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Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting

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 Contents

Detailed contents viii

Preface: Is this book for me? xvi

1 Developing contextual research that matters 1

2 Entering the conversation of qualitative research 25
3 Paradigmatic reflections and qualitative research territories 48
4 Research design: Sampling, research proposals, ethics, and IRB 75
5 Negotiating access and exploring the scene 104
6 Field roles, fieldnotes, and field focus 129
7 Interview planning and design: Structuring, wording, and questioning 155
8 Interview practice: Embodied, mediated, and focus‐group approaches 181
9 Data analysis basics: A phronetic iterative approach 208
10 Advanced data analysis: The art and magic of interpretation 236
11 Qualitative quality: Creating a credible, ethical, significant study 265
12 Theorizing and writing: Explaining, synthesizing, and crafting a tale 292
13 Drafting, polishing, and publishing 320
14 Qualitative methodology matters: Exiting and communicating impact 344

Appendix A Fieldnote 367

Appendix B Focus group guide 369
Appendix C Interview/focus group excerpts with different levels of transcription
detail 373
References 377
Index 400
Detailed Contents

Preface: Is this book for me? xvi

1 Developing contextual research that matters 1

Overview and introduction 2
Three core qualitative concepts: ­self‐reflexivity, context, and thick description 2
Self‐reflexivity 2
Context 3
Thick description 3
How qualitative research is distinct from quantitative research 4
A phronetic approach: doing qualitative research that matters 6
Strengths of qualitative research 7
Qualitative research is useful in a variety of jobs, settings, and disciplinary
foci 8
EXERCISE 1.1 Interviewing a friend, colleague, or classmate 9
Moving from ideas to sites, settings, and
participants 11
Sources of research ideas 12
EXERCISE 1.2 Field/site/participant brainstorm 13
CONSIDER THIS 1.1 Sources of research ideas 14
Compatibility, yield, suitability, and feasibility 15
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 1.1 Negotiating challenges with rare or hidden
populations 17
TIPS AND TOOLS 1.1 Factoring the ease of fieldwork 18
Moving toward a research question 18
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 1.2 Published examples of research questions 20
Considering collaboration 20
EXERCISE 1.3 Early research question brainstorm 21
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 22
EXERCISE 1.4 Three potential field sites and/or participant groups 23
In summary 23

2 Entering the conversation of qualitative research 25

Inductive/emic, deductive/etic, and abductive/iterative approaches 26
The funnel metaphor 29
Sensitizing concepts 29
EXERCISE 2.1 A quick dip into the field 30
A complex focus on the whole 30
Naturalistic inquiry 31
Thick description 31
Bricolage 32
 Detailed Contents ix

A sampling of theoretical approaches that commonly use qualitative methods 32

Symbolic interactionism 33
CONSIDER THIS 2.1 How do I know myself? 35
Structuration theory 36
CONSIDER THIS 2.2 Why am I standing in line? 37
EXERCISE 2.2 Action vs. structure 38
Sensemaking 38
Historical matters and current conversations in qualitative research 40
The early days 40
Ethically problematic research and the creation of the IRB 41
Recent history in academia and the private sector 41
Current conversations: ethics, post‐qualitative research, big data 42
In summary 44
EXERCISE 2.3 Research problems and questions 45

3 Paradigmatic reflections and qualitative research territories 48

Paradigms: positivist, interpretive, critical, postmodern 49
Positivist and post‐positivist paradigms 49
Interpretive paradigm 51
EXERCISE 3.1 Verstehen/understanding 52
Critical paradigm 52
Postmodern and other “post” paradigms 55
CONSIDER THIS 3.1 Whose stylistic rules? 57
Paradigmatic complexities and intersections 58
EXERCISE 3.2 Assumptions of paradigmatic approaches 59
Key territories and approaches of qualitative research 61
Case study 61
Grounded theory 62
Ethnography and ethnography of communication 63
Phenomenology 65
Participatory action research 67
Narrative inquiry and autoethnography 69
Creative, performative, and arts‐based approaches 70
In summary 71

4 Research design: Sampling, research proposals, ethics, and IRB 75

Planning the data collection: fieldwork, interviews, texts, and visuals 76
The value of fieldwork and “participant witnessing” 76
The value of interviews 78
CONSIDER THIS 4.1 Yin and yang: taijitu 79
The value of textual analysis and cultural studies 80
The value of visual and arts‐based materials 81
Developing a sampling plan: who, what, where, how, and when 82
Random samples and representative samples 82
Convenience/opportunistic samples 83
Maximum variation samples 83
Snowball samples 84
Theoretical‐construct samples 84
Typical, extreme, deviant, and critical incident samples 84
x Detailed Contents

TIPS AND TOOLS 4.1 Sampling plans 86

How and when to choose your sample 86
Ethics and institutional review boards (IRB) 87
Research instruments, informed consent, and confidentiality 88
Different levels of ethical risk and IRB review 89
The quirks of IRB 90
Creating a research proposal 92
TIPS AND TOOLS 4.2 Research proposal components 92
Title, abstract, and key words 93
Introduction/rationale 94
EXERCISE 4.1 Conceptual cocktail party 95
Literature review/conceptual framework 96
Research questions/foci 97
Methodology and methods 98
TIPS AND TOOLS 4.3 What belongs in a qualitative methods section? 98
Budget/timeline 99
TIPS AND TOOLS 4.4 What to include in a qualitative project budget 99
Projected outcomes 100
In summary 100

5 Negotiating access and exploring the scene 104

Confessional tales that illustrate common challenges of access and
consent 105
Riding my mentor’s coattails: Citywest 911 emergency call‐takers 105
Becoming a full participant: the Radiant Sun cruise ship 106
Entering a closed organization: Women’s Minimum and Nouveau Jail 107
Accessing an elite interviewee population surrounding a delicate topic 108
Practical considerations of negotiating access 110
Do some homework before approaching the scene 110
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 5.1 Contact information log 111
Please don’t reject me! Seeking research permission 111
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 5.2 Sample access proposal 114
Virtual “access” versus textual harvesting 115
Negotiating access for interviews 116
Abandoning the ego, engaging embodiment, embracing liminality 117
EXERCISE 5.1 Self‐identity audit 119
Navigating those first research interactions 119
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 5.3 Initial reactions speak volumes 121
Relationship building with participants 121
Seeking informed consent in the scene 122
TIPS AND TOOLS 5.1 Navigating the beginning of the qualitative research
project 123
Exploratory methods 123
Briefing interviews and participant information table 123
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 5.4 Participant information table 124
Member diaries 124
Maps and narrative tours 125
EXERCISE 5.2 Map and narrative tour 127
In summary 127
 Detailed Contents xi

6 Field roles, fieldnotes, and field focus 129

Field roles and standpoints 130
Complete participant 131
Play participant 132
Focused witness 133
CONSIDER THIS 6.1 When playing is uncomfortable 134
Complete witness 135
Visual and virtual aspects of fieldwork 136
Writing fieldnotes: raw records, headnotes, and formal fieldnotes 137
Raw records and headnotes 138
EXERCISE 6.1 Taking raw records in the scene 140
Formal fieldnotes 140
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 6.1 Fieldnote header 141
Qualities of good fieldnotes 142
Economy versus detail 142
Showing (and using dialogue) versus telling 142
Making the familiar strange and the strange familiar 143
Noticing the data as evidence 144
Analytic reflections 145
CONSIDER THIS 6.2 Noticing the data as evidence 145
Fieldnote wrap‐up 146
TIPS AND TOOLS 6.1 Fieldnote writing tips 147
Focusing the data and using heuristic devices 147
EXERCISE 6.2 Fieldnotes 149
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 150
In summary 152

7 Interview planning and design: Structuring, wording, and questioning 155

Self‐reflexivity in interviews 156
EXERCISE 7.1 Self‐reflexive interviewing 157
Interview structure, type, and stance 157
Level of structure in interviews 157
Interview types: ethnographic, informant, respondent, narrative,
discursive 158
Interview stances: naïveté, collaborative, pedagogical, responsive,
confrontational 160
Interview guide and question wording 161
TIPS AND TOOLS 7.1 Interview structure, types, and stances 162
Wording good questions 162
EXERCISE 7.2 Strategizing interviews 162
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 7.1 Research questions versus interview questions 163
Interview questions: types, purposes, examples, and sequencing 164
Opening the interview 164
TIPS AND TOOLS 7.2 Interview question types 165
Generative questions 166
Directive questions 168
Closing the interview 169
Interview question wrap‐up 170
Visual, embodied, and experiential approaches 170
xii Detailed Contents

RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 7.2 Mobile peripatetic interviews 173

How many interviews are “enough”? 174
In summary 175
EXERCISE 7.3 Interview schedule or guide 176

