Using a semiotic framework for methodical, polytextual analysis of ethnographic, multimodal data multimodal data

Qualitative research can attract criticism when analysis is regarded as being ‘too

interpretative’ or ‘too subjective’, particularly when researchers are not transparent and/or reflexive in their analysis (Ramazanoğlu and Holland, 2002). I use semiotics as an analytical framework to support an overarching aim of (theoretical) sensitivity in grounded theory research with a topic where the politics and discourses I have encountered are testament to deep ideological divisions. Using semiotics allows me to work to address potential critiques of my analysis as being ‘too interpretative’ or ‘too subjective’. Semiology is useful to sociologists (Plummer, 2010) and underpins the understanding and meaning making that are constructed through the various methods of analysis (Rose, 2007). This level of detail helped

25 I refer to demonstrating ‘support’ for my findings, interpretations and theory, as opposed to the positivism implied by ‘verification’.

me make sense where differentiations (for example, between agency and structure) were/are ill-defined and to ‘challenge taken for granted understandings’ (Charmaz, 2006, p.54).

Semiotics were useful where I saw patterns within patterns and multiple levels of

signification with meanings that shifted between audiences, as well as shifted for me as I encountered different narratives and representations. I use semiotics as a structure for the 'constant comparative methods' recommended by grounded theorists (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Howitt, 2010).

A semiotic framework does not offer a definitive description of what one image, a collection of images, or a corpus must mean; however, semiotics can provide a framework for

deconstructing and illustrating the multiple relationships and processes that are elided within more general descriptions of social constructionism, for example, and symbolic

interactionism. Therefore, to achieve my overall aim of asking ‘What are the experiences and representations of men selling sex to men through advertising in London at the turn of the twenty-first century?’, my objective has been to describe, deconstruct, and illustrate how the texts – including images – work together, with each other, with their subjects, with their audience, and with wider discourse(s) to create meaning(s) across a large body of text (Baker, 2003, 2005; Baker and McEnery, 2012; Norris, 2012). Thus, to achieve this I have adopted a semiotic framework for my application of grounded theory.

As I have mentioned, my analysis processes for my different data sources were neither linear nor discrete. ‘Intertextuality blurs the boundaries not only between texts but between texts and the world of lived experience’ (Chandler, 2007, p.209). Intertextuality allows an

understand that the meanings of one text can and will depend on the meanings of other texts (Rose, 2007). Likewise, one of the challenges of multimodal analysis is that different modes of communication are materially structured in different ways (Norris, 2012). A constructive grounded theory approach acknowledges and takes advantage of those differences; however,

any rigid distinctions between grounded theory and discourse analysis become increasingly fuzzy. To adapt for this in my initial coding of the advertisements, I developed a coding schedule, following Rose’s (2007) guidelines for semiological analysis. The core coding questions were:

1) What are the signs?

2) What do the signs signify in themselves?

3) How do they relate to other signs in themselves?

4) What are the connections? (for signs, within signs, between signs; between codes; with wider repertoires and discourses) What are the connections of the connections?

5) Revisiting the signs through their codes: How are narratives, ideologies and mythologies articulated?

From this, I developed a detailed coding schedule for questions 1 and 2 as presented in Appendix N. I used the categories which I constructed and identified to develop my analysis and produce the findings that follow in the rest of this thesis.

Applying the practice of ‘line by line’ coding to multimodal texts

Along with the materiality of doing the coding, creating the categories, and making an organised structure, one of my challenges with multimodal texts was with how to describe and name the different signs as they emerged. ‘Line-by-line coding’ was an insufficient description. For example, I have attended to the minutiae of comparing collocations of words and images in archived print advertisements that had variously been written, dictated, or designed by men as advertisers and/or magazine design staff, and at the same time I have deconstructed the interviews produced with my participants into narrative and thematic sections. For clarity, I have returned to the descriptions which Charmaz (2006) offers for coding so as to document the materiality of my coding practices thus allowing a transparent guide for what I have done.

I coded magazines as incident by incident (or issue by issue) analysis to determine a unit size (see Appendices M, N, and O for coding schedules and initial coding samples) for my text

samples. Through this process I also had to make decisions about how to sample volumes/

issues. For example, I started with multiple issues per year and when that data was saturated sampled single issues from consecutive or intermittent periods, depending on the pace and types of changes to the content. I did this coding by hand initially, using page markers with the archived volumes in the offices at Boyz magazine and creating tables and handwritten memos in notebooks. I created spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel. When I had determined the size of my text ‘units’, I scanned the pages I needed for the next level of coding.

