Dear Keith,

This is a useful and valid perception, but the problem we face on the list involves different issues.

The first of these issues is that this is a discussion list. Our medium of communication is words sent by email and reproduced in on-screen text. In this context, we can neither make nor demonstrate a concrete cup. We can only talk. In some formats, of course, we could demonstrate a representation of the cup or a video of making a cup. That would raise other issues. Here, our only medium is words.

The second issue is that this is a research list. Its purpose is “discussion of PhD studies and related research in design.” While >some< research involves physical activities and concrete material apparatus, >all< research involves words. Research is a thought process internal to the mind of a researcher. Individual researchers may share their thoughts with other researchers in a group, a laboratory, or a larger community. Sharing the research act requires words or symbols in some kind of language, as, for example, mathematics, chemical notation, etc.

These words and forms of language are part of the description or narration of the content of any research act.
 
Every research narrative has at least two levels of narration. One involves the object of inquiry that forms the content of the research. The other involves inquiry into the process of research itself. This is a metanarrative.
 
The research metanarrative involves narrating research process issues that lie outside the object of inquiry. Whether we are making a cup, building a cyclotron, or testing a drug, much of what we do happens in a physical world of human action. When we describe our research, we move to the metanarrative. This includes:
 
1. Stating the research problem,
2. Discussing the knowledge in the field to date,
3. Discussing past attempts to examine or solve the problem,
4. Discussing methods and approach,
5. Comparing possible alterative methods,
6. Discussing problems encountered in the research, and
7. Explaining how the researcher addresses those problems.
 
The research narrative involves all those issues that
 
8. Explicitly contribute to the body of knowledge within the field.
 
This is where researchers demonstrate and exhibit aspects of the process under study.
 
This is a quick note, rather than a full description of the research narrative and a description of the forms it can take. All of the specific internal aspects of the research inquiry would be found here, and this is where we present evidence, cases, illustrations, examples, process demonstrations, and artefacts. If we are working with a cup, this is where we make the cup, present it, and provide the necessary demonstrations or representations about the cup.
 
After the substantive portion of the research inquiry and the statement of results, we return to the metanarrative.
 
We engage in metanarrative when we state implications for future research.
 
The narrative describes and portrays activities, processes, and objects in the external world. This is why different forms of communication can reveal and explain the research inquiry. In some cases, these explanations require artefacts or demonstrations that may be better than language, whether words or numbers. This would be the case for many issues involving professional practice — surgery, cup-making, dance, book illustration, playing music all come to mind. 
 
In contrast, the metanarrative is a thinking process that takes place in the mind of the researcher. Some aspects of the metanarrative are seen in the larger literature of the field. In some cases, the metanarrative occurs in the minds of other researchers to be reported by the author of the research report.
 
Metanarrative is a process of individual thought and social communication. While we do not think exclusively in words, we describe thought in words and symbols. Some metanarrative issues allow pictorial or numerical modeling. The metanarrative as a whole requires description. Descriptive narration generally involves words.
 
There may be more than two levels of narration in some forms of research. Some forms of research would involve narration of research content, metanarration of the research process, and a second level of reflective metanarration on the researcher’s engagement with the process.
 
Still further levels of metanarration may be possible.
 
It is likely that all or nearly all levels of metanarration require words. It is conceivable that some forms of metanarration may involve images or exhibitions in addition to words.
 
The attention given to captioning, model making, charting, and presentation techniques in such books as Anholt’s (1994) book on the art of oral scientific presentation or Todoroff’s (1997) book on scientific presentation skills involve questions of narrative and metanarrative.
 
There is no question that visual media other than words help to communicate the content of science. These can also support the metanarrative description of research process in some cases.

It is possible to engage in the world in many ways. Some forms of engagement require words and language. Some do not — at least not language in the ways we normally conceive it. Many parts of tea ceremony do not require words, and we engage with the tea cup we hold and drink from in a different state of mind than would be appropriate to a discussion list such as this. But there are points in the tea ceremony that do require words. This is also true of a discussion list, particularly a discussion list where we discuss research. 

In this forum, we must use words if we are to talk about making a cup. We cannot make a cup in this forum. We cannot hold a cup on the list. We cannot drink from a cup on PhD-Design.

Whatever our views on language with respect to human life in the physical world, language of some form is the medium of the research narrative and the research meta-narrative, and language is the medium of a list such as this.  

Yours,      

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015 

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology 

— 

References

Anholt, Robert R. H. 1994. Dazzle ‘em with Style. The Art of Oral Scientific Presentation. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
 
Todoroff, Cindy. 1997. Presenting Science with Impact. Presentation Skills for Scientists, Medical Researchers, and Health Care Professionals. Toronto: Trifolium Books.

--

Keith Russell wrote:

—snip—

Many members of this group treat language as a secondary activity when talking about a primary activity. That is, 'talk about cup making' is not needed in order to evidence the making of a cup; one can simply make a cup. If one were to do a running commentary whilst making a cup, the commentary might be of interest and it might illuminate the activity but it would be a secondary activity.

In this sense, language is then better or worse according to its ability to describe or define the process of making a cup. Making the cup retains its priority. The process could be describe in any language, given enough time and struggle. Why, because the making of a cup is a distinct activity that has been concretised in time and space. Language can point to the cup.

For others on this list, language is a primary activity. The cups they make are made of words. They design thoughts in the medium of words. The cups they make with words are concretised in the words that make-up the cups. Secondary accounts of these word-cups could be made in any language but the actual word-cups could not be made in any other example of language any more than an actual instance of a physical cup could be made in other materials and be actually identical.

All this is first year stuff but it keeps emerging in our disputations.

—snip—


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