Writing Sociologically: A Note on Teaching the Construction of a Qualitative Report

Abstract

Like their mentors, many students experience considerable difficulty with the portrayal phase of their qualitative research projects. Fortunately, an increasing number of teachers of sociology now are attempting to remedy this situation by treating the construction of texts as the widespread practical problem that it is and by dealing with writing as a legitimate object of pedagogical concern. Becker's (1986) monograph on the topic is well known; at least three recent student-directed books (Berg 1989; Holmes 1988; Stark 1989) include sections that offer serious advice on writing, perhaps signaling a trend.1 In this brief report, I take seriously Stark's (1989, p.645) observation that when become a sociologist you are essentially choosing to be a writer, and I describe a simple organizing device that enables students to produce written work with the look and the feel of our discipline. The device operates by alerting students to the formulaic character of sociological portrayal and by displaying a way of constructing conventional ethnographic essays-realist tales, as Van Maanen (1988) would call them---that could be described as generic. In addition to helping students to write in sociological fashion quickly and with considerable ease, the device enhances their critical understanding of sociology and provides them with a frame for the knowledgeable reading of professional sociological work. My approach to writing sociologically shares with postmodernism the belief that rhetoric has a rightful place in our concerns; i.e., that the form in which something is said, the presentation of what has been found, is not