Subject Position of the Researcher

Rhetorically, in conducting research and presenting findings, a researcher must take a subject position. At its grossest level, taking a subject position, in this context, means either taking on an assumed objectivity or foregrounding the subjective "I" who is doing the research and writing/presenting.

Taking a seemingly objective, "there is no 'I' doing the research," stance is most commonly associated with empirical approaches to research questions. This has, however, also been a tenet of humanities work of even the most basic sort for decades. Only recently has ethnography revitalized a generally respectable "I" within research and academic writing.

The objective stance brings with it certain rhetorical baggage, such as analytic and evidentiary discourse modes (Branscomb, 1995, p. 472). The stance maintains distance between the "what is being said" and the "who is saying it," which has the rhetorical effect of obscuring the subjectivity of the point of view expressed. An example of the reliance on an assumed objectivity can be found in the Berkenkotter, Huckin, and Ackerman (1988) study, "Conventions, Conversations, and the Writer: Case Study of a Student in a Rhetoric Ph.D. Program" [a.k.a., the Nate study]. In publishing this study, the researchers intentionally obscured the fact that one of the subjects was also one of the researchers. They created a persona, "Nate," to represent John Ackerman, who was both a subject and a researcher in the study. In a postscript to a later re-print of the article (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995), Ackerman writes about why he and his fellow researchers chose to do this. Ackerman says, "We were nervous about revealing the co-identity of researcher and research subject; we needed some of the conventional distance between researcher and participant" (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995, p. 145). He adds that

We did debate whether to reveal the dual identities of Nate. . . [W]e decided to separate the two because our field had not yet published hybrid, collaborative research relationships, and thus to reveal our method was to take an unwise risk (p. 145).

These researchers made a rhetorical move by not revealing the identity of their primary research subject. Maintaining a sense of distance helped them make their argument more successfully.

As shown in the section, "The Evolution of Scholarly Journals in English and Composition Studies," the use of a clearly subjective voice has a historical base in English studies. A foregrounded subjective voice is a rhetorical move that has once again come into its own with the rise of ethnography that calls for an accounting of the researcher's position as an inevitable participant in the study. What the foregrounded subjective voice provides rhetorically may be somewhat akin to "hedging" in more empirical presentations (Hayes, et al., 1992, p. 319). Identifying the position from which research is being conducted and explained may add to the researcher's credibility in a manner similar to that of hedging.

Freedman's introductions also provide an example of objective and subjective voices and their different rhetorical affects. In her more empirical JEP article, she uses first-person constructions seven times in the first five paragraphs as compared to twenty-two uses in the first five paragraphs of the CCC article. The rhetorical constraints of JEP are such that an objective position is more likely to be effective. The reverse is true of CCC. Freedman makes a rhetorical decision about positioning herself based on the presentation context and the needs of her audience.

Writing Guides

Understanding the Rhetoric of Research

Subject Position of the Researcher