Title: Speaking into Silences: Autoethnography, Communication, and Applied Research
Abstract: Abstract Editor's Note: Given the rare use of autoethnography in the field of communication, I invited Dr. Tillmann to discuss autoethnography as a valuable tool in applied communication research. This discussion serves as a prelude to her essay "Body and Bulimia Revisited: Reflections on 'A Secret Life.'" In 2004, two articles in the Journal of Applied Communication Research (Ashcraft & Tretheway, 2004; Goodall, 2004) celebrated the merits of auto- and narrative ethnography, methods of research grounded in lived experience and evocative modes of representation that seek to engage readers emotionally, aesthetically, ethically, and politically. Despite these and other persuasive calls for auto- and narrative ethnographic works, few have been published in communication journals. More than four years ago, JACR offered readers arguments for this kind of scholarship, yet no full-length autoethnography appeared in its pages—until now. This essay, a prelude to its companion, "Body and Bulimia Revisited," speaks into that silence. Keywords: AutoethnographyNarrativeQualitative ResearchEating DisorderBulimia Acknowledgements The author thanks Art Bochner, Laura Ellingson, Carolyn Ellis, Tom Frentz, Bud Goodall, Christine Kiesinger, Kathryn Norsworthy, Laura Stafford, and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and support. A version of this piece was presented at the 2008 meetings of the National Communication Association. Notes 1. I acknowledge the limits of using a search engine to locate relevant works. In a broader review of the 136 articles netted by searching for autoethnograph* and narrative ethnograph* in "all text" of all peer-reviewed CMMC journals, I found a small subset that did not mention auto- or narrative ethnography at all—not even in the works cited. In addition, my search likely missed sources that would meet Ellis and Bochner's (2000) criteria for autoethnography, but their authors either did not label their work, or they used other terms to describe it. Further, CMMC does not catalogue sociology journals like Symbolic Interaction or interdisciplinary outlets like Qualitative Inquiry; both regularly publish autoethnographic scholarship. 2. A search of Google Scholar reveals that "Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity" (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) ranks among the most cited articles or chapters by communication scholars, though most of these hundreds of citations appear in sociology, education, and psychology publications. According to Bochner (personal communication, September 25, 2008), the chapter "has been virtually ignored in our field." Additional informationNotes on contributorsLisa M. Tillmann Lisa M. Tillmann is Associate Professor and Chair of Critical Media and Cultural Studies at Rollins College
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-30
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 41
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