Next, I used the Adobe suite software (Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat) to code visual and verbal texts together, to take advantage of the available technology without losing the

interface or analytical scope that was available in that generation of NVivo (and similar) products for Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS; see Bryman, 2004). I describe how I used these tools in more detail later in this chapter. I coded the ads in the identified editions word by word to deconstruct all of the sampled advertisements. My objective was to identify patterns of collocation through a corpus-based content analysis (Baker, 2003); however, my findings led me to develop the semiotic framework along with the analysis.

This close analysis allowed me to reveal patterns within ads and within the layout which were not immediately apparent through looking at what was otherwise familiar in different ways (Charmaz, 2006). With the content coded, I used semiotics to develop a comparative method in order to create a distance from any of the preconceptions I had about what I thought I might find in the advertisements (Charmaz, 2006).

I used NVivo software (version 7, then 8 and 9) to apply thematic codes (as ‘nodes’) to create 'incidents' within the interviews to ‘discover patterns and contrasts’ (Charmaz, 2006, p.55), then recoded incident by incident. In practice, I had a hard time with this because I used

single words for many of my codes, which allowed me to find unanticipated relationships but was not a ‘quick’ method to distil the open codes.

There was simply too little focus to make meaningful connections from single words except as thematic groupings. Returning to the literature, I used my thematic groupings to make seven categories: proximity, knowledge, exclusion, need, experimentation, desire, and temporality. There were inevitable tensions which I discuss in detail in the findings chapters.

Following the advice to ‘preserve actions’ (Charmaz, 2006, p.49), I revisited my data sets, collected new data and comparing my additional analysis, revised the seven categories into a model of five actions:

1) Addressing scarcity,

2) Defining performativity (redefining, rationalising/ defending), 3) Utilising embodiment,

4) Locating contact(s), 5) Thinking temporally

These five categories are interrelated actions which M$M have taken. I have used these actions as categories to identify modes of rationale, comfort and distress for people selling sex and/or involved in sex work. I did this by constructing tables to summarise how their personal experiences fit all five categories. (For an example, see Appendix T.) At this stage, I had a cohesive model but still struggled with how to describe its interrelated parts in a

sensible, linear manner. ‘The action as unit of analysis, however, is still a complicated issue, because there are smaller (lower-level) and larger (higher-level) actions’ (Norris, 2012, p.199).

To construct a research narrative that illustrates the interrelationship of these modes, I applied an additional process of axial coding to reorganise my data into four themes which answer Strauss and Corbin’s (1998, p. 125) questions ‘when, where, why, who, how, and with what consequences?’ (cited in Charmaz, 2006, p.60). Following Charmaz’s advice for axial coding rather than Strauss and Corbin’s formal procedures, I developed sub-categories for categories

(such as ‘strategies for setting prices’) to help illustrate the relationships and to make explicit how the data my participants have provided might be useful as information for others in their place. To heed the call, ‘Nothing about us without us’ (Schreiber, 2015, p.256).

These four themes make the narrative for my findings chapters: advertising in London’s queer scene (Chapter 5), representations and interpretations of men’s bodies and embodiment (Chapter 6), the role of queer rationale in performativity when men sell sex to men (M$M) in London’s ‘gay’ scene (Chapter 7) and ways that money and worth are defined and

experienced by M$M in contemporary London (Chapter 8). This follows Strauss and

Corbin’s (1998) organising scheme to identify ‘1) conditions, the circumstances or situations that form the structure of the studied phenomena; 2) actions/interactions, participants' routine or strategic responses to issues, events, or problems; and 3) consequences, outcomes of actions/interactions’ (Charmaz, 2006, p.61). The final chapter is my discussion chapter, where I bring those findings back together to discuss them as a single five part model of rationale, comfort and distress.

An argument: All grounded theory is a little bit queer

To define key points of grounded theory from the application discussed by Charmaz (2006), I have employed and adapted existing theories to analyse my interview material. I have coded material line by line, and adapting that for the visual: frame by frame. And also within

images: element by element. And I have quantified content. And I have interpreted meanings.

I have relied on theory and applications that have been produced more recently than the earlier incarnations from Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (Bryman, 2004; Charmaz, 2006;

Howitt, 2010) or Strauss and Juliet Corbin (Strauss and Corbin, 1994b).

Yet, I will label even my grounded theory as having queer properties. For however inductive grounded theorists might aim (or claim) to be, I have reflected extensively (read: experienced

and reconciled enormous anxieties) about ‘identifying’, or rather discussing, ‘realities’ which are (or certainly seem) discursively constructed as well as constructive (Barad, 2007). Even in this relatively under-researched area, I could not claim to be free from standpoint or a prior immersion in the literature, or the field, and so indeed I have claimed that standpoint and that immersion as features of my methodology. Labelling ethnography and grounded theory as

‘queer’ disrupts even the label of queer because in retrospect, these points only seems like common sense. That common sense, at times, might seem exceptionally queer.