Studying English Literature and Language, 3rd Edition

@ PART SIX

TAKING IT ALL STILL FURTHER: ENGLISH AND THE REST OF LIFE

This part may be towards the end of the website but, as with this corresponding part of the book, you should turn to it early on and keep clicking on it from time to time. For both continue to address the crucial relations between ‘English’ and ‘the rest of life’. Most immediately this concerns you and your particular course of study. But its  significance reaches far beyond the end of a specific programme, into the rest of life around and beyond – other people’s as well as your own. So the emphasis is still upon the ongoing dynamic among Study, Work and Play or, alternatively, Learning, Earning and Re-creation – where play is taken seriously, and re-creation can amount to much more than mere ‘recreation’ in a weak sense. Given the increasingly mobile and immediately networked nature of much work and recreation nowadays, ‘lifelong learning’ of one kind or another – or alternating periods of training and work and leisure, or of over-work and un- or under-employment – are likely to become more common. The connections made below seek to keep you in touch with that ‘nowadays’. And they continue to be made under the capacious and flexible sign of ‘English now and again and afresh’.

To all these various ends, this part of the website offers up-to-date information, advice and links on jobs and study, as well as further checklists and guidelines to help you personally gauge where you are now, and where (and how and when) you want to go – or what you want to become – next. There are Sample Student Profiles to compare and help you develop your own, essential steps towards doing an MA, further frameworks for thinking about interviews and applications, and an extended invitation to reflect on the relations between ‘research’ and ‘learning’ and ‘development’ – personal and social as well as educational and industrial. So there are still plenty of critical and creative questions about Why? and Why not? and Who? and How else? too. People who have ‘done English’ are often acutely aware of and capable in such things. They are also usually skilled in saying so and keen to think about the possibilities, including alternatives. But the immediate as well as ultimate questions persists: what am I going ‘do with English’ in the rest of my life? what’s it to me? and what’s it all about?!  The materials below should help you keep on addressing these questions with a grasp of what’s really desirable as well as possible.

/…

@ 6 contains:           

@ 6.1  Studying, working, playing – an ongoing relation

6.1.1    ‘Opening moves’ and ‘core questions’ applied to yourself

@ 6.2  English again, afresh, otherwise

6.2.1    English language, literature, culture – a personal reprise

@ 6.3  Further study

6.3.1    Qualifications in need of further qualification?

6.3.2    Steps towards choosing an MA

6.3.3    Training and/or education – a distinction and connection

@ 6.4   Into work

6.4.1    Examples of student profiles

6.4.2    Further transformative knowledges 

6.4.3    Applications and Interviews – ‘6 Wh- and a H-?’ at your service again

 @ 6.5   Play as re-creation, re-vision, re-search . . .  

@ 6.1   STUDYING, WORKING, PLAYING – AN ONGOING RELATION 

Here we pick up the two models introduced in the corresponding part of the book (6.1) to help deepen and broaden the sense of what ‘studying in the real world’ can mean. (This is a real world in which ideas and imagination are real too – as real as tables and cars and money and the people who make and use them.)  One of these models represents life as a linear process of discrete elements: now this, then that, then the other:

(i)

Fig 6.1. Linear, additive and static model of life made of discrete components

The other model represents life as a dynamic and cyclic process of reciprocally defining elements and activities: this in relation to that in relation to the other – and another and one another: 

Fig. 6.2  Dynamic and cyclic model of living based upon an ongoing  round of learning

It is worth emphasising the fact that each model has its own strengths and weaknesses, and may be viewed and valued very differently.  This is how the problems and possibilities were put in the book (6.1):

The ‘linear discrete’ model, depending how you see and say it, represents the conveniently compartmentalised or distressingly fragmented life; it stands for ‘control’ or ‘alienation’. The ‘cyclic flow’ model, conversely, can be taken to represent the admirably integrated or awfully undifferentiated activity of living; in extreme terms – depending on your preferred way of seeing/saying – it’s utopian or dystopian.

Here you are invited to see these problems and possibilities – in a sense these two modes as well as models of living – in relation to yourself. And that is what the next section, drawing on some techniques of enquiry applied to texts elsewhere in the book, offers to do: 

6.1.1 ‘Opening moves’ and ‘core questions’ applied to yourself

This picks up the critical and creative strategies used for Initial Analysis of a Text (2.1.1) and adapts them for a personal review. That is, the same ‘opening moves’ applied to a text in Initial Analysis (2.1.1) can be very productively applied to oneself.  In fact Notice—Pattern—Contrast—Feeling is a generally useful when approaching all sorts of perceptions.

• What do you notice about yourself: what would you say is your dominant trait?
• Are there discernible patterns in your personal behaviour and your relations with others?
• We are all characterised by contrasts (tensions, conflicts) – what are yours?
• How do you feel about yourself, and how do you express feeling for others?

