{"id":731,"date":"2021-03-30T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/?p=731"},"modified":"2021-04-07T06:52:53","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T06:52:53","slug":"a-not-so-unlikely-pairing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/2021\/03\/30\/a-not-so-unlikely-pairing\/","title":{"rendered":"A Not So Unlikely Pairing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Daniil Onischenko<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When I tell people that I teach for an English department, they don\u2019t seem very surprised. When I tell them that I teach for an English department and<\/em> the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, I often get a rather puzzled look. I usually just follow with \u201cI teach writing for the behavioral sciences\u201d and that seems to make enough sense to them. It\u2019s the easy answer, but it\u2019s not the whole answer. Because teaching writing is never just teaching writing. When I teach in the behavioral sciences, I don\u2019t just teach sentence structure, spelling or whatever else people might think teaching writing usually involves. It\u2019s always more than that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On occasion, someone makes the mistake of looking overly interested and I continue. I explain that my classes delve into the nuances of the scientific conversation, understanding assumptions, evaluating methodologies, examining evidence, and looking for insight into human behavior through empirical research. This typically elicits either a glazed-over look or a curious \u201cBut English teachers like words, not numbers. Stories, not science.\u201d <\/em>On behalf of literature teachers everywhere, I sigh. That may be true sometimes, but both the composition and research professor in me can tell you that\u2019s a logical fallacy based on the overgeneralization of small samples and anecdotal evidence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Caleb Woods<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Because more than just muddling through quantitative research methods as a necessary drudgery, I really like numbers. I do love novels, but I\u2019m not above spending a few hours poring over data visualizations (and then texting a literary colleague to confess such promiscuous activity). I find figuring standard deviations and constructing scatterplots oddly satisfying. And I admit, sometimes, when I should be grading, I get distracted by a research article I was saving for later. While it often surprises people that a literature professor is interested in quantitative research, quantitative approaches to literary analysis are not new. If you\u2019re interested, you might check this lovely collection of histograms and scatterplots and statistical analyses of the distribution of words across narrative time from Stanford Literary Lab<\/em>\u2014be forewarned you\u2019ll find terms like \u201cnull hypothesis,\u201d \u201cchi squared,\u201d and \u201cmultinomial distribution\u201d mixed into the discussion of word choice and Moby Dick.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, quantitative analysis has found its way into the realm of literary research, but the connection doesn\u2019t end there. In fact, qualitative research, with its focus on narrative and thematic investigation, is an even more natural intersection between my two loves. Content analysis<\/a>, in particular, seems to me to be well aligned with literary analysis. Both interrogate cultural artifacts, looking for patterns and trends, what is said and unsaid, the exact words used for characterization, the underlying motivation and processes behind the construction of narratives, and the effect all that has on the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Dan Dimmock<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since I know you want to know more, stay tuned. In the next post, we\u2019ll look at content analyses of literature and how researchers use these methods to gain insight into the stories we tell ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To continue on this journey, click here<\/a> to read part two of this three part series!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I tell people that I teach for an English department, they don\u2019t seem very surprised. When I tell them that I teach for an English department and the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, I often get a rather puzzled look. I usually just follow with \u201cI teach writing for the behavioral sciences\u201d and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,127,11],"tags":[12,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":776,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/cshb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}