Greatly to my surprise, I've received two responses to my distribution of incoherent notes. That's at least two more than I expected, so I feel a bit justified in having sent them out in the first place. I'm copying here each response together with my reply:

RESPONSE 1:

Hi Tom

what an interesting process… incoherent notes on an incoherent process.. i guess thinking of my interviews where i can assume no interviewee was dementing there are still points at which their story is incoherent offen at the point where they seem to be so ‘in’ their story that they get lost… just a thought

​To which I replied:

Your point about them being "  so ‘in’ their story that they get lost " is a really interesting one. There seem to be different possibilities of interpretation:

1. That the particular moment that they are in process of remembering has struck up so many different other thoughts and images in their head that they somehow lost track of the original story and their head is full of "other ideas and images" which don't seem to them to be appropriate to start talking about.; or

2. That the particular moment that they are in process of remembering has got them to appoint where they are remembering something they very specifically decide they don't want to tell you, or even perhaps themselves, and so they have to let the story go...

3. What seems a movement in the story which can be first thought to be "incoherence" could be interpreted as a coherence, a free association jump, whose connective significance one has not yet understood (and maybe the speaker too), and so one has not yet found the free-sensitive thread that could make sense of what strikes one as first as a random movement, an incoherence. 

4. Any other.

I suppose it's only by looking at the interview sequence as a whole – and in an ideal world going back to that point in the interview with them and asked them what was going on for them at that point – that would be in a position to judge which of several possibilities was the best explanation of what happened. In principle, if there was such a coherent story which jumped to something apparently quite unrelated in the way I suggested in point 3 above, one could ask for a PIN (obviously in subsection 3 you could do it in some other way. You might be able to push for a PIN as follows:

"you were talking about topic T and then you said X; you stop for a second; and then went on to talk about Y. Could you give me any detail about that moment, what was going on in your mind as you moved  just now from X to silence to Y?"

​RESPONSE 2:

my poor benighted brain is far from comprehending what you mean by:

I’m now thinking of Collingwood’s description in his Autobiography – relevant bits cited in the BNIM Short Guide and Detailed Manual -- of all the ps from the past ( and maybe projected as possibilities into the future?) that are exhibited in the current p4. There are also what structuralist analysis would stress as being the anti-p elements and dynamics inherent in the various assertions of p. See my discussion at the end of QRI on the semiotic triangle (Bronwyn Martin).

Oh my! ​

​To which I replied:

As regards what I meant by my incomprehensible paragraph, I'm not sure! 

The question tried to relate two elements together: I haven't done that work, I have just listed the elements:

a) Collingwood: You might want to look at the baroque reference to Collingwood in the BNIM Detailed Manual vol. IV, section 4.2.3.3.4.2. of the current version.  You can find the current version on my webpage on RESEARCHGATE.

b) Structuralist analysis and Bronwen Martin: in my 2001 textbook, [Qualitative Research Interviewing] .... there is an appendix B where I tried a solitary and rare foray into a sort of structuralism, which I called their much more accurately a critical linguistic/semiotics model (CSL model) and then tried to apply it to some material of Harold the miner. The relevant section is on pages  375-77 of my textbook, but I think I would have to read it several times again in order to work out whether it is comprehensible or not. Obviously, at the time I thought it was; obviously, now, I frankly don't know!

If you do have time to look at the two components separately and even think about the relationship between the two, it would be lovely if you would tell me.

 ​

​

A psychoanalyst

​​

was once supposed to have said 

​: "it takes two people to think somebody's most difficult thoughts". In this case, the incoherent thinker (myself) has already had the aid of two other people to help them think his most difficult thoughts. Now, that I call support! If anybody else can come in on the discussion, that would be great!

Best wishes

Tom​

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If interested in BNIM,the Biographical-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) approach to qualitative research interviewing, the following is relevant.......

The next  (45th) BNIM 5-day intensive course runs in London from Thursday April 19 to Wednesday April 25, 2018. 

A lot of material about BNIM is available from my page at RESEARCHGATE. 

This now includes the Quick Outline Sketch, the Short Guide, and the Detailed Manuals, and the BNIM Bibliography. 

Also several articles and papers.

Do feel free to consult and use the RESEARCHGATE facility.

 

Quite separately, I would be very pleased to receive and respond to  any comments or questions that you may have about those materials or  more generally about BNIM. 

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