Indeed, the text/person analogy may be yet further extended, though with caution. You are not an entirely ‘open book’ to yourself, so it’s also worth asking others how they ‘read’ you. Nor are you an entirely ‘closed book’, done and dusted, so it’s also worth considering how your own story and drama might develop from now on. In short, how do you want your own story to go from now on? This is of course much harder in life than in literature. ‘We make our own history but not in conditions of our own making’, as Marx observed in tones not that different from Rich’s observation (at the opening of 6.1). But still the possibilities as well as the problems for kinds of ‘self-authoring’ and autonomy – up to and beyond current limits – are worth weighing.  

Below are some suggestions on how you might put the fundamental questions What? Who? When? Where? How? Why and What if? to yourself.  Similar questions were put when doing something as apparently  ‘academic’ as analysing poems, prose fiction, play-scripts and essays (see 2.1.1—2); and they will be put again when doing something as literally ‘applied’ as applying for a job and being interviewed (see 6.4.3). In fact the ‘6 Wh- and a H-’ questions are so fundamental that, whatever the object, the answers are always likely to prove revealing. A few other things should be made clear about the lay-out: 

• The immediately practical questions What now? and What next? are implied throughout, so they are emphasised across the top >>> NOW? >>>>>> NEXT?  >>>  .
• Their critical and creative counterparts Why . . . ? and What if . . .?   are also implied throughout, so they are reaffirmed across the bottom.

Crucially, here, there are three columns to the right headed Studying, Working and Playing.  These are reminders that each of the questions posed may be responded to and carried through in one, two or all three of these areas of activity. That is, the shape of a possible ‘answer’ may lie in further Study and/or Work and/or Play (i.e. recreation). And it’s really worth trying to sort through your current preferences and priorities in these areas. Try to say which it should be primarily (1), secondarily (2) and thirdly (3). For instance, you may like and be good at writing. You wouldn’t want to do it for a full-time job (as a journalist or novelist, say) but as part of a job is fine. You are not especially interested in studying it further but would really like to pursue it in your own time.  The result then might be something like: Studying 3 ; Working 2; Playing 1. There is still room for manoeuvre: 1 and 2 are negotiable and could be reversed, depending on circumstances and opportunities; but further studying is definitely out, 3, at least for the moment. Do something like that for each of your responses. It’s really worth the time and effort. The individual answers and overall table of results that you come up with will not, of course, tell you automatically what to do next. But going through the process will tell you a great deal – and in some detail – about your current preferences and priorities. By implication, it will point to some likely ways forward.

>>> NOW >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> >> NEXT? >>>

WHAT are you interested in? What do you like doing? (What do you hate doing?) What are you good at? (What are you useless at?) Action and antipathy: what you actually do and would rather not do.	Study Ing ?	W orking ?	P l a y i n g ?
WHO are you? What kind of person do you think you are? How do you think other people see you? (Ask them.) Identity and identification: personal temperament, social association, cultural frame.	Study Ing ?	W orking ?	P l a y i n g ?
WHERE do you like being? Indoors or outside? City or country? Still or on the move . . .? On your own or with others? Where in the world – region, country, continent? Location: personal, social and geographical space.	Study Ing ?	W orking ?	P l a y i n g ?
WHEN do you tend to get things done? When told to, when you have to – when you choose, when you feel like it . . .? Steadily, regularly, over a period – by fits and starts, in a rush, at the last minute . . . ? When do you relax, rest, re-create? Time: personal, social and biological clock, diary, calendar; historical condition.	Study Ing ?	W orking ?	P l a y i n g ?
HOW are you in health? at being on your own? with other people? with speaking? with writing? at finding out things? using current media?                                                                 Condition: capacity, disposition, opportunity	Study Ing ?	W orking ?	P l a y i n g ??

WHY each of the above? ………………………………… WHAT IF some were different?

Here is a relevant website:

‘Skills and strengths: Self-analysis, plans and vision’, http://www.helenemarcoz.net/.

@ 6.2. ENGLISH AGAIN, AFRESH, OTHERWISE

This carries through the perspectives opened up by the vision of ‘English and or as other subjects’ in the corresponding part of the book (6.2.). There an array of Englishes was projected as though on a ‘clock’ or ‘compass’, measuring the various times and places – within and beyond formal education – that each can operate. Here related questions are posed and pointed differently. The emphasis is specifically on English as language and literature and culture (again) but the pressing issue is what you find them to be and make of them yourself, here and now (afresh). Hence:

6.2.1 English language, literature, culture – a personal reprise

This is a refocusing of issues raised in Part One when the foundations were being laid for advanced study of English. So you might like to get your present bearings by revisiting the question Which‘Englishes?’(1.1) and the overview of the fundamental Fields of Study (1.3). Your understanding of what may be meant by ‘English’ (historically, geographically, socially and by medium) will have expanded and become more complicated since the earlier stages of your study; and you are likely to have a much stronger sense of where your own interests, sympathies and values now lie. Exposed to the range of Theories and Approaches explored in Part Three and having engaged with the kinds of text and genre featured in the Anthology in Part Five, you now have a much more capacious and perhaps argumentative sense of just what may be covered by – concentrated on or even excluded from – the overlapping areas here designated as Language and Literature and Culture, Communication and Media. Again, the immediate aim is to help transform your sense of ‘What now?’ into ‘What next?’; and the big, most pressing and personal questions will be something like: What do I really make of English at the moment? What’s it to me? And what’s personally worth taking forward?  The questions and suggestions that follow are provocative and designed to help you come up with answers that you find productive, in and on your own terms. The initial terms of reference are obviously those of the book at large; but the emphasis here is on treating these as points of departure (not arrival) and on future possibility (not just pressing actuality). So the whole thing (as in 6.1.2) is again framed in terms of Now and Next? (at the top) and Why? and What if . . .? (at the bottom).

>>>  NOW >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>  NEXT?  >>>

>>>  NOW >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>  NEXT?  >>>

>>>  NOW >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>  NEXT?  >>>

>>>  NOW >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>  NEXT?  >>>

And finally – or first . . . 

WHY each of the above? ………………………… WHAT IF some were different?

After all (whenever that turns out to be) you may not have quite made your mind up about what you know about ‘English’ as Language or Literature or Culture, Communication and Media – or whatever category or configuration you come round to prefer. And it would be unwise to close your mind to everything you might encounter in or do with English in future – over the rest of your life. A proposition from Blake proves suggestive again:

‘Reason, or the Ratio of all we have already Known, is not the Same that it shall be when we Know More.’

William Blake, ‘There is No Natural Religion’ (1788)

In fact, these words may well serve both to clinch the present section and link it to the next.  (Blake was featured in 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 and in the Afterwords, 6.5, too). 

Here is a useful website:

‘Job Skills: But all I can do is read!’, English Subject Centre (2011) http://www.whystudyenglish.ac.uk/you-can/index.htm

@ 6.3  FURTHER STUDY

This section continues to query what ‘further study’ might possibly mean, even while offering some more, practical guidance on how to go about pursuing it. Again, then, the approach is critical and constructive, inviting reflection along with action. To these various ends, we begin with a quizzing of just what is implied by those archaic yet remarkably persistent names for degrees, graduate and postgraduate, ‘higher’ and – what –  ‘lower’?! BA, MA, PhD . . .  the acronyms still need some unpacking – and perhaps repacking too. That said, you may be thinking more or less seriously about ‘doing an MA’. So here are some practical and intellectual steps to take. Meanwhile, in the same spirit of both/and rather than either/or, it may prove helpful to reflect on some of the connections as well as distinctions between training and education. In the best cases, in and out of formal study, the one tends to complement the other – even while offering to supplement it. In the worst cases, they have nothing to do with one another. But it is still up to you to say which, as far as you can see, is which and why.

The sections are:        

6.3.1    Qualifications in need of further qualification?

6.3.2    Steps towards choosing an MA

6.3.3    Training and/or education – a distinction and connection

6.3.1 Qualifications in need of further qualification?

Bachelor and Master of Arts? Doctor of Philosophy? People who do English are naturally curious and critical about language, and often alert to creative alternatives too. All the educational terms in play here, especially the acronyms for qualifications, are no exception. ‘Graduate’ comes from Latin gradus, meaning ‘step’; so under- and post-graduate together can be seen as a ‘two-step’ approach to Education that gets slightly ‘Higher’ (if conceived as stepping ‘up’) and ‘Further’ (if conceived as stepping ‘along’ or ‘out’). There’s a significant and questionable difference. And it is not helped by the fact that the post-, meaning ‘after’, has an oddly skewed and a-symmetrical relation to the under-: post- is usually balanced with pre-, and under- balanced with over-. These are curiously out-of-step gradations. What’s more, the ‘Post-’ in Postgraduate is essentially like all the other Posts- we have previously met in the realms of theory: Post-structuralism, -colonialism, -modernism, etc. (see 3.8—9). It can mean ‘after and a part of’ (a continuation) and/or ‘after and apart from’ (a discontinuity). It may therefore require a step or a jump, over a bridge or a gap, a walk in the light or a leap in the dark. Meanwhile, the letters you get after your name as an under- or post-graduate are also worth pondering. BA and MA stand for Bachelor and Master of Arts (in their anglicised forms) and these are direct translations via medieval French of their Latin counterparts, respectively, Baccalaureat and Magister in Artibus.  The archaic gendering of the names of these degrees as masculine is remarkably obvious. and consistent. Given the fact that the majority of students and an increasing number of academics doing English (and many other subjects) are women, it is even more remarkable and perhaps objectionable that they have proved so persistent from days when universities and seats of learning were officially and exclusively male preserves. In fact, they are as odd as the fact that the average person who does a PhD (from Philosophiae Doctor) is neither a ‘teacher of philosophy (the original Latin sense of doctor) nor a medical ‘dcotor’ (the modern English sense) – and ‘philosophy’ as such may not come into it at all.

