This is a research moan. It is mine and belongs to me.

I am revising my three data chapters -- three out of the four central chapters of the thesis, as a matter of fact -- to be able to send them to my supervisor, get her approval and then be able to send them to the seminar participants by Monday at the latest. (The seminar is on the 7th, but if people are to read three chapters they do need to get more than a week cos some of them also have other things to do. Weird, I know, but there you have it.) And the chapters are essentially complete and finished, but when I am going through the email chapter one final time I start thinking things such as "Can I use the word genre here?" and spend half an hour looking up everything I can on genre research, and read things like this paper and realise that I don't really know enough to know whether I can use the term or not. Except in a lot of papers, people seem to be using the term without analysing it in minute detail. I have read Swales on genres at some point, but it is all so very far away in my mind right now.

And then there are gender-related issues. Which is something I have never been interested in but it would be plain bad research to just ignore them; I can get away without doing any gender analysis in the chat room chapter since it is impossible to know the genders of the participants for certain, but the weblogs and emails are another thing. And I don't know anything about the differences between how men and women communicate or what the researchers say about it (except the very basic stuff from the general sociolinguistics course I took a couple of years ago), and I feel that I should take a month or three to actually get acquainted with that -- but that is impossible of course.

Oh, and then there is the whole question of quoting from the material. The praxis seems to be that you really need the consent of the language producers, but in the case of the email material that isn't possible. The same goes for most of the chat material, of course. And most of the bloggers I've written to ask for consent haven't answered. In the previous seminars people have clamoured for more examples, but instead I may have to take out most of the ones I do have. Can I use fictitious examples, if I take care to construct the noun phrases exactly the same way they were in the actual examples? (I am reading up on this, and also consulting people who have experience with this kind of problem, but I want it to be solved as of last month, so I don't have to tinker any more with the examples because that kind of work is tedious as well as worrying. Especially when I have to renumber all the examples in the 35-page email chapter yet again.)

And have I really read everything I ought to read? The answer to that is certainly "no" and that bothers me, and I am worried that I have missed some very basic stuff. And my knowledge of discourse analysis theory is not at all good. Oh my paws and whiskers.

Also, I got very little sleep last night.

This is my research moan which is mine and belongs to me and is related to my thesis, but am I the only one who has ever had this kind of worry?

Labels: thesis, work

 
My Christmas holiday is winding down. I went to the department today, saw my tutor briefly and discussed my time plan. Once back home, I started tidying up my reference lists and making todo lists. Tomorrow I'll start writing again.

I feel fairly good about the thesis right now. I think I can finish it on time - more or less. I feel less sanguine about the quality of my research, though. Sometimes I don't think what I'm doing is relevant at all. But at the moment I'm not too panicked about that.

Ho hum. Here is a good link regardless of your nationality: The Local, English-language news from Sweden. Only from Sweden, and by a team of native English-speaking editors who live here (mainly expatriate Brits, I think). I enjoy reading The Local for many reasons - their articles are well-written and usually well-researched; even if the news are the same I get in DN the language factor makes it seem as if the perspective is somehow different; and knowing that Sweden is very small and very insignificant it nevertheless feels good to be able to point to news articles (not to mention in-depth articles about Swedish society, culture, traditions, science, politics...) for the benefit of foreign friends. Read The Local, it's a good newspaper. Especially if you're a forriner.

Labels: links, personal, Swedish stuff, thesis

 
I suppose that when you are a published academic, you are expected to be so high above worldly concerns that seeing your name in print is of no consequence. Well, sod that for a game of soldiers (as Terry would say.) I'm published! In vol 66 of Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, ISSN 0028-3754; my paper is on p 295-305.

I think that is extremely cool. So there.

Labels: linguistics, thesis

 
Johari Window by Kevan. I wouldn't call it a personality test so much as a... um, not sure just what :-)

Today I have been working on a Table. A good table, I'm quite fond of it as a matter of fact. It's not the kind of table that has legs and a tabletop, rather the kind where you get rows and columns, and table cells with numbers in. I know more things about the language of chat rooms now than I did this morning. Not much more, mind you, but still -- a day well spent.

Labels: fun, links, thesis, work

 
People are... well. People.

And there are so many ways to be odd in. Today I have counted vocatives in five chat logs. The first one was a general-purpose chat with some kind of soft cybersex going on. (It was singularly uninteresting, believe me). The second and third ones were chat rooms for people who believe in UFOs, crop circles and alien abductions. (Those were fascinating but there was a distinct lack in the marbles department). The fourth, God help me, was a chat for 10 to 15-year-old fans of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. (I found that if I sorted the posts alphabetically I could keep some of my sanity, and it was MUCH quicker and more efficient. And there were a lot of vocatives in that one). The fifth was a group of sys admins. (Utter and complete nerds, and the most "normal" bunch of the lot).

Today's count: 1003 vocatives. My goal for the day was 1000 - I am very satisfied. Hopefully I'll reach 3500 by the end of the week.

Labels: thesis, work

 
The PhD Dissertation Explained:

"'What is it, then?'
'Nothing.'
'What do you mean, nothing?'
'Nothing of importance.' [...] 'I'd rather not talk about it.'
'Come on, professor, out with it.'
'It's, er, a doctoral thesis.'
Smyke laughed. 'That's a relief. I thought it was some frightful disease.'
'So is a doctoral thesis, in a way.'"

Walter Moers, Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures, (p 142).

Labels: fun, thesis