Phenomenological Descriptive Analysis
To hold experience still in order to study it, it needs recording. For this discussion that would be a text. And to study that text, one also needs words to describe and analyze and comprehend selected, specific phenomena thought to be represented by and through the text. The result of study would thus be lost to the ether if not another text with (which to de-construct and understand). That secondary text, if produced with care, valid method, and sound foundations for description and analysis, we can call a phenomenological descriptive analysis.
Writing.
Writing is the act of one person recording streams of words on-/into a medium (e.g., paper, digital document, dictation recorder). Editing, proofreading, and formatting for greater ease of comprehension are also forms of writing.
All other albeit related activities are not, in this view, writing per se. Writing is not thinking about something without recording for a reader to access. It is not the spontaneous idea one must remember to be sure to include later. It is not following a writing process such as is taught in schools and colleges. It is not some aspect of the psychology of writing such as where or when one does it, associated rituals, choosing preferences for inscription method, promoting or marketing writing-as-product (e.g., article, book), and so forth.
Evidence of having written is a text someone can read.
Subjective view.
The standard points of view are three--the position of the speaker/narrator in relation to what is written. These reduce to "the subjective or first person point of view". A text in first person point of view is clearly within the boundary of conscious experience as experienced by _I_, the first person. A second person point of view is a first person speaking, thus their conscious experience captured as it were in process, verbatim, "I am speaking to you". Access to the second person is directly from and through the first person, the one that address an other. Third person is what a(ny) speaker/writer, a first person, holds in consciousness and represents as such to communicate to an audience such as a reader.
Description.
Any text, simple or complex, answers the question of what is/was it like to experience something.
Text is a description of a phenomenon or phenomena. Phenomena as conscious-experience-as-experienced knows no bounds. However, a phenomenon contained in a larger text may be worth holding in consciousness and studying in order to comprehend, in the sense of completeness and understanding of what and how something is or was for the percipient-writer.
Text takes countless forms. Each can be seen as description. For example:
- A letter of complaint describes a correspondent's experience and how an altered state of that reality really would be better.
- A poem presents images and sentiments and thoughts sharable among others through its construction and words--see what I see, feel what I feel, think what I think in this special way I have made it accessible for to you.
- A personal memoir tells us what life was like at that time with me.
- The company policy memorandum makes the case for or answers the question of how it would or should be in present and future experience.
- A work of historical fiction describes how it could realistically have been in people's experience.
- The peer reviewed scientific article describes what was done/experienced and how and what happened as a result, and what the meaning of the phenomenon might be--an invitation to experience along-with and consider for yourself (and perhaps a world however large or small).
A text taken as a whole is a description or an as-accurate-as-can-be image including feeling-tones and the like. Such may include other elements as narrative structure, chronology, attitude toward one or more parts of an experience, factual details, and so forth. And that whole is primary data to disclose or uncover an object or objects in consciousness--phenomena. The choices for which phenomena should be the subjects for analysis and description depends upon the need to fix more certain than in generalized fashion the understanding of same.
Meaning.
". . . [P]henomenology is the study of . . . appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience."*
Integral to understanding meaning has to do with the structure and content of primary data word streams constituting the phenomenon, and this can only be known by a methodical taking apart and putting together what and how of the experience including considerations of whether or not the given data is comprehensive enough to reveal in clarity and fullness and boundaries of the phenomenon we would know and understand better. Structure refers to parts and how they interrelate in order to comprise the whole. Content refers to themes and qualities that are deemed to be essential to the understanding of the experience of the phenomenon.
To be continued.
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Sources.
* Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy. 2021. Plato.Stanford.Edu. https://plato.stanford.edu.
"Phenomenology Online » Writing". 2021. Phenomenologyonline.Com. http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/writing/.
** Illustration source. Husserl. (2021) Optionals IAS Mains Philosophy Phenomenology (Husserl)(History and Problems of Philosophy) Questions 1 to 1 - DoorstepTutor. Retrieved April 13, 2021, from https://www.doorsteptutor.com/Exams/IAS/Mains/Optional/Philosophy/Questions/Topic-History-and-Problems-of-Philosophy-0/Subtopic-Phenomenology-Husserl-6/Part-1.html