Clearly, then, all these terms for educational qualifications are sorely in need of verbal qualification. That is, if we are not to be dully blind, casually acrimonious or merely resigned to the persistent power of titles, especially when veiled by acronyms. For the fact is, in practice as in theory, all these beguilingly routine usages are themselves in need of further critical research (including historical enquiry and cross-cultural comparison) leading to creative rewritings and radical retranslation to and from languages other than those of the ancient and modern wor(l)d-orders of Latin or English.

Some im/modest research proposals, perhaps . . .?

6.3.2 Steps towards choosing an MA

Below (in fig. 6.3.1) are some more concerted steps to take towards doing an MA in and around English. For convenience, these are distinguished as ‘intellectual’ (what about, how and why) and ‘practical’ (when, where and with whom). But really you need to be taking these steps together, like a left and a right foot moving in unison. Theory and practice, research and learning, are like that: when further study really get somewhere the ‘higher’ and the ‘education’ may alternate but they never separate. It’s another case of know-how and knowledge pulling in the same direction.   

Intellectual Decide on an area for exploration that interests you. Try defining this by: Time (period, movement, dates) – when: e.g. Modern, Modernism, 1890—1930; Renaissance, Shakespearean, 1590—1620 Place (continent, country, region) – where: e.g. American, Southern States; South African; Northern Irish; . . . in Liverpool. Topic (issue, question) – what: e.g. representations of  gender (class, ethnicity, children, etc.); the creative reader; sources and sequels of . . . Genre and/or Medium – what kind: e.g. epistolary poem; novel-film adaptation; tv news; cyberfiction.  Person (author, group) – who: e.g. Emily Dickinson; Chaucerian; Romantics; Black Mountain poets.   Method / Approach – how: e.g., comparative study of; aesthetics in; case studies of; corpus-based approach to; discourse analysis of . . .     Rationale, Motivation – why: to enhance career; for personal interest; to see whether / how far . . .    (also see 2.4 about framing undergraduate dissertation / project)

Practical  Decide whether you want to do it at your present / nearest institution or elsewhere. There can be good intellectual reasons for exploring fresh environments and exposing yourself to other experts. But there can also be strong economic and personal as well as intellectual reasons for staying put. Explore – and indeed research – the various people, places and resources involved. Much of this can be found out from the web and prospectuses, along with your own cross-checking and reading and asking round. It can be followed up with by visit and/or interview, preferably including informal talk with present or recent postgraduate students. In particular check out  and ‘research’: Faculty /staff with subject expertise and experience in your chosen area of interest. Will they actually be there for you? Bursaries or other support available. Library holdings and related resources.

Fig. 6.3.1: Steps towards taking an MA in and around English

6.3.3 Training and/or education – a distinction and connection

There is an essential distinction – and an equally essential connection – to be made between ‘training’ and ‘education’. Training tends to be identified with practical skills and work, and education with academic knowledge and study. But the relation is more complex and dynamic than that; and the over-simplification obscures the fact that you will have had some ‘training’ in English even while you have been developing your ‘education’. Grasping both will help you approach the study-work relation as one of natural transition rather than abrupt dislocation or mere abandon. It will also help you see the transformable skills and transformative knowledges identified below (6.4) not just as a route through to the world of work but as a genuinely two-way bridge, with traffic to and fro between the worlds of studying and working. The usual alternative is to make a few vague and hopeful gestures into the abyss or, to switch image, to throw out the baby with the bath-water. For the fact is that you have already been in some measure trained and educated in English. And you will probably continue to be retrained and educated through English.  It’s just that you may not be fully aware of the connections as well as the distinctions.

Training entails the learning of skills and the application of knowledge for a specific task or procedure; it tends to be identified with particular techniques and technologies and by extension with particular occupations. With training, practice makes – if not perfect – good enough. Learning to write or type properly and to speak audibly to a large group are largely matters of training and practice; so are the mechanics of referencing and research and building a data base. Most of the ‘Ten essential actions’ in Doing English (1.2) have a strong ‘training’ dimension to them. They involve regular procedures and repeated practices. So do the basic methods and models of the Critical and Creative Strategies for Analysis and Interpretation in Part Four: the opening moves; core questions; frameworks and checklists. You can learn to recall and apply the formula ‘Notice—Pattern—Contrast—Feeling’, the questions ‘6 Wh- and a H-’, and the interpretative square of pairs, ‘Language—Text , Literature—Genre, Culture—Context, Critical—Creative’. These things are built to be serviceable and adaptable (‘6Wh- and a H-’ was adapted for 6.1.3, for example):  not to be applied slavishly or treated as an all-purpose solution. They offer frameworks and play-frames. What precisely you do on, with and to them is up to you. In this respect – insofar as they actually help you work effectively and play enjoyably – they are models of good training.  (In so far as they don’t, they are there to be refined or replaced.) Either way, training is like this – and you have already had quite a lot while doing English. Good training get you to the mark.

