11 How to Write Qualitative Research Reports and Literary Nonfiction
Objectivity is passé. Few academics now believe that they can achieve objectivity—or that this view from everywhere_and_nowhere is even a desirable goal. Everyone seems to agree that we can never write anything except from a situated and interested point of view.
__Peter Elbow

Many academics have grown weary of the institutionalized passive Voice, of excessive jargon, of the rigid structure of traditional research reports. Even the role of the objective scientist has been questioned as we have come to understand that knowledge is socially determined and shaped by personal desire. Academicians ln many disciplines are challenging the positivistic assumption that truth exists as an independent entity that can be measured and quantified. Because they conceive meaning to be context_dependent, Some academicians no longer believe that we can generalize from a sample to a larger population. Numerous disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, religious studies, and education, are developing new ways to plumb the depths of human behavior that do not fit comfortably into the positivistic, scientific paradigm.
Although many academics disagree about the appropriate way to conduct qualitative studies such as ethnographies, case studies, and focus groups, most would agree that these alternative forms of research place greater demands on the authors than do traditional forms of research. Because disagreement about what qualitative reports should look like is so widespread, authors of such works are less firmly guided by convention than when following a more traditional methodology. Even within specific disciplines, qualitative studies differ because scholars disagree about the value and practices of qualitative research. Unlike the quantitative researchers, they cannot assume that their work should be segmented into five major sections: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions. Scholars across the disciplines cannot agree on whether ethnographers or case_study researchers can generalize from a small sample to a larger population. Many qualitative researchers now reject this impulse toward generalizations as contrary to the primary goals of qualitative research—that is, to understand specific communities and people. Qualitative researchers cannot even agree about how active a role an ethnographer should play in the community being studied. While some ethnographers formally interview respondents and tell them that they are researchers, others work incognito.
Authors of literary nonfiction are in a quandary similar to that faced by qualitative researchers: no rigid conventions exist for how to shape speculative or persuasive essays or other nonfiction documents that employ traditional fiction techniques. Frankly, those of us interested in language and style have tended to focus on novelists rather than nonfiction writers. As a result, attempts classify the defining attributes of qualitative studies and literary nonfiction must be viewed skeptically. Nevertheless, by noting the work of some master stylists, I can at least touch on a few of the features that these genres share: (l) they are driven by a strong persona, passion, and a speculative tone, and (2) they employ so of the stylistic devices used by novelists, dramatists, and short story writers. The following excerpts from distinguished writers illustrate how we can make our writing more elegant by incorporating these features. Naturally, I assume that all of the standards for writing well, as reviewed throughout this book, can help us achieve this goal. Yet I argue in this chapter that successful writers go a step beyond ensuring that their work is readable: they engage our interest by surprising us, by violating our expectations.

WHY NOT SHARE YOUR PASSIONAND SELF?
Much academic writing appears anemic and drab because authors cloak their passion for the subject in excessive jargon and passive constructions. I do not mean to suggest that all quantitative researchers are guilty of adopting a pedantic, detached tone. In fact, some of the greatest scientists have shared their passion and excitement in traditional academic genres as well as in essays for broad audiences. For example, when discussing the coral formations at the Keeling Islands in a professional periodical, Charles Darwin wrote, “It is remarkable how little attention has been paid to encircling barrier_reefs; yet they are truly wonderful structures” (225). And in these brief excerpts from his popular account of how he and Francis Crick discovered the DNA code, James Watson reveals his passion and excitement for scientific discovery:

Despite the messy backbone, my pulse began to race. If this was DNA, I should create a bombshell by announcing its discovery. (147)

As the clock went past midnight I was becoming more and more pleased. There had been far too many days when Francis and I worried that the DNA structure might turn out to be superficially very dull, suggesting nothing about either its replication or its function in controlling cell biochemistry. But now, to my delight and amazement, the answer was turning out to be profoundly interesting. (148)

After lunch I was not anxious to return to work, for I was afraid that in trying to fit the keto forms into some new scheme I would run into a stone wall and have to face the fact that no regular hydrogen_bonding scheme was compatible with the X_ray evidence. As long as I remained outside gazing at the crocuses, hope could be maintained that some pretty base arrangement would fall out. (150)

While some empirical scientists have had the courage to share their passion and involvement with their subject, even a cursory look at academic periodicals shows this to be the exception rather than the rule. However, it is undoubtedly true that the newer qualitative forms of research and the growing popularity of literary nonfiction offer contemporary writers a chance to share their passion and involvement with their subject matter. Perhaps because they believe that the persona of a detached experimenter does not make the research any more objective, or because they believe that all research is subjective, authors of qualitative studies and literary nonfiction often have strong, opinionated voices. After reading their essays and books, you may feel that you know them.
In some ways the following excerpt from Patricia Adler’s ethnography Wheeling and Dealing follows a rather traditional organizational structure in that it clarifies the context for her investigation of a subculture of California “wheelers and dealers,” and also presents the theory that emerged from her research. Although academicians trained in the sciences and social sciences might initially be put off by her use of the first person, I think it offers an important alternative to the drab, institutionalized passive voice:

