Erickson and Schulz and Gass and Mackey use different terminology, it seems that the
procedure of the data collection is similar. Participants view video recordings which stimulate their memory to reflect on the events in which they participated.
Similar methodology was employed by Erickson and Schultz (1982) for the study of identity to investigate whether counselors and students perceived the same points of the
counseling interviews as salient and by Nelms (2001) to get an emic perspective on the functions of sarcasm in the university classroom. Since this study focuses on the relationship of humor and identity, the employment of stimulated recall methodology assisted in bringing evidence of “the social meaning of variation in the communicative performance” (Erickson & Schultz, 1982, p. 52).
Although I knew that I would not be able to participate in students’ activities because I would be operating one of the two video cameras, I still decided to include my own observation as an additional source of data. My observation contributed to the video data, specifically, the general atmosphere of the classroom. Just being there and listening to what students talked about and observing how they cooperatively tried to finish their homework assignments before the class, allowed me to get a better idea of student-teacher relationships in the class. I also noticed some details of the students’ and the instructors’ behavior or heard some comments that may be missed while watching the tape. This information complemented video information that I analyzed later. Although I could not take thorough field notes because I was operating a video camera, I was able to write brief comments and questions that emerged during my observation. Thus, the data were collected by means of videotaping, stimulated recall sessions, and my own observation and allowed me to get emic and etic perspectives on the studied phenomena.
Data Triangulation
The data sources correspond to the methods of data collection. The data from class videotaping include video clips of humorous interaction supplemented with the detailed transcription of these clips. The data from stimulated recall sessions are video clips with the students’ and the instructors’ comments on and interpretations of the humorous exchanges and their transcripts. My field notes are the data from my observations. The combination of the data from different sources allows for “the widest possible theoretical use of any set of observation” (Denzin, 1970, p. 306).
Participants and Their Recruitment
Four international teaching assistants participated in the study. Two of them were from China, one from India, and one from Cyprus. The ITAs from China majored in Political Science and in Computer Science, the ITA from India studied Political Science, and the ITA from Cyprus studied Business.
I wanted to select participants from the most represented graduate student population based on their country of origin and the field of study both nationwide and also in Georgia State University (GSU) where the study was conducted. According to the Open Doors 2006: Report on International Educational Exchange (Chin & Rajika, 2007), during the 2005/2006 academic year, India, China, Korea, Japan, Canada, Taiwan, Mexico, and Turkey were the eight leading places of origin of the graduate international students in the United States of America. These countries were also the leading countries of origin of the international students enrolled in GSU based on the GSU Fall 2005 report for the Open Doors 2006. However, in GSU, not India, but China took the leading place and was followed by India, Korea, Canada, Taiwan, Turkey, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
The fields of study during these academic years that were ranked number one through six in terms of the number of foreign graduate students majoring in these fields were business and management, engineering, other1, mathematics and computer sciences, social sciences, and physical and life sciences correspondingly. In GSU, the fields of study with the most international graduate students’ enrollment were business disciplines followed by computer sciences, social sciences, biology, physical and life sciences, and education. Since the majority of the population of foreign graduate students was enrolled in these disciplines both nationwide and in GSU, I wanted to recruit participants from these fields. The participation in the study,
however, was voluntary, and, realistically, it would have been difficult to find participants from the most representative groups based on the country of origin and the field of study, particularly since GSU does not have an engineering major. So, I looked for participants who would fit at least one of the criteria.
Recruitment of the Participants
I planned to recruit six ITAs and developed a strategic recruitment plan. I contacted instructors of the ITA training courses in the Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL and asked them to contact their former students (current ITAs) to inquire whether they were
interested in participating in this project. Also, the chair of the department, Dr. Nelson, contacted the department chairs in the college of Arts and Sciences and asked them to forward the
information about the project to their graduate teaching assistants. I also contacted the ITAs I knew personally and asked them whether they would be interested in participating. I told potential participants that I was studying how international teaching assistants use language in
1 These fields include liberal/general studies, communication and journalism, law, multi/interdisciplinary studies, family and consumer sciences/human sciences, library and archival sciences, communication technologies, and residency programs.
the classroom. I did not specify that I was interested in humor because if I did, it might affect the data: they might either use humor intentionally or might not use it at all.
The most effective recruitment method was personal contacts: contacting ITAs whom I did not know via e-mail appeared to be less successful. Although the instructors of the ITA training courses and the department chairs were extremely helpful in providing me with the names and e-mail addresses of the ITAs, I encountered several problems. First, some ITAs did not have teaching assignments during the semester of the data collection. Second, some ITAs who were teaching at that time refused to participate in the project explaining that they were very busy. Third, some ITAs did not respond.
The first ITA who agreed to participate in the study was Rana2, a doctoral student from India in the Political Science Department. His country of origin and his major, which was part of the field of Social Sciences, fit both choice criteria (India is the top country for sending students to the U.S.A. and the social sciences are one of the top six majors). I had known Rana for about two semesters as we worked together in the Writing Studio. When I told Rana that I was looking for more participants, Rana said that he knew another ITA who might be willing to participate as well. In a couple of days, I received an e-mail from this ITA. It was a Chinese doctoral student, Wen, from the same department as Rana. Although Rana did not know the criteria for the participants’ choice, it appeared that Wen also fit both criteria. When I met with Wen, I told him about the project and he agreed to participate.
The third participant, Ming, knew about my study from his roommate, who was my peer and colleague. When I met with Ming in his office, I told him about the project and he agreed to participate. Ming also fit both criteria because he studied Computer Science and was Chinese.
I also stopped by the ITAs’ offices at the Business Department. Since their offices were in the same building and on the same floor as ours, I often saw the ITAs from the Department of Business in the building. I talked to three ITAs and e-mailed one of them; however, only
Alexandros, a doctoral student from Cyprus was enthusiastic about the project and agreed to participate. He met only one criterion, his major field of study, which occupies the leading place for a foreign graduate students’ enrollment. The other three ITAs, all females, were reluctant to participate for different reasons. Thus, I had four instead of six participants when the study began.
Before I started videotaping, I met again with all four participants individually, described the project in detail, explained how much time the project required, and we signed the consent forms (Appendix 1) that included both the consent for videotaping their classes and their