Plummer, K. (2001). The call of life stories in ethnographic research. In Atkinson, et. al (eds) The Handbook of Ethnographic Research. pp. 395- 406. Sage Publications.
In terms of telling one's life story, one has to consider audience. Who will hear me? Who will read me? How does my recognition of how stories are told influence how I will share my world. Ken Plummer wrote,,
"The dry old tale told by a boring social scientist who hedges the tale in with the dust of theory and jargon will never meet such higher criteria [aesthetic delight]. Writing skills, the craft of telling, art, imagination - all these now come into their own, and help us to distinguish the valuable social science 'life story' from the less valuable one...for such stories to be successful they have to be written to attract an audience (something most social science usually cannot imagine!), to help the reader see the phenomenon, and finally - most importantly - to persuade the reader to hold certain views..." p. 401.
Plummer (2001) points out an important distinction between research writing and the what I would argue is the type of writing placed on most blogs. Blogs are meant to be constructed for the personal aesthetics of an individual thinker, writer and constructor for ideas, life and knowing. Their audience is in their head and even if it is the self, it is someone they feel needs to keep a hold of their life story construction.
1 comment:
I tend to believe that any attempt to define what a blog is, other than as a website that has dated entries, would be destined for failure.
Ultimately, one of the things that makes blogs special is our ability to create them in an image we want to portray. The individuality of the endeavor is what makes it appealing beyond any demographic confines.
I have a interactive blogs of sorts in which I ask people to simply point a camera out their window, shoot what they see and tell a brief story about it.
Think you might help me out with that?
If you visit my homepage and like what you see I'd be open to a link exchange.
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