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Using Expressive Text in Research to Interpret and Portray Lived Experience: Lived Experience in Hospitality Receptionist Work

Field Guide to Case Study Research in Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure

ISBN: 978-1-78052-742-0, eISBN: 978-1-78052-743-7

Publication date: 22 June 2012

Abstract

This chapter examines how hospitality and tourism researchers can use ‘expressive text’ (or writing) to express the lived quality of an experience in order to ‘show what an experience is really like’ rather than ‘tell what it is like’. Expressive text refers to written language forms such as narrative, poetry and metaphor that can be used as tools in research to vividly represent the meaning and feeling conveyed in an experience. The expressive text-based approach to researching lived experience provides a textual link between experience and its expression. For this reason, it is especially useful when working with lived experience accounts of phenomenological and hermeneutic research.

The expressive text-based approach suggested here is still a relatively under explored arena within hospitality and tourism research. As a relatively under explored arena, the rich insightful knowledge that can be gained from understanding practitioner experience is rarely a central focus of scholarly writings about the workplace in hospitality and tourism contexts. However, in order to be fully appreciated as a discipline in its own right and to advance knowledge of the field, understanding the typical and significant attributes of hospitality and tourism work will be decidedly helpful.

One of the difficulties of working with lived experience accounts is finding a suitable research approach that helps to both retain the lived elements of the experience and ensure the rigour of the inquiry. An expressive text-based methodological framework that has a phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophical underpinning is argued to be suitable for this purpose. Therefore, the focus of this study is to discuss such a methodology and explain the reasons for its content, style and structure in researching lived experience. The approach that is proposed here consists of a five-tiered textually expressive methodology that is employed to contextualise, portray and interpret the lived experience meanings in order to understand the significance of the experience in relation to relevant discourses in hospitality and tourism studies, and to consider implications for policy and professional practice. The guiding questions of the five-tiered framework cover the following issues: (1) What is the context of the lived experience? (2) What is the lived experience of this practice like? (3) What is the meaning of this experience for the practitioner? (4) What is the significance of the experience in contributing to the advancement of knowledge within the field? (5) What are the implications for practice and professional development?

To illustrate uses of this methodology in research, the study here includes an example showing portrayals and interpretations of the typical and significant lived nature of hospitality reception work. This shows and communicates the full meaning of the episode, circumstances or situation. The chapter then concludes with some reflections on benefits as well as tensions in working within an expressive text-based phenomenological and hermeneutic framework.

Keywords

Citation

Wijesinghe, G. (2012), "Using Expressive Text in Research to Interpret and Portray Lived Experience: Lived Experience in Hospitality Receptionist Work", Hyde, K.F., Ryan, C. and Woodside, A.G. (Ed.) Field Guide to Case Study Research in Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure (Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 6), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 109-169. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1871-3173(2012)0000006009

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited