ABSTRACT
This chapter describes principles and techniques of using qualitative research methodologies, including: Characteristics and origins of the practice, Styles or genres of qualitative research, and Procedures for conducting qualitative research. Styles or genres of qualitative research, including: Ethnography, Phenomenology and Socio-linguistics. Procedures for conducting qualitative research, including: Designing studies, collecting data in the field with observation and interviews and analyzing the collected data to reach valid conclusions. Qualitative research, especially ethnography, has a good deal of similarity to journalism because with both practices, researchers go into the field and use essentially the same tools: observation and interviews. Semiotics helps ones’ to realize that meaning is not passively absorbed but arises only in the active process of interpretation”. Semiotics is important because it can help ones’ not to take “reality” for granted as something having a purely objective existence which is independent of human interpretation.
