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Letters From Pamela: Reading Howard S. Becker's Writing(s) for Social Scientists
Author(s) -
Clough Patricia Ticineto
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1989.12.1.159
Subject(s) - reading (process) , argument (complex analysis) , feeling , writing style , style (visual arts) , sociology , psychology , linguistics , social psychology , literature , philosophy , art , biochemistry , chemistry
A deconstructive reading of a text is only in part an argument that can be abstracted. More than that, a reading deconstructs a text to make explicit how that text implicates a certain kind of reader. The reading can celebrate, resist, or essentialize the very construction of the reader by that text My reading of Becker's Writing for Social Scientists is a resisting reading which focuses: 1) on the formal aspects of the writing style that Becker endorses for social scientists, and 2) on the figure of the woman which Becker uses as a vehicle of “the structure of feeling” that promotes the message of his text.