Re: WC in Comm. Coll -Reply -Reply

[Eric Hughes Hobson <ehobson@medicine.wustl.edu>]

Jim, et. al.

Funny you should bring up the issue of research because what you 
described is something that I've been talking off line with Byron Stay 
and Joan Mullin, among others, about for 6-8 months. I to think it would 
be vauable for us to undertake a systematic analysis of conference 
interaction from many perspectives using a variety of methodologies for 
several purposes: 
	1. discover something cool about what we do.
	2. Learn how to (not) do "research" within particular 
epistemological and methodolocial parameters.
	3. Model a longitudinal and complex inquiry.
	4. Have a good and intense time working with colleagues who speak 
WC talk.

What I've envisioned is something like a summer seminar--preferably at an 
envy-inducing locale and maybe bearing academic credit--during which a 
group of WC folk gathered with data (transcripts, tapes, etc.) and worked 
together and with folks with experience employing a variety of research 
tools to analyze it. As I've thought about it, I keep coming back to 
several methodologies that facinate me: narrative and conversational 
analysis; ethnographic analysis; statistical analysis (of a variety of 
flavors); and others that I'm too tired at the moment to recall. Imagine 
what we could do and learn in four weeks of head-to-head work with a 
limited--but, somehow representative--body of data.

Funding something like this, however, is the big hitch in my vision. It 
would take an institution to support the idea, and probably a serious 
grant to boot. I keep toying with NEH but given the current political 
realities in DC, I move on to other possibilites. I am certain that there 
are private endowments that could be made interested in such a program, 
BUT it would take the concerted efforts of a large number of folk to pull 
of funding.  HOWEVER, I'm certain the rewards wwould quickly outweigh any 
input.

Right now though, my plate is full with the conference in Sept.

Eric Hobson