8 Interview practice: Embodied, mediated, and focus‐group approaches 181

Conducting face‐to‐face interviews 182
Interview logistics 182
Why good interviewing is so much more than asking questions 184
Technologically mediated approaches to interviewing 186
Strengths of mediated interviews 186
Disadvantages of mediated interviews 188
TIPS AND TOOLS 8.1 Mediated interviews: advantages and disadvantages 189
The focus‐group interview 190
The value of focus groups 190
When to use focus groups 191
Planning focus groups 193
Facilitating the focus group 193
TIPS AND TOOLS 8.2 Logistics of formal focus groups 194
Overcoming common focus group and interviewing challenges 196
EXERCISE 8.1 Practicing focus groups 197
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 8.1 Remedial–pedagogical interviews 199
Transcribing 201
EXERCISE 8.2 Role‐playing interview challenges in a fishbowl 202
TIPS AND TOOLS 8.3 Common transcribing symbols 204
In summary 206

9 Data analysis basics: A phronetic iterative approach 208

A phronetic iterative analysis approach 209
Organizing and preparing the data 212
Coding: what it is and how to start 213
CONSIDER THIS 9.1 Motivating questions and coding domains 215
Analysis logistics: colors, cutting, or computers? 216
Manual approaches 216
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 9.1 Manual coding visual displays: Artistic canvas
and tabletop categories 217
Computer‐aided approaches with everyday software 218
Primary‐cycle coding, coding question start list, and first‐level descriptive codes 219
Focusing the analysis and creating a codebook 221
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 9.2 Codebook excerpt 222
CONSIDER THIS 9.2 Focusing the data analysis 224
Secondary‐cycle coding: second‐level analytic and axial/hierarchical codes 225
EXERCISE 9.1 Grouping together codes via axial and hierarchical coding 227
Synthesizing activities: memos, negative cases, and analytic outlines 228
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 9.3 Analytic memos 229
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 9.4 Loose analysis outline 230
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 231
In summary 232
EXERCISE 9.2 Iterative analysis basics 233
 Detailed Contents xiii

10 Advanced data analysis: The art and magic of interpretation 236

Advanced logistical tools for data analysis 238
Visual data displays 238
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 10.1 Matrix display 239
TIPS AND TOOLS 10.1 Flowchart depicting iterative analysis process 241
Computer‐aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) 242
Exemplars and vignettes 245
Developing typologies 247
Dramatistic strategy and narrative analysis 248
TIPS AND TOOLS 10.2 Questions to inspire narrative analysis 250
Metaphor analysis 251
Explanation and causality 253
Discourse tracing 255
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 10.2 Micro, meso, macro sources 257
A post‐qualitative analysis: deconstructionism and arts‐based research 258
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 260
In summary 261
EXERCISE 10.1 Advanced data analysis/interpretation 262

11 Qualitative quality: Creating a credible, ethical, significant study 265

Moving beyond objectivity, reliability, and formal generalizability 266
Eight “big tent” criteria for high quality qualitative research 269
TIPS AND TOOLS 11.1 Eight “big tent” criteria for excellent qualitative research 270
Worthy topic 271
Rich rigor 271
Sincerity 272
EXERCISE 11.1 Gauging worth and rigor 273
Self‐reflexivity 273
Transparency 274
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 11.1 Sincerity word cloud 274
Credibility 275
Thick description 275
Crystallization or triangulation (NOT both at the same time) 275
Multivocality 277
TIPS AND TOOLS 11.2 Intercoder reliability 277
Member reflections (NOT member “checks”) 278
Resonance 279
Transferability and naturalistic generalization 279
Aesthetic merit 280
Significant contribution 281
Ethical research practice 283
Procedural ethics 283
EXERCISE 11.2 Articulating and gauging significance 283
Situational ethics 284
CONSIDER THIS 11.1 Situational and relational ethics 285
Meaningful coherence 286
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 287
CONSIDER THIS 11.2 The ten lies of ethnography 288
In summary 288
xiv Detailed Contents

12 Theorizing and writing: Explaining, synthesizing, and crafting a tale 292

Theorizing, brainstorming, explaining 293
EXERCISE 12.1 Words push back on us: a creative analytic exercise 294
EXERCISE 12.2 Theorizing via bracketing, abduction, metaphor, and explaining 295
Types of tales: realist, impressionistic/poetic, confessional/autoethnographic 296
The realist tale 297
Creative, impressionist, and literary tales 297
The confessional tale 299
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 12.1 Poetic inquiry 300
Archaeology of a “traditional” qualitative essay 301
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 12.2 Dialogue as a powerful literary tactic 302
EXERCISE 12.3 Accidental rewrites 303
Writing the framing material: title, abstract, key words 304
Writing the introduction, the literature review, and the conceptual framework 305
Writing the research methodology and method(s) 305
Findings and analysis: choosing an organizational approach 306
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 12.3 Methods data display 307
Themes/topics 308
Chronology/life‐story 309
Convergence/braided narrative 309
Puzzle explication strategy 310
Separated text 310
Layered/messy texts 311
EXERCISE 12.4 Which writing strategy? 312
Conclusions, implications, limitations, and future research 312
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 315
In summary 317

13 Drafting, polishing, and publishing 320

Writing as a method of inquiry 322
How to write and format qualitative research 323
Choosing the research materials 323
Rich, luminous, and thick representations 324
Structuring the data in sections, paragraphs, and sentences 325
EXERCISE 13.1 Writing from different perspectives and verb tenses 326
Formatting qualitative work 327
Visual representations and art 329
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 13.1 Visual representation 330
Setting yourself up for success by considering the audience first 330
EXERCISE 13.2 Article format model 332
Submitting, revising, and resubmitting for journal publication 333
TIPS AND TOOLS 13.1 National or international journals that have published
qualitative communication research (an incomplete list) 334
Rise and grind: overcoming common writing and submission challenges 336
How to write a lot 337
Addressing common challenges in qualitative writing 338
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 342
In summary 342
 Detailed Contents xv

14 Qualitative methodology matters: Exiting and communicating impact 344

Navigating exit and research disengagement 345
Give notice and say goodbye 346
Exits can be emotional 346
Don’t spoil the scene 346
Give back 347
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 14.1 Thank you note 348
Ethically delivering the findings 348
Public scholarship: crafting representations that move beyond the scholarly essay 349
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 350
Public scholarship 351
Staged performances 351
RESEARCHER’S NOTEPAD 14.2 Staged performance with impact 352
Films 353
White papers and translated essays 354
TIPS AND TOOLS 14.1 White papers 355
Grant applications and reports 356
Consulting and private sector ethnography 357
Media relations 358
EXERCISE 14.1 Six‐word stories 359
Web presence 359
Warning: doing research that matters can be terrifying 361
Overcoming lingering obstacles to public scholarship 362
EXERCISE 14.2 Making an impact via public scholarship 364
FOLLOWING, FORGETTING, AND IMPROVISING 364
In summary 366

Appendix A Fieldnote 367

Appendix B Focus group guide 369
Appendix C Interview/focus group excerpts with different levels of transcription detail 373
References 377
Index 400
 Preface
Is this book for me?
This book is an all‐inclusive treatment that leads
readers through a qualitative research project
including research design, data collection,
­analysis, theorizing, writing, and research disen­
gagement. This book introduces relevant issues
as they typically emerge in a qualitative research
project. For example, consider ethics or the
choice to use visuals or arts‐based research.
Those new to research must first understand
these issues when conceptualizing a project, and
then again as they conduct research and analysis,
and consider them again when they are creating
an ultimate representation and leaving the field.
I provide a chronological discussion of relevant
issues, which makes this book especially valuable
for people to review (and return to) as they
journey through a project. My approach con­
trasts with resources where information about
certain theories, methods, or topics are each
siloed into their own single chapter. Readers of
this book will feel confident to jump into
qualitative research straight away.
One of my ongoing aims is to provide clear
explanation of qualitative analysis and theo­
rizing in commonsense terms, understandable
both to newcomers and to those well versed in
qualitative research. Although students have a
wealth of available pedagogical resources on
methodological philosophies, research design,
data collection, and writing, those new to
research still struggle with finding appropriate
instruction of what to do in between the time
they collect data and the time they craft it into a
polished representation. This book provides
step‐by‐step instruction along with timely exam­
ples, backstage stories, visual images, and
discussion. It also clarifies how the phronetic
iterative approach in this book compares with
other popular analysis approaches (e.g. grounded
theory). In addition, it describes seven specific
types of qualitative analysis and offers a new
discussion of claim‐making and theory building.
The book is designed to be accessible to
advanced undergraduate students while
providing enough detail, references, and illustra­
tions to make it valuable for doctoral students
and advanced scholars. Undergraduate students
tend to appreciate that I share my own joys and
frustrations – marked as they are by twists and
turns, celebrations and disappointments – as a
method to make the research process poignant,
interesting, real, and occasionally humorous.
Graduate students have told me that they return
to this book repeatedly as they write their theses
and dissertations; and faculty have said they
keep it on their bookshelves for ongoing refer­
ence. And, although this book is designed pri­
marily for an academic audience, practitioners
wishing to engage in qualitative research to solve
organizational and societal dilemmas will also
find good advice within these pages.
This book is appropriate for a variety of
­disciplines and classes and can be adapted for
one‐semester/quarter and to two‐semester/
quarter classes. The book is useful for college
courses that appear under names such as
research methods, qualitative research methods,
ethnography, ethnographic methods, critical
research methods, interpretive research,
grounded approaches to research, naturalistic
inquiry, autoethnography, performance studies,
narrative research methods, and field methods.
Examples and illustrations reach beyond my
home field of human communication to