Education, meanwhile, involves learning to learn and emphasises critical and creative understanding; it may include more or less specialised skills and knowledge, but these tend to be generic (relating to kinds of task and procedure) and are therefore relevant to a range of techniques, technologies and occupations. With education, it’s not so much a matter of ‘practice makes perfect’ or even ‘good enough’ – but of doing similar things differently, not just again but afresh, and eventually in some sense ‘better’. (There are educational dimensions to all the ‘Ten essential actions’ in Doing English  in so far as they encourage critical reflection and creative experiment: alternating monologue and dialogue within both lectures and seminars, for instance (1.2.2), or exploring ‘orderly’ and ‘chaotic’ ways of taking/making notes and preparing essays and presentations (1.2.2, 1.2.8—9).) The more specifically educational aspects in Part Four tend to come through at the fully ‘Interpretative’ and ‘Critical and Creative’ end of the process, once the initial analytical checklists have been applied. They are more to do with the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the work on the frameworks, the play on the play-frames. They explore the more experimental ‘What if . . .?’ and they test and extend critical theory. Indeed, in so far as these interpretative strategies encourage the enactment of fresh theory-practice, reflection-action relations, they express the educational project at full critical-creative stretch. So above all, they require that they themselves be superseded and transcended – not just replaced or refined.

Good training gets you up to the mark. Good education gets you to make your own mark. We clearly need good training and education; but it’s not easy – or perhaps always possible – to combine the two. That is why we have training programmes and educational institutions, which may overlap but are not identical. That is why English programmes need courses in work-related learning or opportunities for work experience – but also much more than that; and why people sometimes need to get out of work and back into education to do, say, evening courses or MAs in English or Creative Writing – while also carrying on with or returning to work and the rest of life (looking after a family, for example). So obviously the possibility/problem cannot be posed, let alone solved, once and for all. It has to be constantly re-posed and in some measure resolved by everyone differently, in and on their own terms. That’s where you come in. And so does ‘English’ again.  Grasping such distinctions not just and/or but as connections is especially important for a subject such as English. It is implicitly richly educational but not expressly vocational. There are skills involving training and practice in doing English (as indicated above and filled out later); but they tend to be embedded or assumed and can readily become invisible. There is obviously education in English, as well; but the criticism, creativity and reflection are so pervasive and, if anything, so presumed that again (though for a different reason) they too tend to become invisible. Clearing the obscurity and making these things visible, theoretically and practically, is obviously an important matter.

Thankfully, however, while English has presented us with this problem, it has also given us the means to re-pose it as a possibility. Practical advice on pursuing further training and education for study (including research) is offered in the next section, and there is detailed guidance in how to turn your current training in skills and subject-based knowledges into their work-related counterparts in the one after that (6.4). But this present section will close on an openly theoretical and provocative note. What does your English-trained-and-educated mind make of the following (very common) kinds of statement in this area?

Education is for life, training is for work.

Training is essential, education is optional.

(Rewrite or replace these statements as you see fit and feel moved.)

Here is a useful website:

Josh Boldt, ‘Five good reasons to earn a masters degree in English’ (2012) http://www.orderofeducation.com/five-good-reasons-to-earn-a-masters-degree-in-english/

@ 6.4  INTO WORK

This section continues to encourage a broadly intelligent and informed not just a narrowly instrumental attitude to the worlds of work. The emphasis is still upon plurality and potential, even while recognising the very real constraints and pressures in terms of time and money and energy. There are some actual student profiles (with changed names) relating to actual jobs; these show how you can prepare for kinds of work even if you cannot predict specific jobs. There is a checklist of transformative knowledges, over and above transferable skills; these recognise critical know-why alongside technical know-how and creative know-what-else to go with routine know-what. It is also shown how those first and most crucial steps towards getting a job – application and interview – draw on skills and knowledge you already probably have. You perhaps just don’t know it.