This is [a] study of a community of drug dealers and smugglers and the social scene they inhabit. These operators constitute the drug world’s upper echelons, as they import and distribute tons of marijuana and dozens of kilos of cocaine at a time. In part, the extremely illegal nature of their trafficking activities makes these individuals cluster together for both business and social relations, forming a deviant subculture which reflects common norms and values. This subculture provides guidelines for their dealing and smuggling, outlining members’ rules, roles, and reputations. Their social life is deviant as well, as evidenced by their abundant drug consumption, extravagant spending, uninhibited sexual mores, and focus on immediate gratification. They are the jet_setters of the drug world, living the fast life, pursuing the whim of the moment….
The methods I used to study this group were direct and personal. With my husband as a research partner, I spent six years in the field (from 1974 to 1980) engaged in daily participant observation with members of this dealing and smuggling community. Although I did not deal, myself, I participated in many of their activities, partying with them, attending social gatherings, traveling with them, and watching them plan and execute their business activities. I thus came to know members of this subculture, and formed close friendships with several of them. In addition to observing and conversing casually with these dealers and smugglers, I conducted in_depth, taped interviews, and cross_checked my observations and their accounts against further sources of data whenever possible. After leaving the field, I continued to conduct follow_up interviews during periodic visits to the community until 1983. (1 )

In the field of composition and rhetoric, Ann Berthoff has often provided a strong, controversial voice. As a sample of how she whispers gossip in your ear and yet makes you rethink an age_old myth__that writing can’t be taught__note how Berthoff uses a Single bit of dialogue to capture a popular misconception in ademia~ that writing theory lacks intellectual rigor:

A friend of mine who has for some time devoted his intellectual energies to teaching himself and his young colleagues to teach writing and who recognizes the political imperative to draw out the practical implications of theory was warned not long ago by a colleague who noticed that instead of his literature seminar my friend was offering one on rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy: “Stay away from that stuff! It’ll rot your brain! “ This man, a distinguished critic and litterateur, had not eamed the right to make that judgment, having retreated to the defensive position so attractive to cynics and the lazy, as well as to despairing men of good will, viz., nobody can teach anybody to write. (279)

When drafting documents, try to be flexible about the voice that your work should take. At first you might even want to write in the first person because this voice can help you establish a natural rhythm and develop original ideas. You can always eliminate first_person references when they seem inappropriate in light of your audience.

TRY INCORPORATING SOME OF THE STYLISTIC DEVICES USED BY NOVELISTS, DRAMATISTS, AND SHORT STORY WRITERS

Instead of asserting, “This is what X means,” fiction writers allow characters to speak about X, and then they expect readers to think, “Oh, so this is what X means.” In turn, qualitative researchers and authors of literary nonfiction essays often borrow the narrative voice of the fiction writer. For example, rather than telling readers what they think, some nonfiction authors will offer proverbs and dialogue to show what they think and why.
Ethnographic and case_study approaches to studying human behavior and social organizations often read more like novels or short stories than like academic essays or scholarly monographs. Ethnographers often depict the people that they are studying in a realistic way and expect readers to draw their own conclusions about the ways in which the subjects’ environment shapes behavior. Rather than bundling up the results of research into a concise paragraph near the introduction, an ethnographer may wish to tell the story of the community__to show what he or she witnessed so that readers can draw their own inferences about the values of the Community_ The example below, taken from Douglas Harper’s ethnographic study of the lives of tramps, is an excellent example of how an ethnographer can provide samples of conversations between members of the community to illustrate their values rather than explicating them in a traditional academic voice:

I was drinking beer with some tramps one night in the fall of 1973. Jack and Eddie had buddied up when Jack picked Eddie “out of the gutter” in Wenatchee, and he’d taken him along to a job he’d arranged picking apples. Jack had an old car and called himself a rubber tramp. Eddie didn’t say much and he didn’t work very hard. He looked old and worn out but Jack had an interest in him for some reason and was always saying things like: “Now Eddie, you aren’t going off to drink that old wine no more, now are you?” And Eddie would shake his head back and forth he wasn’t going back; he wasn’t going back.
I didn’t know how they’d ended up together, but I thought that they must have known each other someplace down the road. Jack was talking about the times he’d had: jobs, cars, drunks, bad rides, when Eddie interrupted: “Last job I had was making brooms for fourteen cents an hour made twohundred_forty dollars in sixteen months.”
Jack banged his beer down on the table and stared at the other tramp: “Two_hundred_forty in sixteen months?”
The tramp looked like he’d wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He finally nodded and started telling us about twenty years behind the bars of San Quentin, Alcatraz, and other prisons I’d never heard of. Jack kept looking at him like he couldn’t believe his ears, and I was a little surprised the subject hadn’t come up in the month they’d been together. Jack finally asked him what he’d done to get himself in so much trouble and [the] tramp said: “It’s checks__always little chicken_shit checks. My problem is my education__I know how to write my name. Did you ever think of it? Just sign your name and they give you money. It never fails to amaze me to find out my name’s still good after all the trouble I’ve been in.” (l)

