Autoethnography

Ellis, Adams and Bochner’s (2011) article provides an extensive overview of autoethnography as one of the qualitative methods in social research. It outlines the history of development of this method, process, end product or an output, potential, issues and criticisms. I thought the article was well written and could be a very useful reference for those who are not familiar with this method.

I can see that autoethnography could be one of few methods that I would be able to apply in L2 acquisition and ESL teaching research. For example, being a language learner and writing about this experience. Or in the case of ESL teaching, this experience would be complemented with teaching and communication with other teachers, their experiences and thoughts, and possibly students’ perspectives as well.

Having read this article, I kept on pondering whether I would utilise this method in my research that tends to address a wide range of issues, such as crises of identity among ethnic minorities and marginalised groups of society, consequential effects of public and social policies, including language policy, etc. If I wanted to do field work somewhere, for example, in northern Iraq and carry out a research on Kurds’ national identity and the way people feel about it being suppressed by the former government of Saddam Hussein, how would I be able to experience what those people had faced? My assumption is that being an ethnic Korean and a Russian citizen, I would be treated in a different way, which will affect (again, my assumption) the findings. Furthermore, the level of education, cultural and religious beliefs, gender, sexual orientation and social class might also affect this experience and treatment. This is just one of many examples of the research that I could be carrying out, but how will it be different to ethnography? And another reason why I would probably not use it is because I simply lack confidence in my writing and ability to write the way other authors do – in a very engaging and artistic way. I might be too self-critical. And perhaps, to be a good writer, one needs to have at least some sort of training, which I never had. All this makes any writing task quite challenging especially if things have to be written in L2 or L3.

However, what I found interesting about autoethnography (and I must acknowledge that I didn’t have a prior knowledge of this method and hadn’t done any reading on it) is that it challenges canonical ways of what research is, the way it should be conducted and how the findings should be reported (Ellis et al., 2011). I remember when I did the Language Learner paper, both assignments were supposed to have a conventional structure that had been prescribed by both lecturers: introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion and conclusion. And I clearly remember how I felt about those prescriptive instructions – quite negative I must say – because it was limiting and I felt I could approach this task in a different way.

Another interesting finding from this article is that unlike other methods, autoethnography acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotionality and the researcher’s influence. It does not hide these matters like other methods tend to do and neither does it try to assume that they do not exist (Ellis et al., 2011). The notions of objectivity, absence of bias, validity and others are often considered as benchmarks of a good research, especially in quantitative and some qualitative works. Autoethnography, as implied by Ellis et al., 2011, challenges what social research is and what to expect from both researchers (how it can be done) and the audience (it can be much wider and also it can be urged to change their attitudes and civic activity).

Although autoethnography may not be suitable in all types of social research (in terms of the topics and issues that one wishes to examine), looking at various methods and assessing their suitability is a positive thing. It allows the researchers and academics look outside the square, which is constituted by scientific paradigms, established views, attitudes and whatnot. It can also help us approach issues in an alternative way and who knows, maybe that’s where the answers are hidden.

Reference:

Ellis, C., Adams, T.E. & Bochner, A.P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum: Qualitative social research. 12(1)