This section contains:

6.4.1    Examples of student profiles

6.4.2    Further transformative knowledges 

6.4.3    Applications and Interviews – ‘6 Wh- and a H-?’ at your service again

6.4.1  Employing English – sample student profiles

The knowledge and skills you gain during the course of an English undergraduate degree can be put to work in an almost infinite variety of jobs. Consider the ways in which Jed, Abby and Tom employ English:

• JED did an English literature degree and is now a successful professional self-employed DJ, working regularly at range of elite London nightclubs and running or contributing to various additional solo or collaborative one-off events in nightclubs in several cities each month. His work involves drawing upon his skills in persuasive and concise communication to write promotional material for flyers, posters and his website. He also has to communicate with club managers and owners, sound technicians and the clients of clubs, as well as other DJs, and draws upon his understanding of different registers and awareness of the varying forms and formality appropriate to different mediums (emails, letters, messages via social networking sites). He has to work productively as part of teams and negotiate with peers and colleagues, using his experiences of undergraduate group work to support him. His learning processes as a student taught him how to adapt to changing demands and conditions, how to multitask, and how to manage his time effectively, all of which are essential to both the act of DJing and the role of running one’s own business. His DJing also requires him to engage critically with the milieu of various sub-cultures, and to understand the relationship between his material, these sub-cultures, and the mood of his audience. His mixes are often influenced by the thematic and other interrelations he perceives across tracks based on his interpretations of the lyrics. 
• ABBY graduated with a 2:1 in English Studies and got an internship at a non-governmental organisation campaigning on the damaging environmental effects of oil-extraction in various parts of the world. Abby’s role involves summarising reports from a range of sources containing different kinds of data, and motivated by different financial, political and ethical issues at play in disparate socio-cultural contexts. Abby often has to research the background of the sources of the reports, bringing to bear on this research her undergraduate engagement with a wide range of socio-historical and cultural contexts and ethical issues. She also has to find out further details about aspects introduced within these reports. Her undergraduate research skills are invaluable in undertaking these tasks. Abby uses the critical and analytical skills she developed during her degree course to critique the reports, comprehend their data objectively and to select and synthesise pertinent information. She utilises her skills in independent task management and oral and written communication to compile and present summaries in accordance with what she recognises to be the needs and priorities of her colleagues. She works as part of a team to organise internet based campaigns and update a blog, drawing on her undergraduate experiences of adapting to different dynamics and role-taking within groups, and employing the skills in using electronic technology she developed through undergraduate activities such as participation in group wikis and construction of an online portfolio. Abby also writes press releases and edits the speeches of her senior colleagues, and is starting to contribute to grant applications, all of which draw upon her skills in grammatically correct, concise, persuasive and context-sensitive communication, and her abilities to construct hypotheses, to follow arguments to logical conclusions, to think conceptually and systematically in terms of social, financial and organisational models, and more.
• TOM writes wildlife and social documentaries for TV. He completed an undergraduate degree in English and went on to take an MA in Media and Photojournalism. While his MA taught him much about the media industry and gave him many of the technical skills he needed to be aware of in working as part of a TV production team, he finds that his socio-cultural awareness, his empathy and skills in perception, and the research skills he uses are primarily informed by his undergraduate critical engagement with literature from around the world. His documentary script writing is also greatly influenced by his undergraduate study of characterisation, plot, suspense, and narrative, as, although he is producing a factual script, his undergraduate degree in English and his MA in Media and photojournalism have taught him that a carefully managed narrative with obstacles and the like together with use of interesting protagonists and emotional relationships between characters are highly effective strategies in engaging an audience.

Activity

Put aside any assumptions about what is and isn’t a ‘natural’ profession for an English graduate, and pick a profession at random from those you know of (e.g., firefighter, market trader, farmer, cleaner, accountant, police constable, doctor, I.T. technician, caterer, ....). Imagine that you are applying for a job in that profession, and consider how the skills you have gained studying English equip you for that role. As part of a hypothetical application form, write a persuasive summary of the ways in which your study of English makes you an ideal candidate, to convince your addressee of your value to their team.     

