文章基本信息

标题：Why It Matters: The Value of Literature as Object of Inquiry in Qualitative Research
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作者：Peter Johnston
期刊名称：Journal of Literature and Science
印刷版ISSN：1754-646X
出版年度：2014
卷号：7
期号：2
页码：84-85
DOI：10.12929/jls.07.2.07
出版社：University of Glamorgan
摘要：According to Robert Nathan's provocative characterisation, qualitative social science research is in urgent need of a personality inventory: the hybrid offspring of strict empirical observation and creative narrative art, practices such as phenomenology and ethnography seem so directed towards pleasing Father Science that they tend to disavow their essential inheritance from Mother Literature altogether. In "Why It Matters: The Value of Literature as Object of Inquiry into Qualitative Research," Nathan states an intriguing case for reconciliation, arguing that the unique tools and experience of literary scholars might profitably be harnessed in service of social research, if only the researchers themselves might allow it. Nathan's first proposition in support of his overall argument will be familiar to many: qualitative social science texts are fundamentally similar to literary texts, he states, in the sense that they each selectively impose a subjective representational narrative upon the non-narrative, objective infinity of reality. The exclusion of novels from one's research on the grounds that they distort reality is therefore merely ideological. Citing Hayden White, Nelson Phillips, and John Ziman, Nathan recounts the well-known 'linguistic relativity hypothesis', according to which language does not simply represent the categories of reality, but in fact creates them. Consequently, he continues, accepted qualitative practices cannot be distinguished from their literary equivalents, since neither can claim to represent external reality with transparent objectivity.