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3. On Methodologies and Procedures
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
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On Methodologies and Procedures Fixing the Physicality of Referents: Th e Artificial Time/Spac e Grid To use various incident s i n our cas e to illuminat e thing s cultural , social , political and economic, three genres of narrative have been set out to serve as referents. However, the physicality of these referents i s not to be take n for granted, for the y neither simpl y exist 'somewhere out there ' nor exis t merely as linguistic utterances The y are discursive artefacts, the cumulative hybrid of numerous 'events' and 'structures'. Events are structurally define d and structures are mentally formed out of events, but 'event' and 'structure', as part s o f dialogica l existence , ar e n o mor e tha n thing s discursivel y perceived. Th e comprehensibilit y o f eac h result s fro m th e overarchin g perceptual grids available to the narrato r Within a sociohnguisti c context , a referen t — 'th e sit-m ' — i s established, but only through a certain process. On th e one hand, I have had to weed out supposedly 'irrelevant' elements from the desired referent , using the yardsticks derived from categorizations and their corollaries. It is a deliberate act, although underacknowledged, t o make the physicality o f the referent 'manageable ' for a definite discursiv e exercise. Nevertheless, 3 52 Colours of Money, Shades of Pride this proces s ca n b e unconscious , take n car e o f 'automatically ' b y one' s habitual, cultural, political or other 'blind spots'. However, this is a process in which various instances are used to verify or qualify some aspects of readily assumed formulations and, therefore, to reify the categories employed. The process of establishing a referent is , so to speak, both to cut the feet and to tailor the shoes. Precisely in this way we, as social scientists, have managed to 'think' our research 'objects' and refract back from them to figure out our own existence . Bot h empirica l precisio n an d logica l rigou r hav e t o b e sacrificed t o fit variou s practical contingencies . Needless to say, this is an exercise at once ideological and tautological . The problem for me is that referents and the categories thus established become take n fo r grante d an d ar e naturalized , objectivized , an d de problematized . The y the n assum e th e statu s o f things-ln-themselves , 'behaving' automatically . Wha t ha s bee n forgotte n ar e precisel y thos e procedures that one adopts to conceptually fix the physicality of the desired referent and to 'empirically' define the referential-boundary o f its operative category. There i s n o eas y wa y t o ge t ou t o f th e existentia l predicament s o f conceptualization and exposition. But one can make explicit the operations and circumstance s i n which th e physicalit y o f referents i s fixed upo n a n artificial time/spac e grid. The Time/Space Frame To b e full y awar e o f th e operation s an d circumstance s i n whic h th e establishment of a referent take s place, I begin with the time/space 'frame' , in which both the referent an d the category are taken to be situated. Th e fundamental proble m i n the journalistic formulation o f this frame lie s in the fact that the four 'Ws' — Who, What, Where, When — are customarily handled i n the following fashion : (1) Who , What , Where , an d Whe n ar e identifie d independentl y an d separately. No inquiry is made as to mutually constitutive relationships among them. It is believed that an 'event' consists of the convergence and perfect overlap of these separate elements. [18.234.55.154] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:18 GMT) On Methodologies and Procedures 53 (2) On e o f th e 'Ws ' i s ofte n use d t o defin e others . Th e underlyin g presumption i s that o f a complete convergence of the four 'Ws ' in an 'event'. In narrativ e o f this kind, th e identificatio n o f places, times, entitie s and happening s i s predicated upo n th e physicall y perceivabl e propertie s accessible t o bot h th e journalis t...