numerous other disciplines, such as health, edu­
cation, management, sociology, social work, jus­
tice studies, and ethnic and gender studies.
Based upon feedback from reviewers, col­
leagues, and students, the second edition provides
a larger variety of color images (especially pic­
turing the analysis process) and additional
qualitative exercises/activities that can be easily
incorporated into class sessions. Throughout the
book, additional material connects qualitative
research to professional, and not just academic,
atmospheres (something that may be especially
appreciated by undergraduates). Furthermore, the
second edition has much more material related to
arts‐based research, virtual and online textual
analyses, and post‐qualitative conversations.
In response to requests for greater conceptual
clarity, in this edition I separated out theories
that are commonly used with qualitative research
(e.g. symbolic interactionism, sensemaking,
structuration – which are now in Chapter 2)
from qualitative methodological territories (e.g.
grounded theory, phenomenology, case
study – which are now in Chapter 3). Furthermore,
in line with the goal that this book’s chronolog­
ical order match that of a typical research project,
I have switched the ordering of Chapters 4 and 5
so that IRB, ethics, and proposal writing comes
before exploring the scene. Finally, I have added
scores of updated examples and references.
A summary of the chapters, as well as nota­
tions about new features in this second edition,
are as follows:
●● Chapter 1 introduces a phronetic iterative
approach to qualitative methods and the
importance of self‐reflexivity, context, and
thick description. It also provides tips for
choosing a topic and devising guiding
research questions. New features include:
○○ differentiating qualitative from quan­
titative research earlier on in the book
○○ describing the role of qualitative research
in the workplace, in the creative arts, in
social justice, in the media, and in a
variety of interdisciplinary academic
environments
○○ a section related to working collabora­
tively with a partner or team
○○ an exercise on interviewing another
­student
Preface: Is this book for me? xvii
●● Chapter 2 overviews the abductive logic of
iterative qualitative research, introduces
key terminology, provides a sampling of
­theoretical approaches that commonly use
qualitative methods, and concludes with his­
torical matters and current conversations.
New features include:
○○ an exercise of practicing fieldwork in a
public place
○○ incorporating new materialism, post‐
qualitative methodologies, ethical con­
cerns about who gets to study whom, big
data, and the quantified self
○○ a discussion about how theory works in
research
●● Chapter 3 discusses four primary research
paradigms and how qualitative research is
situated in each. The chapter also reviews
seven approaches of qualitative research,
including: case study, grounded theory, eth­
nography and ethnography of communica­
tion, phenomenology, participatory action
research, narrative inquiry and autoethnog­
raphy, and creative, performative, and arts‐
based research. New features include:
○○ incorporating post‐qualitative research
and new materialism into the post­
modern paradigm
○○ new sections on case study, phenome­
nology, and arts‐based research
●● Chapter 4 focuses on research design. It
introduces various types of data collection
and how to develop a sampling plan.
Furthermore, it provides an explanation of
the importance of ethics and human subjects
review and a step‐by‐step guide for writing a
research proposal. New features include:
○○ an expanded and earlier discussion of
sampling
○○ explaining my use of “participant‐­
witnessing” rather than “participant‐
observation” to refer to fieldwork
○○ a new section on the value of textual
­analysis and cultural studies
○○ a new section on the value of visual and
arts‐based materials
○○ material on recruiting and engaging in
interviews via online labor pools
○○ two additional pedagogical exercises: 1)
research questions; 2) conceptual cocktail
party
xviii Preface: Is this book for me?
●● Chapter 5 provides confessional tales about
and systematic tips for navigating access to
conduct qualitative research. These include
keeping a contact log, creating an access pro­
posal, organizing a participant table, and
early exploration methods like diaries, maps,
and narrative tours. New features include:
○○ a confessional tale and material regarding
gaining access to elite populations
○○ a section on navigating access to a virtual
site and ethical sensitivities of textual
harvesting
●● Chapter 6 gives insight on different field
roles and standpoints, visual and virtual
aspects of fieldwork, how to write fieldnotes,
methods for focusing on data collection, and
how to manage various ethical dilemmas in
the field. New features include:
○○ visual, virtual, and online aspects of field­
work
○○ a fieldnote writing exercise
○○ problematizing the idea that data is static
using theories from new materialism
●● Chapter 7 offers the nuts and bolts of
planning and designing good interviews,
including different types, structures and
stances. Then, it turns to how to write and
order interview questions and dialogue,
providing updated examples along the way.
New features include:
○○ a section and text box on visual,
embodied, and elicitation interviewing
approaches such as mobile interviewing,
photovoice, and think‐aloud method
○○ a section on the question, “how many
interviews are enough”
○○ new question types that relate to phe­
nomenology and narrative approaches
○○ an expanded discussion on replacing
“why” questions with “how” questions
●● Chapter 8 focuses on conducting an actual
interview or focus group session. It discusses
developing rapport, ethical engagement,
logistics, transcription, and advantages and
disadvantages of various interview formats –
face‐to‐face, mediated, one‐on‐one, or
group. It closes with common interviewing
challenges. New features include:
○○ an exercise on facilitating a focus group
○○ examples and a visual that depict arts‐
based research in focus groups
○○ how to deal with inauthenticity or prob­
lematic viewpoints in interviews using
dialogic interviewing
●● Chapter 9 details how researchers can ana­
lyze their qualitative research materials using
a phronetic iterative analysis approach. It
then provides step‐by‐step best practices for
transforming a heap of data into a story or set
of arguments endowed with theoretical,
aesthetic, and practical significance. Along
the way, the chapter differentiates types of
coding, how to create a codebook, and var­
ious synthesizing activities. New features
include:
○○ explaining how a phronetic iterative
approach compares with other analysis
approaches
○○ a section that clarifies the different labels
people use to describe analysis, such as:
codes, themes, categories, chunks
○○ responding to post‐qualitative concerns
regarding coding
○○ a coding start‐list that provides topics
and questions to ask when beginning
coding
○○ additional color images to show coding
processes at work
●● Chapter 10 provides advanced data analysis
approaches that are especially appropriate for
graduate level instruction. It discusses logis­
tical tools such as visual data displays and
computer‐aided qualitative analysis, and
seven different analysis approaches: exem­
plars, typologies, narrative, metaphor, and
discourse tracing. The chapter closes with
using deconstructionism as a theoretical
frame for doing arts‐based research. New
features include:
○○ clarifying when you would choose which
type of analysis approach
○○ explaining the importance of interpreta­
tion and logical creativity for analysis
○○ a section on narrative analysis (coupled
with the dramatistic pentad)
○○ showing how analysis can unfold directly
from the theory of deconstructionism
●● Chapter 11 overviews qualitative quality
based upon my “eight big tent criteria model”
for qualitative research. The chapter opens
by discussing traditional quantitative mea­
sures of research quality (e.g. objectivity,

