Comments on: Paradigm Shift: Trends in Market Research

By: Diane Fox-Hill

Diane Fox-Hill — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:00:42 +0000

Ah and for your international readers, I should have mentioned there is of course the difference between Peircean semiotics and Sausurrean semiotics. For the record, these are both on the non-test side. : )

By: Caryn Goldsmith

Caryn Goldsmith — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:07:30 +0000

Thank you all for the depth of your feedback. Diane, you’re obviously quite knowledgeable and have given me much to think about. I look forward to the continued exchange. This exercise started for me as a way to think about how my industry was changing (or needed to change) and has turned into something much more!

By: Diane Fox-Hill

Diane Fox-Hill — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:38:12 +0000

Like Julie I am not a huge fan of orthogonal axes, however I can see this makes for good discussion and I look forward to seeing where that nets out.

I do feel I need to lend discourse analysis a hand here. In many ways (like classical anthropology, as distinct from commercial ethnography)it is natural in the extreme. It can take any text as its analytical concern – a Tweet or verbatim transcripts, an ad or an overheard conversation. It treats language as a form of social action and can explore how people actively construct their worlds and identities, populating these worlds with mental concepts. And so much more, how they orientate to these concepts (and expect others to as well). Data studied is often (although not always – and that is another story!) spontaneously produced i.e. not touched by the hand of researchers or marketeers, avoiding demand characteristics.

However I would say that there are two schools of DA going on in the marketplace – one much more based in critical theory and sociology, concerning itself with relations and power. And another more psychologically based issuing from a discursive psychological background and encompassing Conversational Analysis and ethnomethodology. The latter is the more hardcore and relies on more rigorous analyses of texts. More rigour means more depth, better frameworks and more salient and flexible answers for clients.

Both semiotics and discourse analysis engage with actual and imagined, as well as ‘created’ cultural artefacts – what people produce. They make no distinction between online discussion or ‘real’ conversation (or indeed what people own or why), whilst at the same time noting that online identity construction can be different from how you might talk offline. It is no less interesting for that, and all data is filtered appropriately. There are no artificial barriers concerning what is *artificial* or not – it is all one type of construction, or another.

Even semiotics has two schools: some which is really no more than cultural analysis, differing substantively from semiotics grounded in critical theory and the postmodern turn.

As for other areas to consider for your orthogonal ruminations, certainly cognitive testing and MRI research (which while still flawed is gaining ground) should be included in the ‘test’ side.

I very much look forward to seeing ho the postings continue!

By: Steve Gentile

Steve Gentile — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:34:30 +0000

Caryn: Nice research and great discussion. I happen to like that the 2×2 grid keeps it simple and doesn’t create the “death by PowerPoint/Flowchart” syndrome. As an ethnographer with a base in documentary filmmaking, the difficulty has sometimes been drawing parallels between these two. As someone steeped in both arenas, I think it is most appropriate to place the ethno area in “non-verbal/natural” quadrant. This is where the clues arise from, and where I (as filmmaker and researcher) find the richness of a person’s personal context. While we may get information from the others, this area has been the goldmine.
Nice work and great job simplifying what is often difficult to simplify.

By: Brant

Brant — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:49:44 +0000

This is very interesting and a good way to look at and analyze types of inquiry. I agree with Kathy that social media is not natural per se and I always caution against using streams of text or messaging as representative, just as you would not choose sitting in on one particular business meeting as a representative slice for ethnography.

Thanks for making an interesting discussion and viewpoint on learning about how we study people.