Now, with the exception of the formal use of the colon rather than the comma to introduce dialogue, this introduction to Halper’s superb ethnography on tramp life reads more like a novel than a sociological study. It isn’t until the final chapter, in fact, that Harper introduces the more scholarly tone and apparatus that academic readers are accustomed to, such as references to secondary sources and heavy interpretation.
In addition to showing rather than telling, authors of speculative pieces tend to use extensive metaphors and images. In part these images and metaphors are used to make the work more lively, but they are also used to make readers think. In the following excerpt, the King of Metaphors, John Gardner, explains that he learned to revise prose by coauthoring a textbook with Lennis Dunlap, The Forms of Fiction:

Night after night for two full years we would work for five, six, seven hours on what sometimes added up to three or four sentences. He drove me crazy, and he wasn’t so kind to himself, either: often we had to stop because the stress of working with a young man as impatient as I was would give Lennis a histamine headache. Gradually I came lo feel as unwilling as he was to let a sentence stand if the meaning was not as unambiguously visible as a grizzly bear in a brightly lit kitchen. I discovered what every good writer knows, that getting down one’s exact meaning helps one to discover what one means. (18_19, italics added)

It isn’t every day that a grizzly bear interrupts breakfast. As usual, Gardner has selected a provocative image that emphasizes the importance of his message: every sentence must stand alone, firm and precise.
Some images are used to convey passion and anger. When the audience is not sympathetic to the author’s message, such attempts may seem overly manipulative and ineffective. For instance, in ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of ~igher Education, Charles Sykes titles one of his chapters “The Crucifixion of Teaching,” and throughout his book he uses venomous metaphors and images to turn readers against professors and academic scholarship. At one point, for example, he says that professors care as much about how teaching assistants teach as they do about “a soccer match in Bulgaria” (69). He also suggests that professors are raping their students: “The rape of classroom teaching in the universities takes several forms” (61). Before using such emotionally charged metaphors and images, question whether they are fair and accurate; otherwise, you run the risk of alienating rather than persuading your audience.
Some authors manage to use images in a playful yet provocative way. For instance, when assessing what methodological approaches writing teachers use to decide how and what to teach, Stephen North suggests that teachers particularly those who have not conducted research__often rely on lore to decide what to do. To describe how lore .s passed from teacher to teacher and how it controls how we teach, North suggests that lore is like a house inherited by writing teachers:

The House of Lore, as it were: a rambling, to my mind delightful old manse, wing branching off from wing, addition tacked to addition, in all sorts of materials—brick, wood, canvas, sheet metal, cardboard—with turrets and gables, minarets and spires, spiral staircases, rope ladders, pitons, dungeons, secret passageways—all seemingly random, yet all connected. Each generation of Practitioners inherits this pile from the one before, is ushered around some of what there is, and then, in its turn, adds on its own touches. Naturally, the structure is huge, sprawling. There are, after all, no provisions for tearing any of it down. Various portions of it can and almost certainly will be “forgotten” and “rediscovered” again and again. A wing abandoned by one generation will be resettled (and maybe refurbished) by another. And note, too, that there is nothing to rule out parallel discovery or re_invention, either; so the House of Lore has many rooms that look very much alike. (27)

Scientists and others interested in the creative process have noted that metaphors can control how and what we think and what We believe is possible. If we believe that our world is controlled by the Trinity, for instance, then like Kepler we will seek to reconcile physical properties and mathematical relationships with our assumptions about God the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. After providing a comprehensive review of the use of metaphor in science and drawing on the work of Max Black, Jerome Bump concludes: “Metaphorical models are in fact indispensable tools for the generation of creative hypotheses and effective explanations in science…. Metaphors enable us to make new connections and see things in a new way” (447).

FINAL COMMENTS
When it comes to defining excellence in literary nonfiction and qualitative reports, we have more questions than answers. We need to take a close look at the works of leaders in our disciplines ta determine what makes a text credible and persuasive.
Meanwhile, however, we can agree that the element of surpris~ may be the most compelling feature of literary nonfiction and some qualitative studies. In part, academic authors can surprise readers by breaking with conventions. As discussed above, for instance. we can surprise readers by sharing our passion for a subject and by using figurative language.

WORKS CITED

Adler, Patricia. Wheeling and Dealing. New York: Columbia Universily Press, 1985.
Berthoff. Ann E. “Rhetoric and Hermencutic.” College Composition and Communication 42 (October 1991): 279_287 .
Bump. Jerome. “Metaphor, Crcativity, and Technical Writing.” College Composition and Communicalion 36 (Deccmber 1985): 444_453.
Darwin. Charles. “Keeling Islands: Coral Formations.” In Writing about Science. 2nd ed. Ed. Elizabeth C. Bowen and Beverly R. Schncller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 222_238.
Gardner. John. On Becoming a Novelisl. New York: Harper and Row, 1983.
Harper, Douglas. Cood Company. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
North, Stephen M. The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field. Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook, 1987.
Sykes, Charles J. ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1988.
Watson, James. “Finding the Secret of Life.” In Writing about Science. 2nd ed. Ed. Elizabeth C. Bowen and Beverly R. Schneller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 14~152.