statistical generalizability, and reliability)
and explains how these are inappropriate
benchmarks for qualitative methods. It then
discusses how researchers across paradigms
can create high quality qualitative research
that is interesting, sincere, rigorous, ethical,
and credible. New features include:
○○ discussing how the “eight big tent criteria
model” for qualitative quality has been
used and extended in teaching and
research since its original publication
in 2010
○○ incorporating the latest discussions and
examples of quality from multiple disci­
plines and topic areas
●● Chapter 12 provides a discussion of theo­
rizing and writing qualitative inquiry.
In doing so, it illustrates different types of
qualitative tales, the various ways findings
might be organized, and issues to consider
when writing the main parts of a qualitative
essay. New features include:
○○ a section called “Theorizing, brain­
storming, explaining” that discusses how
to move from analysis, to claim‐making,
to writing
○○ three additional pedagogical activities: 1)
found poem; 2) theorizing via abductive
reasoning, 3) writing and rewriting
○○ an expanded section on poetic methods
●● Chapter 13 overviews drafting, polishing,
and publishing. It provides the philosophical
framework of writing as a form of inquiry
and reviews how to format qualitative data.
The chapter also provides insight regarding
good qualitative journals, revision, over­
coming common writing errors, and how to
write a lot! New features include:
○○ an exercise that illustrates how verb tense
affects understanding
○○ a section on persuasive qualitative writing
○○ updated examples and writing tips
●● Chapter 14 comes full circle, overviewing
logistical issues for leaving the scene and
showing how researchers can frame and
deliver their qualitative work so that it
impacts the world. In doing so, it reviews
alternatives to the academic essay, via public
scholarship options like performances, films,
online presence, grants, consulting, and
media relations. New features include:
Preface: Is this book for me? xix
○○ updated examples and images of films,
YouTube channels, websites, perfor­
mances, and private sector ethnography /
consulting
○○ an expanded discussion on the impor­
tance of public scholarship
Along the way, I include recurring text boxes.
Activities and assignments are in boxes labeled
“Exercise.” Examples and narratives are called
“Consider This.” Practical recommendations are
listed in “Tips and Tools.” Finally, data excerpts
or experiences are offered in “Researcher’s
Notepad.” Some of these boxes are written in the
words of other scholars and students – in which
they talk about their own experiences or activ­
ities that have worked in their own qualitative
classrooms. The boxes break up the text and
encourage reader engagement.
Furthermore, I intermittently include sec­
tions called “Following, Forgetting, and
Improvising.” Practicing any interpretive art
requires tagging back and forth between rules
and improvisational practice. I suggest ways in
which researchers might fruitfully play with
qualitative best practices, or in some cases forget
them altogether. Like in all dialectics, the par­
adox of “following, then forgetting” qualitative
best practices is not something that can be solved
or resolved. There’s no easy way out; but there
are better ways of navigating than others. This
book can serve as a guide.
Finally, an accompanying website with
teaching manual materials is available with
the book. Materials include:
1 Powerpoint slides to accompany each
chapter
2 Sample syllabi for both undergraduate and
graduate courses
3 A test bank, containing questions for each
chapter, including answers
4 Lesson plan outlines for each chapter
5 Additional activities and worksheets
6 Master list of key terms and definitions
These materials will help those who are new to
teaching qualitative research methods to be up
and running in no time. For experienced instruc­
tors, they serve as a supplement and launching
pad for new pedagogical options.
xx Preface: Is this book for me?
Acknowledgments
I am fortunate to have worked with a host of
good mentors and colleagues. You’ll see me
repeat some of their advice verbatim; and, where
I do not, remnants and iterations of their
wisdom are indelibly stamped upon these pages.
I am indebted to my mentors at University of
Colorado‐Boulder who, years ago, planted the
seeds of the iterative phronetic approach to
qualitative research represented in this book.
These people include Bryan Taylor, Stanley
Deetz, Karen Tracy, Margaret Eisenhart, Bob
Craig, Brenda Allen, George Cheney, Sally
Planalp, and Phil Tompkins. Colleagues in the
Hugh Downs School of Human Communication
at Arizona State University have also contributed
to the development of this book. Bud Goodall
was a huge supporter of the first edition, and his
intellectual fingerprints remain in the second
edition. I also feel thankful for the support from
departmental colleagues including Elissa
Adame, Jess Alberts, Dan Brouwer, Belle Edson,
Amira De La Garza, Heewon Kim, Linda
Lederman, Jennifer Linde, and Alaina Zanin.
Many colleagues contributed their wisdom,
advice, and activities via text‐boxes and the
good scholarship cited within. These include
members of my Facebook family, to whom I
would often pose questions or ask for resources.
There are too many to name here, but the people
who lent their ear and insight to me multiple
times included (in no particular order):
Devika Chawla, Bob Krizek, Dawn Braithwaite,
Andrew Hermann, Maggie Carbone, Lorraine
Kisselburgh, Lynn Harter, Dennis Mumby,
Carolyn Ellis, Patricia Geist‐Martin, Debbie
Dougherty, Emily Cripe, Shawna Malvini
Redden, Maggie Quinlan, Sophia Town, Sarah
Jones, Shiv Ganesh, Matthew Donovan, Miriam
Sobre, Timothy Huffman, Natalie Nelson Marsh,
Kate Harris, Art Bochner, Rikki Tremblay, Rahul
Mitra, Larry Frey, Chris Poulos, Kendra Rivera,
Jon Camp, Shirley Drew, Ted Zorn, Joann
Keyton, Elizabeth Richard, Dayna Kloeber,
Bernadette Calafell, Kurt Lindemann, Erin
Willer, Jie‐Young Kong, and Alex Lyon.
Two groups of people are worthy of special
thanks. First, I feel much appreciation for Mitch
Allen, Kakali Bhattacharya, Norman Denzin,
Sally Campbell Galman, and Johnny Saldaña.
These brilliant qualitative gurus have helped me
to become a stronger, more thoughtful
qualitative researcher and helped make this a
better book. Additionally, Emily Beach, Jessica
Kamrath, and Robert Razzante have been instru­
mental in editing, reference checking, and devel­
oping teacher manual materials (building upon
the significant work by Jennifer Scarduzio and
Elizabeth Eger in the first edition). Thanks to all
of you for your consistent advice, quick feedback,
encouragement, inspiration, and support.
Additionally, I feel indebted to Wiley‐
Blackwell team, especially Humbert Haze,
Todd Green, and Elizabeth Wingett (who
have sustained the support provided by
Elizabeth Swayze who convinced me years ago
that I could write this book to begin with).
They along with their colleagues have provided
support, patience, promotion, and expert
copy‐editing of the project. This book is a
team effort and I am eternally grateful for
their help with it.
Finally, I feel appreciative of my family (Boyd,
Malinda, Van, Julia, Zander and Lydia) and fur
babies (Menasha and Lily) who provided
encouragement, patience, and reasons to take a
break. Most especially, thank you to Brad for
being my cheerleader, for believing in me, and
for providing much laughter, even as I spent way
too many hours writing in the casita. These peo­
ple made the whole book‐writing process not
nearly as lonely as it would have been other­
wise – which is important for a qualitative
researcher who likes to spend time in the field
playing with others, and not just at the keyboard
tapping away. May their joy and hope infuse
these pages and motivate others as much as they
motivated me.
Chapter 1

Developing contextual
research that matters

Contents
Overview and introduction
Three core qualitative concepts: self‐reflexivity, context, and thick description
How qualitative research is distinct from quantitative research
A phronetic approach: doing qualitative research that matters
Moving from ideas to sites, settings, and participants
Moving toward a research question
Considering collaboration
In summary

Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact, Second Edition. Sarah J. Tracy.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Companion website: http://www.wiley.com/go/tracy2e
2 Chapter 1 Developing contextual research that matters

W hat is the first thing that comes to mind

when you hear the words, “research
methods?”
Many people never think explicitly about
this question, and if they do, they think that
research methods are difficult to learn and
painstaking to conduct. However, you might
be surprised to discover that you engage
in research every day – and these methods
not only provide important resources for
understanding the world, but are actually a
common and enjoyable way to spend time.
We ask questions, listen to stories, watch
others, participate in meetings, check our
text messages, analyze visual images,
gossip, and engage in dialogue. All of these
are qualitative research activities. Through
talking to others we learn about their quirks,
interests, pet peeves, and sense of humor.
We learn about their culture. We think about
these experiences, make patterns of
meanings, and absorb the scene.
We simultaneously share our own under­
standings in conversations, text messages,
and through social media. In telling these
stories, we call out the most important
players and evaluate their behavior. We do
this to pass the time, interact, and have fun.
But we also do it to understand the world
and our place within it. We make sense
through our talk, and our meaning‐making
helps us know what to expect in the future.
At a basic level, we all engage in qualitative
research daily. The focused study of research
methods takes these everyday actions one
step further: to a systematic analysis that
may lead to better understandings – not only
for us, but for others.

Overview and introduction

This book guides readers step by step through the qualitative methods process –
research design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and creating a representation
that can be shared with others, whether that is a class paper, a work project, a publica-
tion, a performance, a service portfolio, or a social media story. This book offers
guidance, whether you are a student preparing to write a paper, an employee wishing
to use qualitative research at work, a social justice activist completing a service project,
a critical performance artist passionate about interrogating power relations, a rhetori-
cian interested in complementing textual analysis, or a quantitative researcher hoping
to augment statistical findings.
Chapter 1 opens by introducing three central concepts that can jumpstart a
qualitative project: self‐reflexivity, context, and thick description. Next, I overview the
unique, praxis‐based, contextual approach of the book, the ways that qualitative
research differs from quantitative research and how qualitative research is used in a
variety of settings, jobs, and disciplinary fields. Finally, I discuss the first steps in
conducting a research project, including choosing a context and developing research
questions.

Three core qualitative concepts: ­self‐reflexivity,

context, and thick description
Self‐reflexivity
Self‐reflexivity refers to people’s careful consideration of the ways in which their past
experiences, points of view, and roles impact their interactions with, and interpretations
of, any particular interaction or context. Let’s examine this definition in more detail.
Every researcher has a point of view, an opinion, or a way of seeing the world. Some
people call this “baggage”; I prefer to call it wisdom. Rather than deny our way of seeing
 Chapter 1 Developing contextual research that matters 3

and being in the world, qualitative researchers acknowledge, and even celebrate it.
A person’s demographic information provides the basic ingredients. For example, I am
female, white, heterosexual, middle‐aged, partnered through marriage, and an aunt.
My work roles have included professor, public relations coordinator, and cruise ship
activities director. I practice yoga, I love to cook in my crockpot, and I drive a black
Model 3 Tesla named JJetson. I believe that success rewards virtuous action and
discipline, that life is easiest when I do what I say I’m going to do, and that good
research provides opportunities for transformation.
This background shapes my approach toward various topics and research in general.
Likewise, your own background, values, and beliefs fundamentally shape the way you
approach and conduct research. The qualitative researcher in mind and body literally
serves as a research instrument – absorbing, sifting through, and interpreting the world
through observation, participation, and interviewing. These are the analytical resources
of our own “subjectivity.” They shape the way we approach research, analysis, and
knowledge. Being self‐reflexive means that we are thoughtful about this background
and its influence. As Carter and Little (2007) suggest, “a reflexive researcher actively
adopts a theory of knowledge. A less reflexive researcher implicitly adopts a theory of
knowledge” (p. 1319) (italics added for emphasis). This means we think about our
guiding assumptions, and consistently reconsider their value and consequence. Of
course, our bodies and minds also live in a context.

