Illustrative examples
So, I am writing a paper for my class on discourse and social interaction, which I keep calling in my head strategic interaction. I have been having a number of problems with the essay, most of them stemming from my overwhelming desire to write a good paper, something that I am proud of, something that I won't think about as embarrassing when I write this professor a letter after term is over to request letters of reference for the phD programs I am applying to. There is, of course, the added pressure that this is the only thing on which I will be graded for the class. For this paper, I am discussing the work of two sociologists and one linguist and, more or less, how applicable their concepts are to the field of discourse. The paper is supposed to be critical and here's the thing with that... people in the field tend not to be critical of the guys I'm writing on because, as my professor recenly said in a meeting with him, we're just so excited to apply the concepts and see them work. So, anyway, I'm trying to be critical and I'm writing my paper and so far, this monstrosity that isn't supposed to be more than 4,000 words is just under 3,000 and contains no illustrative examples. When I first started writing the paper, I collected a small data sample (about fifteen minutes in length) of John and I playing the children's game Guess Who?. I thought I could analyse the text showing how they would be analysed if I were coming at it from the three different approaches of the three different guys, but now I think that's just too much work. And, as has been pointed out to me, illustrative examples are meant to just clarify your point. They don't have to be ground breaking, they just have to support your argument.
A good example of what I mean by illustrative examples can be seen running through the work of Erving Goffman (for example, in Frame Analysis) Goffman is a freaking master of coming up with the anecdote to prove his point (in Frame Analysis he seems to draw heavily from newspaper articles). And, since is topic is the organization of experience, it is in fact quite exciting when you have examples of how experience that are organization in a Goffmanian way. So, I'm thinking now about using Invader Zim to make my many points. (My essay, at this point, is essentially about the organization of research aims and how they effect the methodology you use to investigate them.)
At this point, I'm thinking about throwing in the towel for a bit and walking home. I've been working on this more or less since 9:45 this morning and its almost 4 in the afternoon now. Although, I would like to get through to the bottom of this draft (I'm on draft 6) before I move locations. I can't decide if I'm being stubborn of systematic. bah.
