Response 1/14/2014

In response to Charles Bazerman’s (2008) recount of Robert Merton’ (1963) theories of the middle range, I would argue that researchers in writing studies pay special attention to disciplinary boundaries as socially constructed and negotiated. (Inter)Disciplinary awareness may help us understand and apply the middle range theory.

The three questions that are constituent of the middle range theory can be determined by relating them to the concerns and serious stakes in the discipline of literacy and writing studies. While the questions correspond to levels of generality, they are not to be treated as simplistic and reductive levels of conceptual generality. The way the class conceptualized the originating question as centering on literate practice, for example, is not merely a matter of locating an overarching question, but rather a major, general concern of the field. It would be more productive to see an originating question as representing the common concerns of a discipline, hence a communal sense in the construction of an originating question.

The same reasoning can apply to the formulating of the empirically specifying and site-specific questions. What is acknowledged as a researchable question is deeply rooted in the practices and methodologies that a discipline adopts. For example, while the mental process of an individual writing might warrant a cognitive study, his or her literacy history might be validate a writing study. In the pragmatic term, whether a practice, a method, or a set of data is marketable in employment and publication has a lot to do with the “serious stakes” of an academic discipline.

Seeing the questions in terms of disciplinary relevance may help produce a set of criteria for forming the questions themselves, locating a strategic research site, adopting a methodology, and deciding on approaches to collecting data. Take Bazerman’s (2008) example of conducting a study on political representation of a social problem (p. 309). Does a researcher start out by looking at a dataset and then decide on which conceptual framework to guide further data collection, sampling, and analysis? Or, a researcher has already taken a certain stance before he or she looks at a dataset and asks questions. In the case of political representation, researchers might have different disciplinary and institutional affiliation, professional and academic training, and empirical research experience that result in their choice of conceptual questions that fall in various political, social, historical, or linguistic disciplines. This differentiation largely determines further research questions, methodologies, and practice. It seems fairly reasonable to claim that before an originating question is formulated, the researcher has already chosen to subscribe to a certain epistemological/disciplinary frameworks.

Researchers might benefit from a critical awareness of their epistemological/disciplinary stance by exploring interdisciplinary possibilities. Literacy studies may well benefit from a rhetorical/discourse perspective, much as Bazerman’s historical study benefited from a textual study of archived data. In the same spirit, cognitive studies may inform literacy studies by lending a rich terminology and conceptual perspectives on the idiosyncratic processes of an individual writer.

This utopian notion of the research methodology may open up opportunities for more productive research. It may challenge Peter Smagorinsky’s (2008) emphasis on the systematic coherence across major sections in a research paper. A protocol analysis, in an interdisciplinary research heuristic, might inform a social or textual design (hopefully the thinking process of a less experienced writer would reveal the cultural, ethnic, economic, and social constraints that occur in his or her process of writing). Smagorinsky’s sense of coherence might be moot if taken by its face value. Instead of structural coherence, conceptual relevance might do a better service to ensure that a study is replicable. A research that represents the complex internal dynamics of a practice, rather than the logic in the social construct of a research methodology, calls for inclusiveness in design.

Back to Bazerman’s (2008) rather mystified statement on “serendipity” (p. 304). Obviously, experienced researchers are more likely to have a moment of serendipity. However, researchers might have a clear clue to a “treasure map” (Bazerman, 2008, p. 315) if they start out with clear identification with a particular epistemology. Preliminary thoughts like these compelled me to ask: Is research design a science? Or, is it political and social?

Bazerman, C. (2008). Theories of the middle range in historical studies of writing practice. Written Communication, 25(3), 298-318.

Smagorinsky, P. (2008). The method section as conceptual epicenter in constructing social science research reports. Written Communication, 25(3), 389-411.