Context
Qualitative research is about immersing oneself in a scene and trying to make sense of
it – whether at a company meeting, in a community festival, or during an interview.
Qualitative researchers purposefully examine and make note of small cues in order to
decide how to behave, as well as to make sense of the context and build larger knowledge
claims about the bigger picture. Paying close attention is the key to success.
Clifford Geertz, sometimes referred to as the father of interpretive anthropology,
focused on examining the field’s rich specificity. As Geertz (1973) famously put it:

Believing that ... man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has
spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an
experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. (p. 5)

Ethnographers construct meaning through immersion in a context. This is in direct con-

trast to some scientific research – say, an experimental laboratory study – where goals
include isolating variables and controlling circumstances, so that findings can be replicated.
Indeed, qualitative researchers believe that the empirical and theoretical resources
needed to comprehend a particular idea, or to predict its future trajectory, are
themselves interwoven with, and throughout, the context. Social theories are based on
the ever‐changing, biased, and contextualized social conditions of their production.
So, for example, we can glean emergent theories of social justice from rich contextual
stories about poverty and eviction (e.g. Desmond, 2016).

Thick description
Directly related to context is the idea of thick description, which refers to the way
researchers immerse themselves in a culture, investigate the particular circum-
stances present in that scene, and only then move toward grander statements and
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Nouna, who was playing at packing, having been busy for twenty
minutes with a delicate Sèvres tea-pot and some yards of tissue
paper, let the china fall from her hands at these words, in a torrent of
indignation. She scarcely glanced at the broken fragments on the
floor, as she burst forth with great haughtiness in the high-flown
language she habitually used when her passions were roused:
“Indeed! Does then the wife of this miserable little wooden soldier
think the granddaughter of a Maharajah unworthy to bear the light of
her eyes? We will see, we will see. Perhaps she is a little too
imperious; there may be powers in the earth greater than hers! I will
write to my mother, who has never yet failed to fulfil my wishes, and I
will tell her to search if she can find means to humble this proud lady
of the fens, so that she may sue to me to receive me in her house,
heathen, foreigner, though I am!”
And with a superb gesture Nouna signified her contempt for the
ironical laughter her husband could not restrain.
“Oh, little empress,” he said, good-humouredly, “you will have to
learn that all magicians have limits, and that even a mother so
devoted as yours can’t carry out all the freaks that enter into one little
feminine head. The very king of the black art could not move Lady
Florencecourt!”
“The king! Perhaps not, because he is a foolish male thing,”
retorted Nouna coldly, “but what my mother wills to do she does, and
I trust her.”
And she would not suffer any further word on the subject.
George was in the depths of his heart not without a little anxiety
about this Norfolk visit. Unconventionality is so much more
unconventional in the country, where every trifling detail in which a
man differs from his neighbours is nodded over far and wide as a
sign of mental aberration, while in the case of a woman it is held to
warrant even graver doubts. Nouna herself was in the highest spirits
at the prospect; delightful as life in London was, a change after five
weeks of her new home was more delightful still. She had had made
for the occasion a varied assortment of dainty white frocks, of the
kind that charm men by their simplicity, and women by their
costliness, and a white costume with fine lines of red and gold, for
yachting on the broads, which might have carried off the palm at
Cowes. Nouna had the instinct of dress, a regal instinct which
revelled in combinations and contrasts, in forms and folds, which
everyday English women might admire or marvel at, but copied at
their peril. She travelled down, the day being cool, in a Spanish cloak
of mouse-grey velvet, lined with ivory silk, and fastened with clasps
of smoked pearl and silver. On her head she wore a cap of the same
colours. The milliner, an artist spoiled by ministering to a long course
of puppets, was aghast at the order, and suggested that it would
make Mrs. Lauriston look, well—er—brown. Nouna replied, with a
great sweep of the eyelashes, that she was brown, and she should
be sorry to look anything else. And indeed her beauty was seen to
great advantage in this original setting, and its tints might pleasantly
have suggested to the fanciful brown woods in the haze of a grey
October day.
They reached Gorleth, the nearest railway-station to Maple Lodge,
at half-past four. Sir Henry and his daughter Cicely were on the
platform, Cicely in a short grey riding habit, looking in this practical
garment a thousand times handsomer and more captivating than she
had done in her most brilliant ball-dress, according to the wont of her
countrywomen, who, from the royal ladies downwards, never look
worse than when dressed solely with the view to charm.
Let it be acknowledged once for all: the Englishwoman, to her
credit be it said, is a riding animal, a walking animal, a boating
animal, a cooking animal, a creature fond of hard work and hard
play, full of energy and capabilities for better things than the piano-
strumming and Oxford local cramming which are now drummed into
her so diligently. But her social qualities are so poor as to be scarce
worth cultivation unless some better methods be discovered than
those now in vogue. Her dancing is more vigorous than graceful, her
conversation is inane, her deportment in full dress uneasy and
deplorable, and her manner at social gatherings where no active
muscular exertion is required of her, dull and constrained. Ten girls
are handsome and attractive in a boat or on the tennis-ground to one
who at an “at-home” or a dance is passable enough to make a man
want an introduction. The metropolis has the pick of the market, if
the term may be allowed, in marriageable maidens as in flowers and
fruit. But all alike lose their freshest, greatest charm when they are
plucked from their natural setting of country green.
George had an inkling of this truth as he helped his tiny wife out of
the railway carriage, amidst the stares of a crowd of country market-
folk, who gaped as they would have done if a regulation fairy, gauze
wings, wand and all, had suddenly descended down the wide
chimney on to their cottage hearth. He should love and admire her
whatever she did, but he wanted her to sway the sceptre of conquest
over all these friends at Willingham and Maple Lodge, and his heart
ached with fear lest a breath of disapproval should touch her, lest
she should appear to any disadvantage under such new conditions.
She herself, happily, was tormented by no such fear. She ran up to
Sir Henry, who was dressed in a vile suit of coarse mustard-coloured
stuff, a common little hat on his head, and a broad smile of
recovered bliss on his face, looking as no self-respecting farmer
among his tenants would have dared to look, and rejoicing in his
escape from town and tight clothes.
“Why, you little town-mouse,” he said, laughing good-humouredly
as he looked down on the tiny lady, “I don’t know how you will live
down here. We shall have to feed you on butterflies’ wings and dew-
drops; I should think a mouthful of plain roast beef would kill you.”
“Oh no, it wouldn’t, Sir Henry,” cried Nouna, distressed and
offended by these doubts cast on her accomplishments. “I eat a
great deal, don’t I, George?”
“Well, more than one would expect, to look at you,” admitted her
husband, remembering the fiasco of the wedding breakfast.
“Besides,” said Nouna astutely, “everything that one eats comes
from the country. The town produces nothing but soot; perhaps you
think I live upon that, and that’s what made me half a black woman.”
The genuine black woman, Sundran, was meanwhile creating a
great sensation; so that, to save her from the rustic wit, which made
up in blunt obtrusiveness what it lacked in point, she was packed
with her mistress inside the Millards’ one-horse brougham, which,
like all their surroundings in their country retreat, was almost
ostentatiously modest and even shabby. George was content
enough to share the coachman’s seat.
 “I thought the maid would sit outside; I hadn’t reckoned upon your
bringing a lady of so striking a complexion, George,” said Sir Henry
apologetically. “The old carriage is such a lumbering concern that I
thought the brougham would be quicker, and there’s a cart for the
luggage.”
George laughed. “If I had my choice I’d go on the cart,” said he. “I
am yet unspoiled by my promotion to matrimony.”
It was a pleasant drive over the flat country, too marshy to be dry
and burnt up even in summer. Sir Henry and his pretty daughter kept
pace with the carriage, and flung breezy commonplaces at their
guests with smiling, healthy faces that made their conversational
efforts more than brilliant. Nouna peeped out like a little bird at the
flat green fields and the pollard willows with an expression which
seemed to say that she had quite fathomed the hidden humour of
the whole thing.
“I like the country,” she called to Cicely with an exhaustive nod, as
if she had lived in and loved the fields for years.
And at sight of the Lodge itself she grew rapturous.
Sir Henry Millard’s modest country residence was nothing more
than a fair-sized one-storied white cottage, close to the road, from
which it was separated only by a little garden just big enough to
contain a semicircular drive, a small half-moon lawn, and two side-
beds full of roses. A stone-paved verandah ran the whole length of
the house, and a hammock swung between two of the supports of
the green roof, in what would have been glaring publicity if there had
ever been any public to speak of on the quiet road in front. It would
have been rather a pretty little place if Sir Henry, to meet the
requirements of his family, had not preferred enlarging it by adding at
the back various hideous red brick wings and outbuildings of his own
designing, to the more reasonable course of taking a larger house.
The pleasure of conceiving and superintending these original
