The discovery of a chiastic structure in a natural text and the prospects of the ethnomethodology progress. First article

Obtaining objectivity sets a formidable challenge to qualitative data analysis. Objectivity could partially be guaranteed in the case there is an evidence for the existence of a natural organisation of data that has immediately explanatory force, i.e. has it independently of generation of any secondary descriptions and other analytic or concept-dependent accounts. Sequential organisation is one case. It is here proposed to consider another type of organisation that is not dependent on turn-taking. The paper (1) discusses the chiastic organisation of a text segment as a specific cultural object, which (2) was occasionally discovered in an interview transcript while running domain analysis (J. Spradley) and theoretical coding (B. Glaser), (3) is an ethnomethodological case, (4) demonstrating «noticeable absence» (H. Sacks) outside sequential organisation, and (5) connection between the conception of hierarchical and contrast categorisations (L. Jayyusi) and the definition of culture as a classification system of hierarchically ordered oppositions (E. Durkheim, M. Mauss). The case of chiastic structure described here suggests the opportunity of the employment of semantic relations (as developed in ethnographic observation and/or grounded theory in Glaser's version) within the framework of membership categorizations analysis. Besides some consolidation of methodologies, this proposal offers opportunity of achieving more rigour in qualitative research. The problem of chiastic structure has gained importance outside sociology, e.g. in biblical studies.