UNDERSTANDING THE GENRE FEATURES OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: A CASE STUDY

Yi-Huey Guo

doi:10.30743/ll.v3i2.1674

Abstract

Some researchers’ prejudiced attitude on qualitative research as non-scientific research seems to hinder the development of qualitative research in some Asian social science research communities. Nevertheless, the present study on a qualitative novice’s writing process found that the lowly formulaic style of qualitative research writing could be another reason that impedes such development as well. Novice researchers’ writing tends to follow model-imitation, which contradicts the lowly formulaic style of qualitative research writing. With the employment of a social approach on writing studies as the theoretical framework, this study treated academic writing as an activity influenced by the writer’s situated research community. The writer’s varied research attempts in thesis writing process such as the formulation of research questions, employment of research methods, interpretation of research results, and the like, were treated as his/her composing acts. By longitudinally observing one graduate student’s use of qualitative research in his thesis proposal writing process, the present study discussed the multifaceted nature of qualitative research and the need of teaching/learning qualitative research as a specific genre in academic writing. Related genre elements to be included in teaching qualitative research are addressed.

Highlights

Compared with mainstream researchers’ preference for quantitative research, researchers doing a purely qualitative research like ethnography or single case study research in some Asia’s social science research communities receive less support (Flowerdew, 1999)
This may be partly caused by his reliance on “model-imitation” (Tran, 2007) as the main writing strategy, in which he wrote by following prior researchers’ work as the writing model. Such imitation behaviour contradicted the lowlyformulaic style of qualitative research writing. To reinforce his ability in lowly-formulaic style of writing, this study suggests the need of an intensive learning of the following qualitative research writing skills: (1) learning the ontologically-driven and methodologically-driven rhetorical situations existing in the data, (2) learning to identify salient features of these rhetorical situations. (3) learning to raise key issues out of the salient features of data, (4) learning to support the key issues with the use of selective data as props for “thick description” use in the Result section, (5) learning to support the key issues with selective literature as props in the Discussion section, (6) learning to reformulate the key issues into the form of research questions and to place them formally in the Research Questions section for the fit of thesis convention
This study draws on the factual situation that the development of qualitative research in some research communities is somewhat tardy

Summary

Introduction

Compared with mainstream researchers’ preference for quantitative research, researchers doing a purely qualitative research like ethnography or single case study research in some Asia’s social science research communities receive less support (Flowerdew, 1999). Some Asian researchers consider the time-consuming and laborintensive process of qualitative research writing to be the factors discouraging them from doing it (Kuo, 2009); Flowerdew (1999) had found another affected factor; that is, the researcher’s underdeveloped interpretive writing skills in English. Their lack of proficiency in using English language comfortably for interpretative writing somehow results in their preference for doing quantitative research. Studying their research processes means to study their writing processes Learning how their writing attempts are complicated by the multifaceted nature of https://jurnal.uisu.ac.id/index.php/languageliteracy

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion