Output details
36 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
Middlesex University
The Book of Friendship
This creative non-fiction book explores how to bring complex theories about friendship, usually perceived as ‘academic’, to wider audiences. It is part of a broader research programme exploring different understandings of multimodality (e.g. Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001, Gibbons 2012) and developing evidence-based understanding of the skills involved in becoming a multimodal writer. It addresses the following specific research questions:
- Is it possible, in moving between different disciplines, data-driven material and autobiographical information, to explore one subject with genuine interdisciplinarity?
- Can such interdisciplinarity be realised by the conception and application of a consistent personal writing voice that fuses the range of material into one entity?
- Can this voice be used to bring a selection of ideas and information normally associated with academia to wider audiences?
Methods used were:
- Literature reviews of: friendship in fiction, political and moral philosophy; interdisciplinary creative non-fiction addressing broad subjects.
- Qualitative research: interviews; case studies, including of the author’s own practice; evidence-based consideration of the impact of Web 2.0 technology on friendship.
- Practitioner research: reflective diary assessing and developing ‘expert-intuition’ (Melrose 2006) and informing writing decisions.
The project follows Zeldin (1995) in moving among a range of disciplines, Epstein (2006) in developing a strong personal voice making an original contribution within one text on the subject of friendship, and Patrick White in taking an outsider perspective to shed new light on the human condition. The project has informed the work of other researchers and writers including Michèle Roberts (2012) and Alison Winch (2013). The project conceives of a multimodal writer as one who produces a body of work that comprises different genres (e.g. fiction and non-fiction) and is disseminated through a range of media (here radio, print journalism and book publishing), thus developing Harvey’s (2013) notion of a transmedia storyteller.