6.4.2 Further transformative knowledges

Specific subject-based knowledge ‘Done in English’ You may know about . . .	TRANSFORMATIVE KNOWLEDGE (Generic) (What it may turn into) You can . . .	And you? Now . . . Next?
HISTORY – linguistic, literary and cultural.  Continuity and variation from time to time, place to place and community to community. Specific literary periods and movements: contemporary, post-modern, modern(ist), Victorian, Romantic, . . .Renaissance, Medieval, etc. Variety of historical traditions and perspectives: European and American, African, Asian, etc. Theories of history and story, narrative and news, etc.  (also see 1.1; 3.6; period and periodisation (4) and Part Five)	Grasp historical change as an active as well as passive process, involving agency and subjection, participation and imposition. Recognise social and cultural change as a form of exchange or imposition: collective and co-operative or conflictual and unequal – expressed by dialogue and dissent, proposal and counter-proposal, compromise and the grasping of alternatives. Understand the importance of specific historical traditions and cultural expectations (social, political, economic) in the conduct of human relationship and technological change – or resistances and the production of alternatives to them. Grasp the significance of a good ‘story’ – meaningful ‘narrative’ – in framing and communicating information.	And you? Now . . . Next?
THEORIES & THEORISING –  Know about theories: Formal and Functional; Psychological; Marxist and materialist; Gender and sex-based; Post-Colonial; Ecological; Aesthetic; Ethical, etc. (see Part Three). Know how to theorise: developing your own theoretical positions and critical approaches appropriate to text, context and purpose,; selecting eclectically in a personally motivated, culturally sensitive and ethically principled manner. (also see Part Three)	Think conceptually and systematically in terms of models, designs and patterns over and above individual instances. Be conscious of power and pleasure (and pain and powerlessness) in human affairs at large as well as particular cases. Become more and differently conscious through the application (and interrogation) of ‘strong’ theory. Be sceptical of the claims of ‘pure theory’ that have not been applied and tested in practice. Care to ask ‘why?’ and dare to suggest ‘what if . . .?’ even – especially – in conditions where such questions may appear impractical or impertinent, purely theoretical or merely academic.  Think on your feet and for yourself with others in mind.	And you? Now . . . Next?
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS – Systematic analysis of texts in context and in relation to other texts, e.g. Notice—Pattern—Contrast—Feeling What, Who, When, Where, How, Why, What if? (also see 4.1.1)	Break a problem (text, idea) down into its constituent parts and explore how and why it works. Produce a thoroughgoing analysis  based on a comprehensive understanding of the people, places, times, problems and purposes involved.  Indicate the possibility of a radical critique and fresh synthesis based on alternative premises, developed on other lines and leading to preferable ends.	And you?  Now . . . next?
CRITICAL-CREATIVE INTERPRETATION Interpretation as critical analysis and creative performance; (re)reading and (re)writing of Language—Text, Literature—Genre and Culture—Context leading to Critical—Creative Interpretation.  (also see 4.1.2)	Grasp a text as a task, and a problem as a possibility.  Grasp even ‘facts’ and ‘data’ with an imaginative sense of what they have meant or might yet mean – not just what they mean now. Ask who made the ‘facts’ or gave the ‘data’ in the first place, when and where, with what purpose in mind? What if other facts and data could be made or found to support other cases and lead to other conclusions?  Approach the interpretation of materials as an opportunity for creative thinking as well as critical analysis.	And you?  Now . . . Next?

6.4.3  Applications and Interviews – ‘6 Wh- and a H-?’ at your service again  

This once more picks up the ‘core questions’ (Who, What, When, Where, Why, What if and How?) already used in Initial analysis of texts (2.1) and to address to your own general situation (@ 6.1.1). Here they are used to help frame applications and prepare for interviews: 

WHO can you ask to give you a reference, who knows you and your work well, and is likely to be supportive (Have you asked them before?)

WHY do you want this particular job? (Here now, with us?) Have you done your homework on who precisely they are and the kinds of thing they do? Have you read the job description and personal specification closely?

WHAT do you think you would bring to the job?  (it, us, the organisation) What skills, expertise, experience, qualities have you go to offer? What are your particular strengths?

Give an example of WHERE and WHEN you:

Showed initiative; solved a problem; worked successfully in a group

HOW do you see yourself

Working independently? Under pressure? In five years time . . .?

WHAT IF you were offered the job – would you be interested to take it? On what conditions. When could you start. 

In addition, have you ANY QUESTIONS of your own? (There is invariably an invitation to ask some towards the close of the interview.) Anything else about the job and the organisation? What about training and professional development. And promotion and opportunities within the organisation . . .?

Here is a useful website:

‘English Graduates and Entrepreneurship’, English Subject Centre (2011) http://www.whystudyenglish.ac.uk/you-can/english-entrepreneurs.htm

6.5 Play as re-creation, re-vision, re-search . . .

Here we come back once more to the crucial prefix ‘Re-’. This has been emphasised at various points throughout the book (e.g. Prologue, @ Prologue, 1.2.9 and 6.1) and, appropriately enough, by insisting on the significance of the hyphenated forms (re-creation, re-vision, etc.) we do so afresh not just again. Now, research in a simple sense means ‘searching again’.  More radically and powerfully, by analogy with re-vision and re-creation the stress falls upon re-search and then the emphasis is on ‘searching afresh’, ‘looking for something new’. Both senses – searching again and searching afresh – remind us that this research is grounded in the routine yet by definition potentially revealing activity of looking for things: whether things we are already familiar with but have forgotten or misplaced, or things that are unfamiliar but we would like to find or find out about. In this respect we are re-searching, again and/or afresh, throughout our lives. This may be for the other sock to go with the odd one we already have, or the times of trains between here and there . . . or a fresh relationship (which may or may not turn out to be the one we already have but done differently) or even ‘a whole new life’ (which in some sense will be the one we already have but done differently).  It’s important to start with this ‘whole life’ perspective on research, just as it’s important to see ‘study-work-play’ as an interdependent complex of ongoing learning. It helps keep research in a more specialised and potentially inflated sense in proportion. We all need ‘research and development’.

