Symposium Study I Part II
Phenomenology: The Abstract and the Concrete
Dan Lukiv
M.Ed., English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca
Phenomenology attempts, in terms of the human experience, to describe phenomena, which could include a perspective, various perspectives, appearances, events, actions, changes, or any occurrence, really, but generally does not attempt to describe forces that produce such phenomena. Phenomenology attempts to describe a phenomenon in terms of its essence with regard to the human experience at hand. Descriptions could include data from one or a variety of individuals, or from other appropriate, non-fleshly sources, which could include literary texts, philosophy texts, art, science, and research.
Phenomenology differs from ontology in that Phenomenologists concern themselves with what is the essence of lived experience. Ontologists, on the other hand, concern themselves with what is reality for the individual. For example, ontologically, how does the individual see the world (his or her reality), or parts thereof? Answers to that question could describe why some researchers tend to do qualitative research (see, e.g., Wilcke, 2002; Graham, 1997; and Chalip, Marshall, Thomas, & White, 1998), whereas others tend to do quantitative research (see, e.g., Savicki, 2000). One researcher may ask a research question best investigated through statistical (quantitative) analysis (see, e.g., Boss & Taylor, 1989). Another researcher may ask a different question best investigated through hermeneutic phenomenological (qualitative) analysis (see, e.g., Lukiv, 2002a or 2003a). Doesn't each research question say something about the researcher who dreamed them up (Siegle, n.d.a)?
Phenomenology, expressed in the form of an article, explores phenomena through whatever information seems opportune (e.g., interviews, documents, literature, philosophy, experience: this may refer to concrete sensory details and to time, place, physiology, spirituality, and relationships). Methodology is not explicitly, systematically described (see, e.g., Altrows, 2000; Baldursson, 2000b; Bergum, 2000; Bottorff, 2000; Brooks, 2000; Burton, 2000; Clark, 2000b; Connolly, 2000; Davis, 2000; Devine, 2000; Evans, 2000; Fahlman, 2000; Field, 2000; Flickinger, 2000; Godkin, 2000; and Hawley, 2000). Phenomenological research, on the other hand, although it also explores phenomena through whatever information seems opportune, should follow a systematic methodology (see, e.g., Baldursson, 2000a; Clark, 2000a; Cull-Wilby, 2000; Ford, 2000; Hagedorn, 2000; James, 2000; Lukiv, 2002a or 2003a; and Maeda-Fujita, 2000) that, described fully, addresses bias, gathering of data, analysis, interpretation, and, if necessary, ethical concerns and sampling procedures (Lukiv, 2003b). A systematic methodology can establish a study's validity.
Traditional quantitative research has attempted to establish validity through systematic, rigid methodology (McMillan & Schumacher, 1997). Sometimes, in phenomenological research, however, the exploration of a phenomenon alters or defines methodology needed along the way (Burch, 1991). In this circumstance, methodology altered or formulated along the way can still be explicitly described, thereby establishing its level of validity; however, when it is not explicitly described it does not, in my mind, merit the necessary labels valid and systematic.
Hermeneutic phenomenology (van Manen, 1990), a marriage between interpretation and essence, attempts, through explicit research methodology, to reduce data to its essence as described in themes. Themes can form two categories: essential and incidental (van Manen, 1990). The essential themes become the essence of the phenomenon. In my hermeneutic phenomenological (2002a or 2003a) study (see Part One: http://asstudents.unco.edu/students/AE-Extra/2004/4/index.html) involving a successful Canadian poet (pseudonym: Arthur), I explored the phenomenon I labeled experiences in school that encouraged Arthur to become a creative writer. From that phenomenon emerged eight essential themes. When themes originate from interviews with participants (the data), as in the case of Arthur, then participant review allows the researcher and participants to evaluate the themes in terms of their incidental and essential qualities. Incidental themes are generally discarded. Analysis investigates what the themes are, and interpretation defines which ones are essential through a process some refer to as free imaginative variation (van Manen, 1990). Study II (appearing in forthcoming September 2004 edition of AEE) repeated the methodology of Study I, and one essential theme emerged.
Philosophy from a phenomenological point of view, however, attempts to describe phenomena through reason/logic. Here are examples of influential phenomenological philosophers: F. J. J. Buytendijk, Jacques Derrida, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Jan Martinus Langeveld, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Max Scheler, Alfred Schutz, and Stephan Strasser. Abstractions often abound in philosophers' works (Kline, 1967), sometimes at levels that, for many, defy comprehension (Trejo, 1993).