“improvements” had indeed, while it lasted, been the most unalloyed
joy of Sir Henry’s simple life; to worry the architect, who had had to
be called in at the last to put a restraining check on Sir Henry’s
inspirations, which threatened to dispense with the vulgar adjuncts of
passages and staircases; to test the building materials, samples of
which lay about the sitting-rooms for days; above all, to do a little
amateur bricklaying during the workmen’s dinner hour—were joys
the mere memory of which thrilled him more than any recollection of
his honeymoon.
Whatever the architectural defects of the house might be, Nouna
had nothing but admiration for it. The tiny little hall; the box-like
drawing-room to the right, with high glass cupboards on each side of
the fireplace containing apostle spoons, old china bowls, fragments
of quartz and the like; the bare-looking dining-room to the left,
furnished as plainly as a school-room, and even the bake-house
which led out from it, all enchanted her by their novelty; while the
bedroom up stairs, ten feet square, into which she was shown, put
the climax to this deliciously new experience, and made her feel, as
she expressed herself to her husband, “that she wished she had
married a farmer.”
To George’s delight she ran down stairs within twenty minutes of
her arrival in the simplest of white muslin frocks, with a wonderful
scarlet and gold sash. But he had no time to congratulate her on her
good sense in dressing so appropriately before she was off, in a
huge garden-hat taken with instinctive knowledge of what was most
becoming from a collection in the hall, to see the farmyard—Sir
Henry’s pride. They made an odd pair—the broad-shouldered, solid-
looking country gentleman, in his rough suit, and the small airily-clad
person who varied her progress by occasional ecstatic bounds in the
air, which made the ends of her sash swirl in the breeze like the
wings of some gorgeous butterfly. George and the girls, with Lady
Millard, followed much more sedately. When, after due admiration of
cows and horses, pigs and poultry, they all returned to the verandah,
fresh objects of interest presented themselves in a pretty group of
riders at that moment climbing the hill upon which the lodge stood.
“Uncle Horace!” cried the girls, as Nouna recognised in the eldest
of the party Lord Florencecourt. He was accompanied by two pretty
boys of about eight and ten on ponies which they already managed
as if boy and pony had been one creature.
“How Horace worships those boys!” muttered Sir Henry enviously.
Charlotte had run down to open the gate, and there was much
clatter of lively greeting. Lord Florencecourt, though he seemed
happier down here with his children than he had been in town,
showed his old constraint with Nouna. It was therefore with great
surprise not only to the young husband and wife, but to their host
and his family that they learnt the object of his visit.
“You see I haven’t lost much time in paying my respects, Mrs.
Lauriston,” he said, speaking in a lively tone, but with an ill-
concealed reluctance to meet her eyes. “Those girls would like to
flatter themselves that my visit is for them, but they are all wrong.”
“Never mind, uncle, Regie and Bertie come to see us,” cried Ella,
giving a kiss to the youngest boy.
Lord Florencecourt continued: “The fact is, Mrs. Lauriston, we
know that you will be so run after down here, that when you have
been seen a little there will be no getting hold of you. So my wife
sent me to ask you and George to stay with us from Friday to
Monday the week after next. Mr. Birch, our member, will be there,
and we thought as he has come to the front so much lately you might
like to meet him.” Nouna stole a triumphant glance at her husband,
and the girls, who were near enough to hear, could not forbear little
unseen eyebrow-raisings of astonishment. He went on: “Lady
Florencecourt will call upon you on Monday, but she thought it best
to send her invitation at once to make sure of you.”
“It is very kind of Lady Florencecourt; I shall like to come very
much,” said Nouna, who was brimming over with delight and
triumph. “Only I don’t think I could do much to entertain a rising
member of Parliament. I can’t talk politics; but perhaps he’d like to
learn to make cocked hats out of newspaper, and then he can
amuse himself when the other members are making dull speeches.”
“I’m sure he’d like it immensely if you will teach him,” said Lord
Florencecourt, with cold civility, which would have damped frivolity
less aerial than Nouna’s.
The girls thought Lady Florencecourt must have been bewitched
thus to transgress her own well-known rule of ignoring any stranger
whose pedigree was not at her fingers’ ends. She had, besides,
gone so far as to gibe at her brother for admitting “a loose-mannered
young woman of unknown and questionable antecedents”—as she
styled young Mrs. Lauriston—into the society of his daughters. And
now she was sending a pressing invitation by the mouth of her
husband, whose prejudice against the interloper was hardly
concealed! Decidedly Nouna had a dash of Eastern magic about her.
Meanwhile the young lady herself was troubling her head very little
with the problem. She was much struck with the blue eyes and curly
dark hair of the younger of the two boys, and bending down to him
with her little head perched on one side in the coquettish manner she
used alike to man, woman, child or animal, she asked with a smile
what his name was.
“Allow me to present him with proper ceremony,” said Ella
playfully. “Permit me to introduce you,” gravely to her small cousin,
“to Mrs. George Lauriston. Mrs. Lauriston,” turning to the lady, “the
Honourable Bertram Kilmorna!”
She had scarcely uttered the last word when Nouna shot up from
her bending attitude as if at an electric shock, and fixed her great
eyes, wide with bewilderment and surprise, on Lord Florencecourt,
who was standing behind Ella and his son, near enough to hear
these words and to see their effect.
“Kilmorna!” she repeated in a whisper, still looking full at the
Colonel, whose rugged face had grown suddenly rigid and grey.
Then, without further ceremony, she ran away to her husband, who
was talking to Lady Millard at a little distance.
“George, George!” she said in a tumultuous whisper, her face
quivering with excitement, “I don’t want to go to Lady
Florencecourt’s; tell him I don’t want to go!”
“Why, what’s this? How has the Colonel offended you?” asked
George laughing.
“He hasn’t offended me at all. Only I’ve changed my mind. I know I
—I shouldn’t like Lady Florencecourt. I’d rather not go.”
 But as George insisted that it was impossible to break an
engagement just made, without any reason, she broke from him with
an impatient push, and disappeared into the house just before Lord
Florencecourt, who had abruptly discovered that he was in a hurry to
be off, took his leave. Ella prevented George from fetching his wife
out.
“It is only some little caprice of hers,” she said persuasively, not
guessing that there was any mystery in the matter, and considering
the young bride’s conduct as the result of some girlish freak. “I think
she was offended because uncle didn’t introduce the boys to her.
She will be all right if you leave her alone a few minutes.”
But George was not unnaturally annoyed at his wife’s rudeness,
and he followed her into the little drawing-room, where he found her
with her nose flattened against the window, staring at Lord
Florencecourt’s retreating figure. She had no explanation to give of
her conduct, but persisted in begging him not to take her to
Willingham. As he remained firm on this point, and continued to
press her for her reasons, she grew mutinous, and at last peace was
only made between them on the conditions that she would go to
Willingham if he would not tease her with any more questions.
And George had to be content with this arrangement, being above
all things anxious to learn the meaning of the miraculous change of
front on the part of Lady Florencecourt and her husband.
 CHAPTER XIX.
At dinner at Maple Lodge on the evening of their arrival, George
Lauriston and his wife met the gentle Dicky Wood, who had come
down the day before, and spent the afternoon riding with the son of
Sir Henry’s steward. Nouna was much pleased by this compliance
with her wishes, and showed her appreciation of it by flirting very
prettily at dinner with the young guardsman. Later in the evening she
held in the verandah a little court, and chanted them some half-wild,
half-monotonous Indian songs in a tiny thread of sweet voice, with
some plaintive low notes that lived in the memory. And George, who
was standing with Ella some yards away from the rest of the group,
felt thrilled through and through by the weird melodies, and liked to
fancy that in these native songs of hers the soul-voice, that, in the
tumultuous life of emotions and sensations in which she found her
happiness, had small opportunity to be heard, forced up its little note
and promised a richer fulness of melody by and by.
It was not by the man’s choice, but the girl’s, that he and Ella
found themselves together. At the present time there was only one
woman in Lauriston’s world, and in his absorption in his wife the
ungrateful fellow was incapable even of feeling his old friendly
pleasure in Ella’s society. Her interest in him, on the other hand, as is
the way with that splendid institution for the comfort and consolation
of man—plain women, had grown tenfold stronger since he had
lowered himself to the usual dead level of his foolish sex, by
marrying through his eyes. To Ella this downfall was quite tragic; she
had thought and hoped so much for him; he had feeling, sense,
ambition, was, in fact, not the mere beautifully turned out figure-head
of a man who, under various disguises of light or dark complexion,
slim or heavy build, was continually saying to her the same
commonplaces, betraying to her the same idea-less vacuity, at
dinner, ball, and garden-party. Yet here he was, bound for life, and by
his own choice, to a beautiful pet animal, with all the fascinating
ways of a kitten, who could gambol and scratch, and bask in warmth
and shiver in cold, and whom nevertheless he undoubtedly
worshipped. Ella, whose mind was of an intellectual cast, and in
whom the passions had as yet only developed in an ardent but hazy
adoration of dead-and-gone heroes, very naturally underrated the
strength of one side of a man’s nature, and was cast down when the
creature whose sympathetic comprehension of her highest
aspirations had made her raise him to a demi-god proved to be in
truth only a very man. She fancied, poor child, that he showed
deterioration already; when she reminded him at dinner that she had
