The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research

Reflections on Interacting with the Workplace

Glen Alessi, Geert Jacobs, Glen Alessi, Geert Jacobs, Glen Alessi, Geert Jacobs

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137507686
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Winner of the Association for Business Communication's Distinguished Publication on Business Communication Award 2016

This edited volume offers a collection of original chapters focusing on the Ins and Outs of professional discourse research. Drawing on insights from LSP, ethnography and discourse analysis, it covers a wide range of issues, ranging from gaining access and collecting data to feeding results back in the form of recommendations to practitioners.

Part I

In

1

Negotiating Positionality in Ethnographic Investigations of Workplace Settings: Student, Consultant or Confidante?

Dorte Lønsmann

1 Introduction

“All researchers are positioned whether they write about it explicitly, separately, or not at all” (Chiseri-Strater, 1996, 115). Ethnographic researchers are not supposed to be neutral observers, but are very much part of the research process. As such, the ethnographer herself becomes part of the data collection process, and the relationship between researcher and informants becomes a part of the process as well. This means that we as researchers need to reflect on the research process, including our own position as researchers. One reason why this is important is because our way of positioning ourselves as researchers influences what we have access to. As Chiseri-Strater puts it: “Ethnographies that omit the methodology of doing fieldwork disappoint me, because this information can reveal what a researcher was positioned to see, to know, and to understand” (123). In other words, what we see – or what we are allowed to see – depends on where we stand and who we are in that moment. By reflecting on this positioning in our work, we are providing important contextual information on the status and value of our research.

Researcher positionality is not a new topic in ethnographic research. Previous studies show that in the context of business ethnography research, the status and power dimension of researcher positionality is important. Especially when trying to gain access to a company, the researcher needs to be aware of the way she presents herself to the company – and the way she is perceived by the people she wants to study. However, Merriam et al. stress the need not to “[oversimplify] the binary power relationship between the researcher and the researched, and [overlook] the multi-dimensional power relationship shaped by the prevailing cultural values, gender, educational background and seniority” (2001, 408). Even in their critique, however, they limit the focus to macro-level identities. By focusing on these relatively stable identities, more dynamic identities or positions are ignored. So far, situational or interactional identities have not been explored in depth in the context of business ethnography research, and neither have the processes through which researcher positionality is negotiated, ascribed and claimed.

In view of this, the chapter aims to explore how researcher positionality is negotiated in interaction with informants. Drawing on a range of ethnographic data, I will argue that researcher positionality should be seen not only in terms of macro-sociological categories such as age and gender, but also in terms of local situated identities and transitory interactional roles. Secondly, I aim to show that positions and identities are not stable, but dynamic, emergent and negotiated in the interactions between the researcher and the informants. Thirdly, I am going to explore how these negotiations of positionality impact on the access to data at several levels: in terms of gaining access to organizations, to individual informants and to narratives or topics. The next two sections discuss previous research into researcher positionality and the theoretical framework for the analysis. This is followed by a section detailing methods of data collection and analysis. In section five, the results of the analysis are laid out, while section six discusses positionality in relation to access and ethics. Conclusions are presented in section seven.

2 Positionality of the researcher in business ethnography

Researcher positionality has been discussed in relation to age, gender, status and power, insider and outsider status, race, sexuality, religion, education, colonization, social class and culture (De Fina, 2011; Huisman, 2008; Merriam et al., 2001; Mullings, 1999; Sabot, 1999). Within business ethnography, the “status and power” dimension has received a lot of attention (see for example Thomas, 1995 and Welch et al., 2002). Welch et al. (2002, 612) argue that interviewing elite informants, such as managers in international business entails a very different relationship between researcher and researched than do other kinds of informants. Thomas (1995, 6) describes how the perceived power difference may put the researcher into a “supplicant” position where she is so grateful to obtain an interview that she refrains from asking critical questions. Another potential drawback is that elite interviewees may come to dominate interviews because they are so used to giving their opinion at length on a number of topics (Welch et al., 2002, 620). A recent study suggests that “what might distinguish the process of studying elites may be the volatility of the process of negotiating status, precisely because prestige is always at stake” (Gaztambide-Fernández and Howard, 2012, 297). In other words, although researcher positionality is always an issue in ethnographic research, when researching elites, the researcher may find herself in constant status negotiations.

It would be a mistake to see researcher positionality in international business research as a one-dimensional relationship, however. Positionality involves more than a single dimension of more or less power, or the equally ubiquitous insider vs. outsider dichotomy. Gaztambide-Fernández and Howard emphasize that matters are more complicated than just “up or down” when they argue that:

status is always inflected in complicated and sometimes unpredictable ways by intersecting social categories such as race, class, gender, language, and sexuality. In other words, neither researchers nor communities have entirely stable or readily evident identifiers that define their relationship. While status as insiders or outsiders may seem ostensibly evident, the process is far more complicated than this, and the ways in which presentation is negotiated and identifications are constructed through the research process in a context of affluence and privilege clearly challenge such static notions of the insider/outsider dichotomy. (Gaztambide-Fernández and Howard, 2012, 291)

This quote highlights two important points about researcher positionality. First of all, it is not just about power and status. Age, gender, culture, class and other factors play a part, too. Secondly, identities and positions are not stable and unchanging, but dynamic and negotiated. I would also like to add that not only relatively stable categories such as age and gender play a part, but so do the more fluid and changing identities we make use of and are ascribed. Chiseri-Strater distinguishes between fixed positions such as age and gender and the researcher’s persona, how she presents her “self” (Chiseri-Strate, 1996, 116). Positioning is not only a matter of self-presentation, however, but also a complex process of negotiation. I will return to this point in the next section where the theoretical framework is outlined. For now, we will move on to a consideration of how researcher positionality influences access to data.

