In one of my undergraduate English classes ("Literary Theory and Criticism") I had a professor who constantly ranted about the "slipperiness of language". It got to the point where we once spent an entire hour and a half class discussing the possible interpretations of the phrase "I think" in a Virginia Woolf text. I thought that I would never find this professor's class more relevant than it was during my study period, but now his lectures are coming back to me at full force thanks to Luker's chapter. In her discussion of how a research question involving rape cases can't really be answered until you have defined what "rape" is (Luker 115) Luker raises a valuable point about language and how it limits our ability to understand things. The operationalization section of this chapter is almost a philosophical waxing about the limitations of language and how it pertains to research, which I found incredibly relevant to my research proposal.
Without going into too much detail, my project focuses on whether certain types of technology affect literacy in young people. Early on in my proposal, I was faced with how to define "literacy". The term is ever-changing thanks to technology, we now have "media literacy" and "computer literacy" in addition to traditional reading-and-writing models. I had to spell out exactly what literacy meant to me and how I was measuring it before I felt comfortable continuing my proposal. Luker's chapter really resonated with me and helped me to feel confident in my choice to outline and clarify my definition of a "slippery" term in my proposal. I can definitely see how my project may also be related to questions of how literacy is defined as well as what does and does not influence it.
I similarly found this discussion interesting (and it seems I'll have to give some thought to operationalizing 'literacy' also). While I haven't had a rigorous exposure to literary theory and criticism, i recently had an assignment in the art librarianship course that involved doing a kind of 'discourse analysis' on three reference articles on a particular topic in order to try to find the underlying theory or bias that the author might have taken. In reflecting on this I thought of the importance of transparency - the more interesting articles certainly had a bias (i.e. they were able to move away from stating factual occurrences to saying something that suggests why the topic might have been important), yet recognizing this was important in order to contextualize and think about what they were saying. When it comes to research, I suspect the way to proceed is to pick some reasonable way to operationalize a concept, but to make it clear by stating it up front.
ReplyDeleteI can really relate to what the two of you are saying. I, too, have had professors who stressed the importance of language when it comes to interpreting and describing the world. I come from a background in philosophy and psychology, so I have always been interested in the ways that language reflects, reinforces and projects our ideological tendencies and general worldviews. In my case, it was often the formal and informal logic professors who would stress the importance of language in analyzing and evaluating arguments. I really like that Luker dives straight into these issues for her discussion of operationalization, for, as she succinctly puts it, "... we can only know things through the medium of the terms we use" (Luker, 2008, p.113).
ReplyDeleteThis chapter informed the development of my research proposal by inspiring me to look into the various ways in which "personality" is defined and measured. My proposed study is on the relationship between music genre preferences and personality, and my general research question is currently: "Which types of people enjoy which types of music?" I quickly realized that there are SO many ways to operationalize and measure personality - there are trait, biological, developmental, behavioural, cognitive, evolutionary, humanistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural approaches, not to mention the existence of models, which draw from different combinations of these approaches in a variety of ways.
With so many options, I agree that perhaps the best way to proceed is to find a reasonable way to operationalize our concept(s). Luker recommends that we take this a step further and even operationalize our own definition of what we are studying, for doing so will give us "... a framework for examining what the taken-for-granted elements are in other people's categories, and it will also sensitize you to things that you have taken for granted." (Luker, 2008, p.122). In my case, my framework appears to be very empirical and conservative, relying on psychometric measures and widespread consensus to ultimately favour one personality measure over all the rest: Costa & McCrae's "Five-Factor Model".
I have decided adopt and utilize this model because it is widely used and it appears to have A LOT of empirical support. More importantly, it operationalizes personality in a way that complements my research topic. It's an added bonus that I also find the framework both insightful and interesting.