Writing the First Person Singular

Abstract

A poem that explores the boundaries of what can be written in the social sciences and how far we can push those norms of social science. It addresses the discomfort many social scientists feel when writing in the active, first person singular, while raising questions about qualitative inquiry that plague those who choose to venture into literary writing styles that offer a greater expressive range and more emotive language.

Keywords

qualitative research poetry poetic inquiry emotion language writing reflexivity

If I start with “I,” can I use the big words?

You know the ones: those locutions

that thunder and convulse;

those monumental lexemes that elevate

emotions to extremes;

those multisyllabic monstrosities

that vivify the senses in technicolor,

cacophonous decadence.

Can my smouldering burn of envy claim

conflagration instead of fire?

Can I embody anger so immense

and all-consuming it warrants fury?

Can my mind survive the vertigo

of not just freedom, but emancipation?

Can my smallest, most timid,

down-and-out self

take up so much space?

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Kathleen M. Quinlan is Head of Educational Development at the University of Oxford and a research fellow in the Department of Education at Oxford. She has conducted and published social science research as an academic in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and as a consultant in a small consulting firm. She is also a member of Back Room Poets in Oxford. Her poetry, which often explores the political in the personal, has recently appeared in Earthborne and The Babel Anthologies and is forthcoming in the Journal of Family Social Work and Gargoyle.