Re-search in and out of university 

Academic research in university and research and development in industry are crucial dimensions of the public and commercial exploration and exploitation of knowledge. They revisit old knowledge and find out new knowledge, in both cases critically and creatively; and they draw on established as well as innovative techniques and technologies to do so. They are fundamental to human well-being and prosperity, and they are areas of activity that people directly involved in them find endlessly fascinating and fruitful – as well as sometimes frustrating and barren. But on their own they are far from the whole picture; nor in themselves do they make up a whole life – of learning or otherwise. Research in universities is ideally embraced by and braced alongside teaching and learning; that is precisely what makes the whole thing ‘higher education’, with equal emphasis on both terms. Only when there is distortion and imbalance are ‘Research’ (on the one hand) and ‘Teaching & Learning’ (on the other) braced against one another and treated as though they were in competition or effectively in conflict – as though they were not two hands on the same body. Such a lack of co-operation could only prove divisive in the short term and disastrous in the long term.

Finally, it should be observed that ‘Research & Development’ in industry depends upon a dynamic closely analogous to but in some ways the reverse of that for ‘Research & Teaching/Learning’ in university. And in both cases the ‘&’ expresses a potential problem as well as opportunity. For in industry there is a constant and understandable pressure to turn all research (however notionally ‘pure’) into applied research and directly feed into development, thereby directly boosting productivity and increasing profits. Meanwhile, in university there are pressure to relate ‘Research’ both to ‘Teaching and Learning’ (within the institution) and to socially and commercially beneficial ‘outcomes’ and ‘impacts’ in society at large (outside the institution). The overall situation in industry and university is therefore complexly interrelated and in some ways interdependent. (The precise degree and kind of dependence depends ultimately upon the balance of public and private spending in higher education and in industry – including the social services and the public sphere of education and helath and welfare  – at large). This might seem a long way from ‘Research in and around English’, the subject of this section; but in fact it is right at the heart of the what research in and round engoish can mean and be. It ought therefore to be grasped as part of the larger picture when deciding not just what kind of research one might do but also why, for whom, when and where. For the public and/or private sector?  For university and/ or industry? For education formally and/or  learning narrowly or broadly conceived? As a personal, interpersonal or impersonal good?  All this leads us to and leaves us with a final question that is as theoretically profound as it is practically – and perennially – pressing. In effect it is the heading of this section reposed as a hypothetical (imaginative) question.

What if research inside and outside is interdependent?’ Research and discuss.

Re-search in work and the rest of life

For research, as already mentioned, is also something that goes on outside universities; and in its most general sense is fundamental to living and learning at large. If you go into, say, Publishing or the Law you are certain at some point to find yourself looking up and searching for what someone somewhere already knows (i.e. searching again) and even trying to find out what no-one as yet quite knows or  knows in that form (i.e. searching afresh). What’s more, if you go into teaching of any kind at any level you will be regularly e involved in getting other people to look up or find out things. ‘Research’, then, whether in general or specialist senses, is an intrinsic and perhaps regular part of most jobs that are in some way interesting. In fact, most jobs are interesting precisely because some element of research is involved. It is what makes the difference between routinised reaction and enterprising action, learning that feels rote and learning that feels right. For all these reasons, the kinds of research and referencing skill and the kinds of search and research cycle that you learn to go through in ‘Doing English’ (1.2.5—6) will continue to be essential whatever job you do. After all, as stressed there, it is the underlying principle as much as the specific subject-based content that is important. Setting up a ‘Home’ base defined by immediate task and conditions (‘habitat’) is essential whatever you do; as is the activity of constantly going out to information sources and other resources (including other people) and repeatedly returning to redefine and re-pose the initial question and position accordingly.

What’s more, the cycle ‘Home—Library—Web’ (1.2.5) has counterparts in just about any area that involves the transformation and not just the transference of knowledge. So have good habits of proper referencing, so that the knowledge gathered can be fully acknowledged, its authority assured, and the precise use to which you are putting it be fully appreciated. In short, the ability to research well is an essentially transformable skill. And you don’t have to be labelled a ‘researcher’ as such both to benefit from it and to be of benefit to whatever group you are working with or organisation you are working for. Indeed, quite literally, the business of running a home successfully and enjoyably for all concerned entails precisely some such cycle of brining the fresh and sustaining in while also maintaining a habitus – even a series of habits – that proves hospitable as well as habitable: open to the new and young  as well as nurturing for the old and established. This is a very long way from research in the narrow and specialised sense of the term. But it is close to the core of re-research as abiding emblem and living expression of radical re-cycling and re-visioning. It is re-search as a pledge of common and general property and propriety: not their purely private and merely individual counterparts, nor even their exclusively academic or persuasively commercial forms. It is – they are – re-search as re-vision as re-creation . . .

                        Actual—Virtual—Potential  

                                        Local—Global    Personal—Social   

                                                                        Past—Present—Future . . .