Is a small culture an actual place with boundaries, or is it a shifting, transient, ‘on the go’ collection of practices and values which has just enough permanence to be recognisable? Let’s consider a small shop in the high street. Its natural boundaries might seem clear – the definable space …
There is something culturally different but familiar about the people at the next table in the café. I theorise about their background from how they dress, stand, their features and so on. Then I get a better clue when I recognise the language they are speaking and can even understand …
As I get to the last two weeks before submitting my manuscript I am back again to the first chapter. Finding it impossible to write, I decided instead to edit through all the other chapters and get them word-perfect as much as is possible. Doing this quickly enabled me to …
I have to submit my book to the publisher at the end of June. So now I need to edit it through to make it ready to be read. The huge task is not to waste this opportunity, having done all this work, to make sure that it really says …
The writing continues and I’m in danger of losing the sense of structure and storyline. I’m also anxious that parts of it are making no sense. I move some things to different places and even split some chapters into two. Finding new headings and subheadings really does work to fix …
So I have got a nice piece of data. It emerged from my analysis as a good example of a particular theme. I paste it onto the page and work out how to introduce it. It has wider margins to show that it’s data. I begin to write about it, …
These are further thoughts, following my last blog, about how we continue to generate meaning throughout the writing process and that research doesn’t finish once the writing has begun. Perhaps we carried out interviews, and that stage is now finished. Perhaps we are no longer directly in contact with the …
I’m once again alone with my writing. In long texts especially it is possible to feel lost, and also on the screen, where you scroll on and on and back and back. You can certainly have written a lot; but then it begins to lose form, and you begin to …
One of my PhD students recently did a short certificate training course in teaching English as a foreign or other language. As a full-time student in her final year, time is short and needs to be well used. So one might wonder if doing this course was a good idea. …
The sense-making about how to write continues. A colleague asked one of my students where the reference to theory was in her data chapter. She had presented good extracts and said good things about them in the right style – thoughtful, critical, even good thick description in the way she …