ABSTRACT
Fieldnotes practices construct both the objects and the field of study, as well as the researcher. In this chapter, I adopt a discursive constructionist perspective to argue that descriptions in field notes can be read as having an action orientation and do a discourse analysis of three excerpts from field diaries that I generated as a participant in an interview-based and observational study of language teaching and learning. I analyze how performances of apology, discursive repression, and metaphor work to manage my participant and researcher intersubjectivity. The implication is that a discourse-analytic perspective on researcher-generated fieldnotes and participant diaries can complement existing analyses of fieldnotes and offer new possibilities for understanding the role of such field texts in managing the private, public, and persuasive aspects of qualitative research practices.
