In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

230 10 Intercultural Inquiry: A Brief Guide Community literacy ends up speaking through many kinds of “texts”—from reflective essays to newsletters, booklets, flyers, brochures, newspapers, technical reports, proposals, policy documents, documentaries, digital storytelling , and multimedia productions. They can circulate by hand, in public meetings, to mailing lists, over e-mail, on the Web, and in academic and professional journals. A rhetorically based collaborative community literacy starts in inquiry. And in most cases, this means an intercultural inquiry that must cross lines of difference—race, class, status, social background, age, education, or discourse . So I would like to end this story of community literacy in its beginning with the art of such inquiry by describing a small toolkit of strategies drawn from projects illustrated in this book. Writing a Multivoiced Inquiry The foundation for community-literacy writing is the multivoiced inquiry that can stand alone or be embedded in other kinds of text. In either case, you will want to do three major things. Frame a Question Inquiry starts in a sense of felt difficulty—of wondering, questioning, being perplexed—that leads to posing the problem, that is, trying to name the problem, explain the conflict between an A and a B, or explore the dissonance between the reality you see and what others assert it is or should be. Advocacy often starts with answers; inquiry starts with problems and questions and, what is even harder, with a focus on what you don’t know, rather than what you do. You can give shape to your problem-posing by writing a proposal for an inquiry. Start with a well-focused problem/purpose statement that describes Intercultural Inquiry 231 the problem as you (currently) see it in both up-close and specific terms and in its larger context. Answer three questions: (1) What is the conflict/problem /question? (2) What is at stake? Why do we need to conduct an inquiry? What do we need to learn? and (3) What is the specific purpose and plan of your investigation? Think more specifically about methods and a timetable: how are you going to answer the questions you have posed? Then see if your analysis can pass the shared-problem test. A first attempt to pose a problem normally reflects the writer’s perspective (and often an untested assumption about the proper response). To draw others into a dialogue, you need to pose a shared problem—one that recognizes how the conflict or difficulty looks from the perspective of the various people you wish to address. Would others in the local public you want to engage describe the situation, conflict, or desired goals in this way? Can you reshape your statement to include their image of the problem? Finally, use your proposal to sketch some rival hypotheses about what this inquiry could uncover. By predicting what you think you might discover, you are able to reflect later on how far your understanding has grown or changed. Bring Multiple Voices to the Table Now design a research plan that collects interpretations and analyses of your problem from at least three different kinds of participants, sources, or perspectives. Imagine your inquiry going on with others at a comfortable round table. As a college mentor, you might want to bring some voices past and present from books you have been reading (theorists, researchers, educators , novelists, journalists) as well as the voices of the people you mentor, their peers, the community, other college students, and, of course, your own voice—responding and trying to interpret and negotiate what you hear. Some will speak directly to your problem/question or maybe even to each other. Others might offer rival perspectives that reframe the whole question. Still others will require you to find the connections and draw inferences and insights from their words, because they are talking about a different but relevant topic. Secondly, design your multivoiced inquiry to collect at least three different kinds of data. Look at the methods for inquiry below, and take advantage of the strikingly different kinds of knowledge you can get, for example, from library research versus observational notes, tapes of a collaborative planning session, rival readings, interviews, or transcripts of a public dialogue. Plan to collect at least three different kinds of data that will be the most revealing for what you want to learn. Rhetorical Tools in the Rhetoric of Making a...

Share