Inquiry Paradigms and Writing

Abstract

gather/arrange, and then value/judge entities and processes to fulfill our definitions? Our responses concerning the nature, organization, and evaluation of evidence reveal our inquiry paradigms, both those we elect to inhabit, and those we may even help to create. Inquiry rather than research is used here because its connotations are less parochial and more generous. The generic term research suffers from conceptual synecdoche in that, for many, the part has become mistaken for the whole: the single species of empirical research is treated as the entire genus-a matter to which I'll return. As to paradigm-a term as useful as it is currently modish-I will, like so many others, pluck one definition from Thomas Kuhn and call a paradigm an explanatory matrix.2 An inquiry paradigm then is the explanatory matrix for any systematic investigation of phenomena. A few more background comments before I suggest what elements and features make up inquiry paradigms, including those for writing. There is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between a given academic discipline and a given inquiry paradigm. Within a single academic field or discipline, there can be several, even many, inquiry paradigms active and working, as there can be several, even many, academic disciplines deploying a single inquiry paradigm. As an example of the first arrangement: within the single field of belletris