CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
4.2 Research methodology
Amongst several definitions of what research methodology is Leedy’s (1997) and Hammell’s (2002) are appropriate to this study. Whilst Leedy (1997) views methodology as an applicable structure/base within which the collected data are positioned so that their importance may be distinctively visible. Whereas Hammel (2002) perceives methodology as philosophical and hypothetical aspects of how the research should advance taking into consideration the nature of the problem to be addressed. In essence, therefore, these definitions mean that the objective of outlining research methodology is concerned with the description, the types of data that the research project need and how that data were collected, organised and analysed. It is essentially, an umbrella term that refers to the research methods and techniques that are used in the process of implementing a research design as well as fundamental ideas and conventions that underlie their application. Research methodology comprises the description of research instruments, data collection and data analysis methods that are applied in the study.
Since this study is primarily qualitative and evaluative in nature, it will focus on four primary texts. It will follow a text-focused method in order to achieve the aims and objectives detailed in the introductory chapter of this work.
The study will follow a narrative approach. Heikkinen and Syrjala (2002) cited in Moen (2006:4) define the word narrative as “a word that originated from the Latin
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noun and verb narrario and narrare, which means a story and to tell a story respectively”. A narrative is a story that tells a series of events that are important for the narrator or his/her audience. Wertsch (1991) cited in Moen maintains that,
when narratives are analysed within and on the basis of a sociocultural context, one has to bear in mind that the individual and her/his context are entwined. When individuals tell their stories, they are not isolated and independent from the context informing their narratives. On the contrary it is important to remember that the individual in question is irreducibly connected to her or his social, cultural and institutional setting. Narratives, therefore, capture both the individual and the context (Moen, 2006:4).
The person is a political being in as far as he or she navigates communities and a political macro context. This point is corroborated by Carter (1993) who maintains that;
human beings come to understand sorrow or love or joy in particularly rich ways through the characters and incidents we become familiar with in novels or plays. The richness and nuances cannot be expressed in definitions or abstract propositions.
Thus narratives, being a discursive form that draws together diverse events, happenings and actions of human lives, can only be demonstrated or evoked through storytelling. Narratives are therefore inevitably linked to language. In this sense stories cannot be viewed simply as abstract structures isolated from their cultural context ( cited in Moen, 2006:5).
According to Sikes and Gale, (2006:137) “In pursuit of the research; narratives are usually related to qualitative methodologies and methods. The association between the two, is influenced by the type of data that qualitative research gathers and works from, as well as with the manner in which that data is analysed or interpreted and then re- presented as findings”.
Clandinin and Connelly in Moen (2006: 6) maintains that “the narrative approach is a frame of reference that provides the researcher with a platform to reflect from, during the investigation process. It is also a research method as well as a form for representing a research study. From this perspective, the narrative approach is seen as both phenomenon and technique”.Taking the point further Gudmundsdottir (2001:
226) validates the narrative approach when he argues that, it is situated within the qualitative or interpretive research method. Implicit in what has been discussed so far is that narrative research is an on-going interpretive process. Moen asserts that,
When a story is selected among several other possible stories, that point marks the beginning of an analysis and it continues for the duration of the entire research
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process. Interpretation does not bring the research process to an end with its research report. Instead the opposite happens, the final account opens itself up for a wider range of interpretations by others who read or learn about the report (Moen, 2006:7).
The above statement by Moen (2006) is in line with this study. The selected texts mark the start of a debate and analysis that will not end with this study, but instead will open a broader debate and interpretations. This point will be revisited when recommendations are made at the end of the study.
The thesis offers a textual analysis which is to be understood as an interpretative analysis focused on reading, examining, analysing and comparing the more implicit issues in addressing how novels and drama stories written by male authors 'represent' the images of female characters. This implies that the characters’
dialogues, their emotional and moral behaviour and their actions in the story resemble those of real people in everyday life. However, some scholars believe that the author’s perceptions and beliefs impact on his/her depiction of characters in his/her texts. Robbins (2000:59).maintains that, “patriarchal thought has created an incoherent version of femininity, in which the women who live it are trapped and for which they are blamed. Their ‘nature’ is culturally constructed; but the construction is disguised-and, after all, nature is precisely the thing that one cannot change”.
After reading Millett’s book entitled Sexual Politics(1968), Todd (1988) deduced that Millet held a view that literature was ‘mimesis’. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines mimesis as “the imitative representation of real world in art or literature “(Soanes and Stevenson,2004:907). Todd (1988:22) uses this hypothesis
“to develop a notion that gender is a culturally learned sexual identity. For centuries, women have been deceived into thinking and believing that sexual identity is a natural given”. Todd’s hypothesis is corroborated by Ruthven in her statement that;
It is not a question of deciding what a woman ‘is’ by nature, but of examining what she is assumed to be in society or culture in which she lives, how those assumptions came about, whose interest they serve. For seeing that different societies ‘construct’
women in different ways, it is clear that ‘woman’ is in fact a culturally variable construct, which each society produces for a particular purpose (Ruthven, 1984:36).
Following from the above, Todd after reading Millett’s Sexual Politics came to the conclusion that Millett has perhaps falsely presented literature as mimesis in as far as it relates to women. Todd thus develops the argument of gender as a culturally
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acquired sexual identity; acquired in as far as literature creates or constructs the gender normative within a cultural context.
Humm (in Zuma), emphases the fact that,
literature read with a feminist eye should demonstrate the following: since women’s social reality, as well as men’s, is informed by gender, therefore the representation of female experience in literary form is thus gendered. He also affirms that representation of women in literature, whilst it does not depict inborn characteristics of real women, it might disturb the traditional symbolic order or the language system of patriarchy. This is an important idea as it is through this window that both male and female writers can disrupt problematic societal gender ideas simply by writing their representation of women. While accepting openness of literary form as being gendered, Humm also expresses the view that women do not receive their true representation in texts (Zuma, 2009:60).
This study does not rest on the assumption that information from texts is reflective of reality but intends to go as far as disrupting the traditional symbolic order in analyzing and commenting on the representation of women images as represented by male authors in the selected isiZulu literary texts. In the study of this nature, therefore, the narrative research method, as an approach has been chosen as an appropriate method for this kind of desk top study.