The turn to action and the linguistic turn : towards an integrated methodology

This chapter presents a hybrid methodology that facilitates the turn to action in the light of the linguistic turn. Drawing on an investigation into the microphysics of power and gender in one organization, this methodological development employs both collaborative action research and feminist discourse analysis. This account therefore has three principal components: the collaborative inquiry, the shift to feminist discourse analysis, and the suggestive possibility of an integrated methodology. First, I discuss the workplace collaborative inquiry that I initiated, as a professional development practitioner, with a group of university women. Second, I discuss why I found it beneficial, in my doctoral study of the collaborative inquiry stories, to employ a feminist Foucauldian poststructural discourse analysis. Third, as a result of engaging with the emerging methodological issues of both the collaborative inquiry and its discourse analysis, I outline a potential new approach to collaborative action research that may realize some of the possibilities opened up by attention to the linguistic turn.