# Transcript

A third approach that can be found underpinning qualitative research today focuses on how the accounts that people give (whether in interviews, in interacting with others in ordinary situations, or in documents) are discursively constructed, and often formulated to serve particular purposes or to fulfil certain functions. The influence of constructionism should be clear here. The term ‘accounts’ in this context usually means what people say or write, but it need not be restricted in this way. Some researchers argue that the whole of human behaviour is designed to be accountable, in the sense of being intelligible to others; indeed, that it must have this character if people are to make sense of one another’s behaviour and if action is to be coordinated and social order maintained.

The core argument in this third approach is that what generally appears to us as simply given, as just how things are ‘in reality’, is actually a product of accounting practices, notably but not exclusively our ways of talking and writing. Often, this orientation draws on an older linguistic determinism: the idea that we cannot but experience the world through the linguistic resources that we use to make sense of it. However, ‘language’ is usually interpreted here in a broader sense than words and grammatical rules. This is why it is often glossed as ‘discourse’; and, indeed, what is meant is often closer to the notion of ‘culture’. The implication is that different discourses or cultures constitute reality in divergent ways. In short, this third argument claims that, in effect, what we are studying is always language-in-use, always discourse or text, never some pristine non-linguistic, non-discursive reality lying beyond these.

An equally important element of this third orientation is the idea of language use as performative: that speech or writing embodies forms of action, and that we should study it in these terms. As a result of this ‘discursive turn’, the emphasis is on how language can be persuasive, how it can lead us to believe things without question, how it can result in our ‘seeing’ the world as having some essential character, ruling out other possibilities as effectively unthinkable, and so on. Also relevant here is the study of narrative, which derives from literary investigations of imaginative literature and how this creates believable worlds for readers. This third qualitative approach has motivated work of various kinds across many fields: studying ‘myths’ that organisations propagate about themselves, how turns are sequenced in everyday conversation, studies of policy documents for the rhetorical strategies they employ, and the collection and analysis of personal narratives, including autobiographies.

There are different views about what sort of data is required by this third orientation. Some researchers focus their analysis upon transcriptions of speech recorded in ‘natural’ situations (in which the researcher may or may not have been present), or on the use of written documents (paper-based or electronic); and they may specifically rule out the use of data from research interviews because these are heavily shaped by the researcher. What is almost always ruled out from the point of view of this third approach is reliance on fieldnotes, for the same reason. Also, in some of the work inspired by this orientation there is an insistence that there should be minimal use of any information the researcher has about the external ‘context’ of the material being studied. Instead, genuine context may be seen as restricted to what is displayed as contextually relevant in the recorded interaction or document itself.

There is a wide range of foci inspired by this third orientation, but in general the interest is in interactional, discursive, or narrative strategies that are designed to generate a particular sense of what is going on, of who is involved, of why things are being done, and so on. There is a parallel here with the second orientation, since one might say that this third one is exclusively interested in how fronts are constructed and maintained. The important difference between the two orientations is that this third one does not assume, indeed it usually specifically denies, that there is any ‘reality’ behind the fronts. All that there could be behind a front are the practices that generated it; and even the metaphor of front is likely to be seen as misleading. Furthermore, there is sometimes a reluctance to ascribe motives to those who employ the discursive strategies documented. Instead, the focus is often a formal one on the strategies themselves and how they function. To ascribe motives would amount to the researcher engaging in reality construction herself or himself, rather than simply describing the processes, procedures, or strategies through which particular social realities are constructed and sustained.

Nevertheless, some of those adopting this position recognise that the analyst cannot avoid engaging in reality construction, that any claim to be simply representing the discursive practices people employ must be spurious – that there can be no world that somehow lies behind or beyond the discursive practices that the analyst employs. The most that can be hoped for here is that somehow through their very use the analyst can reflexively display the practices that everyone employs. Alternatively, the rationale could be simply to offer continual reminders of the constructed nature of reality by repeatedly subverting the veracity of one’s own account. Finally, in some versions, often drawing on post-structuralism, there may be the idea that by subverting currently influential dominant constitutions of reality the way is opened up for the emergence of other quite different forms of life. However, by no means all of those who use this third approach adopt this extreme constructionist position.