Starting from scratch again…

The good thing about starting a new project- that is when you mark a beginning to something (so much academic research rolls on and over and on and.) is that you can kind of invent a fresh space. So in this project where an explicit aim is to use methodologies which are often positioned as quite district or even incompatible- we are starting to begin to share understandings about these approaches..

What exactly (and fundamentally) is corpus linguistics?

What exactly (and fundamentally) is ethnography?

We all ‘know’ stuff about these approaches albeit in different ways. But this knowing is also linked to how we feel (have come to feel in our bodies) about ways of doing language/writing focused research. So quite literally my gut reaction is to say ‘no’ to any suggestion of cleaning up, simplifying (from my perspective) what the ‘data’ is and I know I am more comfortable with  un sinfin set of possibilities… so I’m personally (as well as intellectually) drawn to ethnography. But all our discussions (which can be frustrating of course too) challenge me to rethink what am I doing and why and on what assumptions.