The research is framed in underlying principles of Free Essay Example

The research is framed in underlying principles of ethnomethodology. Ethnomethodology views reality as socially constructed and aims to discover how people make sense of their collective experience, interested in order-producing practices. In this section, a closer look is taken to how this focus will be applied to discover methods used in sense making, on reality constituting procedures and on social interaction of members that are often taken for granted within the silence compartment of NS trains. Data collection will be done through qualitative research methods: semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation.

________________________________________

Data collection

· Semi- structured Interview

The use of ethnomethodology approach in interviews is to seek and understand how interviews are produced, not what comes out of their analysis. This approach highlights when studying interviews, the intent is to take them as a topic- specimen perspective – rather than as a resource. Research material is therefore, not treated as either a statement about or a reflection of reality; instead, a specimen is seen as part of the reality being studied’ (Alasuutari, 1995: 63).

The interest is not in the issues guiding the interview, the content of questions, and the substantive information communicated by the respondent but the interactional, narrative procedures of knowledge production, but studied to provide useful specimens of members’ methods for creating an intelligible social world (ten Have, 2004). In this paper, the interview data is therefore meant not to ‘represent’ the practices described, but as occasions in which the members can display and demonstrate their everyday procedures in the social world. The aim is to use respondents’ descriptions of events in order to identify the interpretive, elicit interviewees’ accounts and comprehension processes via which social reality is constituted in the silence compartments of trains in ways such that they may be seen to be moral actors, competent persons, and adequate performers in the social status they occupy.

· Observations

Observation focuses on the places (naturally-occurring settings) and circumstances where meanings and courses of action are constructed, maintained, used and negotiated. A important aspect in ethnomethodological ethnography is to find the orderliness of everyday activities, which can be accomplished by members and constructed with their common-sense knowledge of social order. Direct observation through non- participant observation will be used to study social situations in the silence compartment in order to unravel implicit unspoken assumptions and agreements or rules people use to construct social reality that are often taken for granted. As Garfinkel (2002) proposed observations are useful because they would provide greater insight into the human nature of society (social order) than attempts to theorize or model such constructions would.

Data analysis

· Transcription of Interview: Conversation Analysis

CA offers ethnomethodology a set of sharp instruments to bring to the fore detailed features of the production of social order (ten Have, 2004). According to Sacks, intent of the analysis is to take singular sequences of conversation and tear them apart in such a way as to find rules, techniques, procedures, methods, maxims that can be used to generate the orderly features we find in the conversations we examine(Sacks, 1984b: 413). Conversation analysts’ insistence on capturing not only what is said but also details of how something is said, (Heritage, 1984b: 241). Conversation analytic transcripts need to be detailed enough to facilitate the analyst’s quest to discover and describe orderly practices of social action in interaction (Hepburn, 2012). The aim is to demonstrate mechanics of talk in interaction may be conceptualized as methods of constructing accountability. Accounting is the process by which people make sense out of their social world by analyzing, criticizing and idealizing specific situation (Ritzer, 1992). It involves both language and meaning; people constantly give linguistic or verbal accounts as they explain their actions.

· Observation: Membership Categorization Analysis

For ethnomethodologically informed ethnographic enquiry, the people in an environment, their subjective orientations and experiences are central. The interest is in what enables societal members to make sense of the circumstances in which they find themselves, find ways of acting in relation to those circumstances, and which add to the production and maintenance of an intelligible social world. This can be achieved by the study of the practical methods of common sense reasoning used by members of society to reveal the underlying assumptions and practices through examining the methods and procedures employed by members of the silence compartment used to construct, account for and give meaning to their social world. Through the analysis of observation and field notes, this research tries to understand the common-sense knowledge and procedures used by members to construct social reality within the silence compartment.

________________________________________

Description data and research material

· Semi-structured interview

The conduction of the research involved the use of semi-structured interview questionnaire. The interview guide gave structure to the questions that need to be explored by the interviewer. Some certain questions were prepared beforehand, but additional questions were made encountered during the interview. This structure implored open-ended questions to get a more in-depth understanding.

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get a custom paper by one of our expert writers.

Get your custom essay

Helping students since 2015