not yet returned a book of Emerson’s he had lent her, George
laughed carelessly, and said he had forgotten all about it.
“Don’t you remember you particularly advised me to read the
articles on ‘Goethe’ and ‘Napoleon’?” she asked rather acidly.
“Oh, yes, they’re very good,” said he, with a man’s irritating
frivolity, smiling at his wife, who was shutting one eye and holding
her glass of claret up to the light, in imitation of an elderly
connoisseur, for the amusement of Dicky. Then, perceiving in a
pause that he had offended Ella, he hastened to say penitently: “I
haven’t done much reading lately; but you have, I suppose; you are
always so good.”
“I don’t read because I am good, but because I like it,” she
answered coldly.
And George, reflecting on the oddity of Ella’s trying to improve him
as he had tried to improve Nouna, had taken the snub meekly as a
bolt of retributive providence.
But when she got an opportunity of speech with him alone in the
verandah, in a rather melancholy and remorseful frame of mind, she
“had her say” after her sex’s fashion.
“One mustn’t expect you to be the same person that you were
three months ago, George,” she began, with a very humble,
deprecating manner. “Otherwise I would ask you why we don’t hear
of your coming to the front as a writer, as we heard then there was a
probability of your doing.”
George laughed with the same maddening indifference to his
deterioration, and asked if he might smoke. With a cigarette between
his lips, flourishing before her eyes the privilege of a man, he felt
more of a man’s commanding position.
 “I haven’t come to the front,” said he, “because I haven’t made any
steps at all, either forward, backward, or in any direction. I’ve been
lazy, Ella, miserably, culpably lazy, and if my great thoughts have not
yet stirred the world, it is no doubt only because they have not been
committed to paper.”
“Oh, if you are satisfied, of course that is everything. Ambition, I
see, is not the great, never pausing, never ceasing motive-power
that we poor foolish women are taught to believe; it is a pretty whim,
to be taken up alternately with a fit of smoking, or mountain-climbing,
as we girls change about between tennis and tatting.”
“Not quite, Ella,” said George, doing her the justice to grow serious
when he saw how deeply and unselfishly she was in earnest.
“Ambition does not die for lying a short time hidden by other feelings;
and surely even if it loses a little of its bitter keenness, it gains by
being no longer wholly selfish.”
“A beautiful answer, at least. And no doubt contentment is better
than ambition.”
“I don’t know what contentment is, except by seeing it in the faces
of cows and pigs. No passion could be stifled by such a tepid feeling
as that. I am not contented, I am happy. So will you be some day,
and you will let your bright wits rest a little while, and you will
understand.”
Understand? No, she felt that was impossible, as she looked down
at the big, handsome man sitting on the hammock below her, his
eyes bright, not with serene, but with ardent happiness, content to
bend all his faculties to the will of a creature whom he must know to
be his inferior in every way. She did not wish to understand such a
decadence as that.
“Then you will give up all idea of writing?”
“No. I am more anxious to distinguish myself than ever, as things
have turned out. A man who suddenly finds himself to be married to
a rich wife feels as if he had got off at a false start, and is put at a
disadvantage. But so far I own my wife has taken up all my time. You
see, she didn’t know she was going to be rich any more than I did,
and being hardly more than a child, she wants as much looking after
at first as a baby at the edge of a pond.”
 “And this is the sort of woman who gets a man’s best love!”
thought Ella half bitterly, half disdainfully.
“And of course you choose her friends for her,” suggested Ella, not
quite hiding her feeling.
“I can’t quite do that, yet at least,” said George. “Nobody but all of
you has got further than acquaintance yet.”
“But of course you are very particular about those acquaintances?”
Decidedly Ella was in her most disagreeable mood to-night.
“I do my best,” said he briefly.
“And of course it’s all nonsense about the smoking-parties, and
Captain Pascoe being there nearly every night.”
George felt a shock. Mentioned in that manner, the evening calls
of his friends, the admittance among the callers of a man whom he
cordially disliked but whom he had no grounds strong enough for
insulting, were heavy accusations.
“I see my own friends as freely as I did when I was a bachelor,
certainly,” said he, cold in his turn. “Nouna is too sensible to prevent
that. As for Captain Pascoe, he has not been in our house more than
three times at the outside.”
Ella dared not say more on this subject, even if she had had more
to say. She looked out at the swallows, flying low over the young
trees of the plantation on the other side of the road, and asked
musingly:
“Do you like being rich?”
“It’s not bad for a change,” answered George philosophically.
“I hate it. I always feel with papa, so glad to shake off the big
house and the footmen and the feeling that the great human world is
surging round without touching you, and to get back to my tiny room
where I can almost water the plants in my window without coming in
at the door, and to the farm and my pensioners that I take tracts to.
They never read them, but it is quite as much a matter of etiquette to
leave them as it is to make calls in town, and they are dreadfully
insulted if I forget.”
“But you’ve always been well off?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t make any difference. Money rolls together in
such ugly fashions. Look at mamma’s. When her father made his
millions, thousands of people were ruined. Well, you know, that’s
horrible!”
“They chose to speculate, remember. They must have known no
lottery has all prizes.”
“It’s hideous to think of, all the same. On the other hand, if your
property descends to you by a long line of greedy land-scrapers, you
know it has grown in value because other people’s has decreased,
and that your tenants have to pinch themselves to make up your
handsome rent-roll. And you haven’t even done the wretched work
for it that the speculator has done to get his!”
“It’s lucky all capitalists are not so soft-hearted, or there’d be an
end to enterprise, which by the by is brother to your god Ambition.”
“Oh, I’m not making preparations for re-organising the universe,
only lifting up a little weak mew of discontent with my corner of it.
And your wife’s money: is it the result of a robbery of recent date,
like ours, or plunder that has been rolling down for generations, like
Lord Florencecourt’s?”
“Well, really, I’ve never put it to her trustees in that way, and, now I
think of it, why I really don’t know. But as Nouna’s father was a
soldier, and there’s very little loot to be got in our days, I expect it
has rolled down.”
“And you don’t really care how it was got together?”
“Yes, I do, now I think of it. But to tell you the truth, the lawyers
have managed things so easily for us that all we’ve been called upon
to do is to spend the money, a very elementary process.”
“What a strange thing!”
“Why? By the by, so it is, when one comes to think about it. It’s
altogether contrary to one’s personal and traditional experience of
lawyers.”
“When mamma married,” said Ella, pursuing her own train of
thought, “her money was tied up and fenced round with as many
precautions as if poor dear old papa had been a brigand. He often
laughs about it, and says she couldn’t buy a pair of gloves without a
power of attorney. So that it really does seem very astonishing.”
“It does,” assented George, who, never before having had
experience of money in any but infinitesimal quantities, had been
much readier to take things for granted than was this granddaughter
of a Chicago millionaire.
“What would you do, George, if you found out it had been made by
supplying bad bayonets to the English army, or anything like that?”
she asked, half-laughing, but not without a secret wonder whether
this easy-got gold would turn out to have unimpeachable
antecedents.
The question gave George a great shock. He jumped up from the
hammock across which he had been sitting, with a white face.
“Good heavens, Ella! What makes you say that?” he asked in a
low voice, each word sounding as if it were being ground out of him.
“Don’t take it like that,” said she nervously, almost as much moved
as he, and impelled by his strong feeling to be more impressed than
she had been at first with her own surmise. “I only suggested—it
came into my head—I don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh, well, you shouldn’t say things like that, you know, Ella, even
in fun. The mere suggestion gives one such an awful shock. It’s like
cold water down one’s back,” said he, trying to laugh.
“I didn’t mean it, indeed,” said she, quite unable to take a jesting
tone. “As if one would say a thing like that in earnest! I never
guessed you would think twice about a foolish speech like that!”
But they both felt uncomfortable; and both were glad when
George, noticing that Dicky Wood was standing near anxious to get
a word with the jolly nice girl Ella, but much too diffident to come
forward at the risk of intruding unwelcomely upon a tête-à-tête, drew
him into their group by asking if he had been in Norfolk before.
And so both George and Ella were able to shuffle off the burden of
a conversation which had grown decidedly difficult to keep up, and
the memory of which made a slight constraint between them, on the
man’s side especially, for two or three days.
Nouna, to her husband’s great comfort and gladness, was
behaving beautifully, and putting new life by her gaiety into the whole
household, the younger members of which, in spite of Ella’s
intelligence and her sisters’ beauty, were a little wanting in those
electric high spirits which, in the routine of a quiet country-house, are
as sunshine to the crops. The day after their arrival was Sunday, and
the morning church-going had been a fiery ordeal for George, not
from religious indifference, but from the misgiving that if Nouna could
not keep from smiling in the course of a well-conducted service in a
West End church, she would certainly be carried out in convulsions
from the Willingham place of worship, where the school children,
summer and winter, sniffed through the service in a distressing
chorus, while the loud-voiced clerk’s eccentric English rang through
the building, drowning the old vicar’s feeble voice; and where the
vicar’s wife, a strong-minded lady, whose district-visiting was a sort
