Between old and new
Cognitive dissonance and the politics of research
Keywords:
: Cognitive Dissonance, Confessional Tale, Interpretive Inquiry Micro-Politics, Post-PositivismAbstract
In what ways does academic dissonance influence the conduct of research? Or rather what does it mean to convert from a research tradition that valorizes realism to one that emphasizes the rhizomatic, the postmodern, the (inter)subjective? In this narrative, I critically reflect on the challenges I encountered in transitioning as an academic from Ghana steeped in linguistics and education with an avid emphasis on post/positivism to becoming a doctoral student of interpretive inquiry as practiced in the humanities of an American university. The narrative draws inspiration from a recent pilot study I conducted to explore interactional rituals used among student editors of a college news bulletin. Based on a lessons-learnt approach, the paper is a modest contribution to studies on the politics of research, the objectivity/subjectivity debate, and research in cognitive dissonance.
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References
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Stern, H. H. (1983). Fundamental concepts of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thorndike, E. L. (1999/1913). Education psychology: Briefer course. New York: Routledge.
Van Mannen, J. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard Library of Congress.
Bem, D. J. (1967). Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena. Psychological Review, 74: 183-200.
Bloomfield, Leonard. (1933). Language. London: Geroge Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bucholtz, M. (2000). The politics of transcription. Journal of Pragmatics, 32: 1439-1465.
Chomsky, Noam (1957), Syntactic structures. The Hague/Paris: Mouton.
----------- (1965), Aspects of the theory of syntax, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Coffey, A. (1999). The ethnographic self: Fieldwork and the representation of identity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Coker, W. (2013a). Media culture and television news: A review of five books and their implications for future research. International Journal of Communication and Media Studies, 3 (4): 17-26.
----------- (2013b). A road less traveled: Friending as an emerging concept in newswork. Department of Humanities Graduate Research Colloquium. Michigan Technological University, Michigan, 11/15/2013.
----------- (2012b). The day I fell in love: A study of the rhetoric of romantic love narratives of young Ghanaian women. In E. Nketiah (Ed.), Distance Forum: A Book of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2: 209-229. New York: Portorhouse.
----------- (2011a). Power struggle in a female group discussion: The case of a Ghanaian university. Language, Society and Culture, 32: 28-36.
---------- (2011b). SMS and the electronic media: A discourse analysis of text messages on radio panel discussions in Ghana. Unpublished M Phil Thesis. University of Cape Coast, Ghana.
---------- (2010). Persuasion and sermonic discourse. An analysis of a Ghanaian charismatic church. Drumspeak: International Journal of Research in the Humanities, 3: 52- 75.
Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, (2nd ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Daly, K. J. (2007). Positioning the self: Role considerations and the practices of reflexivity. In Qualitative methods for family studies & human development. (pp. 187-209). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publication.
Diao, W. (2014). Between ethic and English names: Name choice for transnational students in a US academic community, Journal of International Students, 4 (3): 205-222.
Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (2011). The sage handbook of qualitative research. (4th ed.). Urbana-Champaign, IL: Sage.
Egan, L.C., Santos, R. & Bloom, P. (2007). The origins of cognitive dissonance: Evidence from children and monkeys. Psychological Science, 18 (11): 978-983.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Fine, G. A. (1993). Ten lies of ethnography: Moral dilemmas of field research. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 22: 267-92.
Frentz, T. (2014). Killing with kindness: Confessions of an obsessive. Qualitative Inquiry. 20 (1): 15-22.
Frost, R. (1920). Mountain interval. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Goodall, Jnr. H. E. (2000). The new ethnography. Oxford: AltaMira Press.
Guillemin, M. & Gillam, L. (2004). Ethics, reflexivity, and “ethically important moments” in research. Qualitative Inquiry, 10 (2): 261-280.
Grayson, J. P. (2014). Negative racial encounters and academic outcomes of international and domestic students in four Canadian universities. Journal of International Students, 4 (3): 262-278.
Halliday, M.A.K. and Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.
-----------. (1994). Introduction to functional grammar, 2nd ed. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K. & Hassan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Hegarty, N. (2014). Where are we now: The presence and importance of international students to universities in the United States, Journal of International Students, 4 (3): 223-235.
Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Kachru, B.B., Kachru, Y. & Nelson, C. Eds. (2009). The handbook of world Englishes. Malden, MA: Sage.
Kachru, B. B. (2006). World Englishes: Critical concepts in linguistics (vol. 4). New York: Taylor & Francis.
-------- (1990). The alchemy of English: the spread, functions, and models of non-native Englishes. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Kwadzo, M. (2014). International students’ experience of studying and working at a northeastern public university in the US. Journal of International Students, 4 (3): 279-291.
Metin, I. & Iktisadi, I. (2011). Advances in the history of cognitive dissonance theory. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1 (6): 131-136.
Pavlov, I. P. (1927/1960). Condition reflexes. New York. Dover.
Piaget, J. (1967). The child’s conception of space. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Quarshie Smith, B. (2012). Reading and writing in global workplace. New York: Lexington.
Tracy, S. J. (2013). Qualitative research methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
----------- (2010). Qualitative quality: Eight “big-tent” criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 16 (10): 837-851.
---------- (2004). The construction of correctional officers: Layers of emotionality behind bars. Qualitative Inquiry, 10: 509-33.
Saldaňa, J. (2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Simpson-Cosimano, A. J. (2010). The experience of new nursing graduates on labor and delivery units. PhD dissertation, Saint Mary College.
Skinner, B. F. (1965). Science and human behavior (2nd ed). New York: The Free Press.
Stern, H. H. (1983). Fundamental concepts of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thorndike, E. L. (1999/1913). Education psychology: Briefer course. New York: Routledge.
Van Mannen, J. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard Library of Congress.
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Between old and new: Cognitive dissonance and the politics of research. (2015). Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Education, 3(2), 76-90. https://ojed.org/jise/article/view/1477