Philosophers of this phenomenological camp, although diverse in their approach to their disciplines, often try to answer questions such as: what is lived experience? What is consciousness? What does the essence of something mean? Can there ever be an essence? For an individual, what is the experience of space, of his or her body, of time, and of relationships? Perhaps you immediately see why philosophical abstractions accumulate (Kline, 1967) in the rhetoric of what some would call answers to these questions. But when philosophers' arguments include statements such as, to name only some examples, if x, then y; if x, then not y; if not x, then not y; if not x, then y; x if and only if y; not x if and only if not y; not x if and only if y; if x, then only y; and if x = y and y is the opposite of z, then x and z are opposites (a Socratic favorite of Plato; see, e.g., The Dialogues, 2003), in which x and y really amount to nothing more than personal opinion, or even so-called axioms (Kline, 1967), which may turn out to be incorrect assumptions or true statements only in unique circumstances, then, frankly, the arguments might deserve space in the libraries of Laputa (Swift, 1726/1985).
Plato, for example, wrote philosophically about the immortality of the soul (Singer, 1999; and You Can Believe, 2003). Let x = the soul is immortal. But from a Biblical point of view, according to Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 18:4, 20 (New World Translation), a man or a woman is himself or herself a soul that can die (You Can Believe, 2003). Therefore, I could follow with not x = the soul is mortal. Anybody, then, who accepts x as true and engages his or her mind in if x, then y and likewise arguments could step into a world of nonsense-rhetoric (New World Translation, 2 Timothy 6:4), no matter how eloquent or creative or ingenious his or her thinking or writing.
The phenomenological researcher may explore, rather than philosophical arguments or constructs or premises, the lived experiences of people such as I did through my research question, when I asked Arthur and Thomas what, if any, experiences in school encouraged you to became a creative writer? I defined, concretely, I should add, a lived experience through establishing an interview guide.
I did not trip into the coliseum of diverse philosophers expressing diverse thoughts or theories about what is a lived experience. Does it seem appropriate to borrow a term from philosophy but define it according to my own purposes? Yes, to me. Providing my definition provides useful data with regard to my research question. To ensure this appropriateness, my interview guide for Studies I and II included direction from the following two paragraphs:
Patton (1987) provides examples of questions that seek concreteness in an event: (a) "When did that happen?", (b) "Who else was involved?", (c) "Where were you during that time?", (d) "What was your involvement in that situation?", (e) "How did that come about?", and (f) "Where did that happen?" (p. 125). Sensory questions, if necessary, probe into what the participant saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched (Patton, 1987). Examples of sensory probes could be: (a) "As you reflect on that experience, do you 'see' anything in particular?", (b) "Do you 'hear' anything?", (c) "Do you 'taste' anything?", (e) "Do you 'smell' anything?", and (f) "Do you physically 'feel' anything?"
Feeling questions, in the Carl Rogerian tradition (Egan, 1998), if necessary, probe "to understand the respondent's emotional reactions" (Patton, 1987, p. 118). A researcher could ask Rogerian-style questions, such as, (a) "How did you feel during that experience?", (b) "Do you mean that you felt (_______) about that experience?", and (c) "It appears to me that you felt (_______): Is that true, or did you feel another emotion?"
If you believe that these questions establish a useful sense of "what happened" in events relative to my research question, then I have likely satisfied your demand for an appropriate definition of lived experience but without an avalanche of abstract words. If you accept my description of essence in terms of essential, not incidental, themes that are established through interpretation and participant review and free imaginative variation, than, likewise, I have established a useful definition of essence without the abstraction dog pile.
Poets, themselves phenomenologists of a sort, generally avoid abstract words. Their works' meanings lie in implicit language, as opposed to the explicit language of the phenomenological researcher, writer, and philosopher; they generally avoid abstractions--often Latinated versions of root words--in the hope of creating an emotional or intellectual understanding or experience of a phenomenon for the reader. That kind of understanding, or experience, usually comes surest with the most concrete, the most unlatinated (excuse the pun) words the poet can gather (Drury, 1991). Concrete words tend to ground the reader in the five senses, whereas abstract words tend to unground the reader. Anybody preoccupied with abstract words could become the Duffy of the following poem:
THE ALPHABET (Lukiv, 1999, p. 197)
In Dubliners,
Duffy "lived a little distance
From his body,"
Like a plucked brain,
Like a leaping Antaeus.
The touch of her hand
On his cheek
Might have cured him,
But he'd neither learned the alphabet
Of simple somersaults
Nor held the Roman torch:
Mens sana in corpore sano
(A sound mind in a sound body).
O Duffy Descartes:
"I think; therefore,
I am
[What?]"
As the poem highlights, there can exist a certain ironic ungrounding in the unnecessarily abstract. Studies I and II avoided this irony by simply stating what I was looking for in terms of a lived experience. I also avoided this irony by defining essence of the phenomenon as essential themes of Arthur and Thomas' selected lived experience. My studies, then, borrowed terms from philosophy, but they grounded them by defining them within an explicit, systematic methodology.
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Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.
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