Gaining access, first to the company and later to individual informants, is one of the major challenges in researching workplace settings. At both stages, the positionality of the researcher is a key theme. How researchers present themselves, and how they are cast into different positions by the people they intend to study, affect the opportunities the researchers have to gain access to data. Again, most of the literature focuses on elite informants (Hertz and Imber, 1995; Sabot, 1999; Thomas, 1995; Welch et al., 2002). Accessing elite informants is seen as requiring different strategies than other kinds of informants, for example proving professional credentials by emphasizing institutional affiliation or positioning yourself as similar to the (elite) informants (Merriam et al., 2001, 406). Gaztambide-Fernández and Howard (2012) note that gaining access to elites depends on the ability to frame the research project using a language that resonates with potential participants, but also on how the researcher’s status is perceived, or in other words “who the researcher is” (292). In their experience, the researcher’s own elite status as a member of academia is one factor which may help researchers gain access, while the researcher’s existing network within elite groups is another (294).

In an interesting contribution, Smith (2006) questions the usefulness of the notion of “elite”. She argues for a post-structuralist view of power and positioning which entails that people are multiply positioned, that is, they do not have one single identity (647). This means that rather than seeing power as residing within certain individuals, power is seen as dynamic and as liable to shift during an interview. Sabot (1999), perhaps inadvertently, supports this argument when she concludes that part of her problems gaining access came from her French informants feeling threatened by her, despite their elite status. Smith (2006) argues that while gaining access to powerful groups may be extremely difficult, this is also true for other groups, for example drug dealers in one of her examples. I agree with Smith that power should be viewed as dynamic and changing, and that informants perceived to be powerful may also in some contexts be vulnerable. In the context of the highly hierarchical world of international business, power and status are very important. Some informants are bound to see themselves as more powerful than others, and some informants do have more freedom than others. While some informants in a workplace context may be categorized as powerful or elite, or may categorize themselves as such, workplaces also include non-elite informants. While informants in the first category are free to accept or decline invitations to participate in research interviews, those in the second may be under significant pressure from superiors either to participate or not to participate (Mullings, 1999). The more powerful informants could thus be in a position to influence whether the “non-elite” informants can and will participate in the research. These differences in power and status obviously have a strong influence on what the researcher can gain access to, and how they can gain this access. However, while power is an important dimension of researcher positionality in workplace settings, it is not the only one.

3 Positionality and identity as a co-constructed process

Analysing positionality refers broadly to “the close inspection of how speakers describe people and their actions in one way rather than another and, by doing so, perform discursive actions that result in acts of identity” (Bamberg et al., 2011, 182). In this section, I will discuss the theoretical lens I use to investigate researcher positionality and identity.

The analytical framework draws heavily on Bucholtz and Hall’s sociocultural linguistic identity theory. They define identity as “the social positioning of self and other” (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005, 586) and emphasize a view of identity as a relational, emergent and sociocultural phenomenon. In this view, identity is not individually produced but rather a discursive construct that emerges in interaction (587). Following this view, I see identity at large and the ethnographer’s positioning and identity in this case as a dynamic process, co-constructed by the ethnographer and the other participants, in which participants are positioning themselves and others while at the same time being positioned by these others. Identity is constructed through the mechanism of “indexicality” in which linguistic forms are linked with social meaning. Identity relations emerge through a number of indexical processes, including the overt mention of identity categories and labels, presuppositions regarding identity positions and displayed evaluative orientations to talk, interactional footings and participant roles (595). Bucholtz and Hall also emphasize the relational nature of identity by focusing on the way that identity positions always acquire meaning in relation to other identity positions.

Discussing what they call the positionality principle, Bucholtz and Hall introduce a three-level model of identity which includes macro-level demographic categories (such as gender and age), local ethnographically-specific cultural positions (such as manager or warehouse worker) and temporary, interactionally-specific roles (such as interviewer and interviewee) (2005, 592). Bucholtz and Hall argue that rather than choosing one level, it is necessary to consider all levels for a complete understanding of identity. Previous research on researcher positionality tends to focus on the first level only, that of macro-level sociological categories such as gender and age. In this chapter I will include consi-derations of all three levels of identity with a particular focus on the so far under-researched levels of local categories and interactional roles.

In order to capture one further distinction in relation to identity construction and positioning, I will introduce Davies and Harré’s positioning theory (1990). Similarly to Bucholtz and Hall’s position on identity, Davies and Harré define positioning as a discursive process. They distinguish between interactive positioning (which is what happens when others position an individual or group) and reflective positioning (where someone positions herself) (4). Taking this distinction as a starting point, attention will be drawn to the ways in which researcher positionality is the outcome of the combination of the two: being positioned and positioning oneself, and the sometimes contentious relationship between them.

Using the above theoretical frameworks means that the analysis focuses on how participants (including the researcher) position themselves and others during the research process at all levels of identity, and on how these positions are negotiated and contested.

4 Methods and data

This chapter is a reflexive analysis of data gathered for two research projects focusing on multilinguali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Reflections on the Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research
• Part I  In
• Part II  Out
• Index