Writing People: Reflections on the Dual Crises of Representation and Legitimation in Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

This paper begins with a focus on the crisis of representation within qualitative inquiry and its implications for how authors write themselves and others in and out of their texts in physical education (PE) and sport. The rhetorical dimensions of research accounts and how they act as persuasive fictions are highlighted. Specific attention is given to how issues of voice(s) and author positioning are dealt with in the tales told by different research traditions. A range of alternative tales in PE and sport are considered, including confessional and impressionist tales, narratives of the self, poetic representations, ethnographic drama, and ethnographic fictions. The crisis of legitimation is then considered in detail. Researchers need to develop a reflexive selfawareness regarding the rhetorical and stylistic conventions of the tales they tell in order to bring the tales within the author's explicit and methodological understandings.