of assize, had been known to “pull up” her reverend husband publicly
from her pew immediately below the pulpit when, as not infrequently
happened, he turned over two leaves of his sermon instead of one,
and went quietly on as if nothing had happened. “Turned over two
leaves? Bless me, so I have!” he would murmur, and rectify his
mistake with a tranquil nod.
So George had put his wife through a very severe drill before
starting, and had strictly forbidden her so much as to sneeze without
his permission. She had a narrow escape at the offertory, when one
of the churchwardens, with a lively remembrance of the artifices of
his own youth, shovelled a penny into the fingers of each of his
offspring with one hand, while he presented the plate menacingly
with the other. But glancing up at her husband and perceiving a
frown of acute terror on his face, she contrived to choke in silence;
and the day was gained.
On the following Monday too, when the dreaded Lady
Florencecourt fulfilled her threat of calling and proved equal to her
reputation for unamiability, the young wife was, as she triumphantly
averred afterwards, “very good.” The county censor proved to be a
fair, florid woman of middle height, rather stout, and with features so
commonplace that, without the saving shield of her title, they would
have been called common. She had arrogant and capricious
manners, an oily self-satisfied voice, and an ill word for everybody.
Whenever her husband, who accompanied her on this occasion,
ventured to make a remark, she turned to look at him with a resigned
air, as if she were used to being made a martyr at the stake of his
imbecility. She examined Nouna from head to foot through a gold
double eyeglass, as if the young wife had been a charity-girl
convicted of misconduct, and made no remark to her except to ask
her if she was interested in the Zenana Missions, to which Nouna
replied rather haughtily that Indian ladies were no more in need of
missionaries than English ones: after which thrust and counter-thrust
it may be imagined that the conversation languished, and that later in
the day George had great difficulty in persuading his wife not to
break off their engagement to go to Willingham. She said it would
just spoil the end of their visit to the Millards, for one of whom she
had begun to feel a real affection. This was the sharp-tongued Ella,
whose intelligence she had the wit to recognise, and whose smart
sayings amused her.
It was on the evening of a day in the course of which this oddly-
assorted pair of friends had been a good deal together that George,
on going up stairs to his room after a last cigar with his host, found
his wife, not as usual fast asleep like a child, but perched upon the
bed in the attitude of a Hindoo idol, with a big book open on her
crossed knees, and her eyes fixed upon the nearest candle.
“Hallo!” said he, “what’s the matter?”
She turned her eyes upon him slowly, with an air of suspicion and
curiosity.
“Nothing is the matter,” she said gravely, and turning down a whole
half-leaf of the book before her to keep the place, she closed it
carefully, and handed it to him with an affectation of solemn
indifference. “I have been reading,” she added with decision.
George looked at the title of the ponderous volume, and observed
that it was The Complete Works of Xenophon. He opened it without
a smile at the page she had turned down, and remarking that it was
about half-way through the volume, said she had got on very well if
she had read so much in one evening.
“I skipped a little—the dry parts,” she observed modestly, but in
such a tone that it was impossible for George to tell whether she
meant to be taken seriously or not.
“Dry!” he exclaimed, raising his eyebrows, “why, he is the very
lightest of light reading. Xenophon was the most frivolous man I ever
knew; he was at school with me.”
She crawled to the foot of the bed, and stretching over the rail to
the dressing-table, on which George had placed the volume, she
recovered it with a violent muscular effort, and turned back the
leaves to the title-page.
“This book was published in 1823; so you are much older than you
told me you were, I see,” she said simply, while George, unable to
contain himself longer, burst out into a long laugh, and made a dive
at her, which she evaded like a squirrel, still staring at him with
unmoved gravity, so that his mirth died away in wonderment and in a
rush of tenderness as he perceived the pathos of this futile plunge
into the mazes of learning.
As he recovered his gravity the expression of her mobile face also
changed; after a moment’s shy silence their eyes met, and each saw
the other through a luminous mist.
“What are you crying for?” she asked tremulously; and in a
moment flung herself impulsively into his ready arms. “Why didn’t
you marry Ella?” was her next question, shot suddenly into his ear in
the midst of an incoherent outburst of the passionate tenderness that
glowed ever in his heart for her.
“Marry Ella!” said he, feeling a shock of surprise at the
remembrance that he had indeed once offered to make the good
little blue-stocking his wife. “Why, what makes you ask such a
question as that? Are you jealous?”
“Oh, no. But I see that she would have had you, and therefore you
were foolish not to have her.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s too late now, and I shall have to put up with the
consequences of my folly,” said he, pressing her tenderly to him.
“That’s just what I thought,” she agreed quite plaintively. “Miss
Glass says a good wife must cook, Ella says a good wife must read,
but nobody says a good wife must just sing and laugh and amuse
herself as I do. And so when you’re tired of kissing me, you will feel
you had better not have married me, but only have amused yourself
like Dicky Wood—” She paused significantly.
“Dicky Wood!” echoed he sharply.
“—With Chloris White.”
George moved uneasily; he was angry and disturbed.
“You must not say such things—you must not think them. The
name of such a woman as that is not fit to pass your lips.”
 “But, George,” she argued, looking straight into his eyes with
penetrating shrewdness, “if you had not been you, say, if you had
been Rahas or Captain Pascoe, I might—”
He stopped the words upon her lips with a great gravity which
awed her and kept her very still, very attentive, while he spoke.
“When God throws an innocent girl into the arms of an honest
man, Nouna, as you came into mine, she is a sacred gift, received
with such reverent love that she must always hold herself holy and
pure, and never even let any thought of evil come into her heart, so
that she may be the blessing God intended. I was born into the world
to protect you and shield you from harm, my darling; and so my love
was ready for you at the moment when your innocence might have
put you in danger, just as it will be to the end of your life.”
“Supposing you were to die first?” suggested she, not flippantly,
but with an awestruck consideration of possibilities.
“A soldier can always last out till his duty’s done,” said George,
with quiet conviction.
After this Nouna remained silent a little while, but that her ideas
had not been working in quite the desired direction was evident
when she next spoke.
“If, as you say, your love will keep me safe and good whatever I
do, I needn’t be so particular,” she argued, “and it won’t do me any
harm to go and see this Mrs. Chloris White, and ask her to leave
poor Dicky alone, and let him meet some one who will be a blessing
to him. I want him to marry Ella.”
George was thunderstruck.
“Go and see Chloris White! I’d as soon let you go to the Morgue!”
“But I know I could persuade her to give him up; I know just what I
would say, just how I would look. I’ve thought it all over; and surely
anything’s better than that he should rush back to her as soon as he
gets to town, and undo all the good we’ve done him in the country.”
She spoke with a pretty little matronly air of perfectly sincere
benevolence.
“My dear child,” said her husband decisively, laying his hand on
her head with his gravest air of authority, “you cannot go; it is out of
the question. You must not even mention such a wild idea to any
one; they would be horribly shocked. But we’ll keep poor Dicky safe
among us by much better means than that, I promise you. So now
go to sleep, and don’t ever let such an idea come into your head
again.”
She let herself be kissed quite brightly and submissively, and
rubbed her cheek against his with affection which might have been
taken to argue docility. But her own fantastic notion of helping her
friend remained in her mind quite unmoved by her husband’s
prohibition.
 CHAPTER XX.
When the time came for them to finish their stay in Norfolk by the
dreaded three days at Willingham, neither George nor Nouna made
any secret of the fact that they felt the coming visit to be a severe
ordeal. Undoubtedly it would be a cruelly abrupt change from the
cheerful homeliness of the Lodge, to the penitential atmosphere in
which the household of Lady Florencecourt passed their days. So
notorious was the character of the gracious châtelaine that
Willingham Hall was commonly known in the neighbourhood as the
House of Correction, a title to which the severely simple style of its
architecture gave no very flat denial. Willingham Church stood in the
grounds belonging to the Hall, so that Nouna had had an opportunity
of shuddering at the sombre dreariness of the mansion even before
the return call she had made with Lady Millard and Cicely, on which
occasion she had sat almost mute on a high-backed chair, looking as
insignificant and unhappy as a starved mouse, thinking that Lady
Florencecourt’s light eyes looked like the glass marbles with which
she played at solitaire, and what a good model her face would be for
one of those indiarubber heads that children squeeze up into
grotesque grimaces.
She cried at parting with the Millards, like a little girl sent to school
for the first time. Sir Henry, with his simple good humour; Lady
Millard, with her quiet manners, and the quick black eyes whose
flashing keenness and sympathy showed the burning soul of the
New World flickering in uneasy brightness among the glowing
embers of the Old; Cicely and Charlotte, fair, kind creatures, who
filled up the pauses gracefully, the one by merely smiling, the other
by a gentle rain of chatter which she had been taught to think a
fascinating social accomplishment; and, above all, Ella, of the sallow
face, the sharp tongue, and the warm heart, were a group to live
pleasantly in the memory, and to make the approaching encounter
with the unamiable hosts of Willingham more disagreeable by
contrast. It added to poor Nouna’s forlornness in these