Alec McHoul
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Alec McHoul (June 14, 1952) is a British/Australian Ethnomethodologist. He has written numerous books and articles, many of which are informed by Ethnomethodology. He is currently Emeritus Professor at Murdoch University.
McHoul was born in Wallasey, a town on the Wirral Peninsula, England. In 1973 he graduated from the University of Lancaster, with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Literature and Linguistics and, in 1974, a Master of Arts. In 1975 he moved to Australia. In 1978 he was awarded a Doctorate from the Australian National University.
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[edit] Criticism
McHoul's work spans a range of academic fields: linguistics, cultural theory, continental philosophy and literary theory. Prima facie, his approach to diverse subjects adheres to no strict rule of academic enquiry. In a review of his 1998 Semiotic Investigations: Towards an Effective Semiotics, Robert Eaglestone writes, The book is no less [...] an attempt to work in at least three fields at once, and McHoul seems at home dealing with analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, semiotics, and linguistics. [1] In a review of the same book, Douglas Ezzy says, His theoretical range is wide, drawing on Wittgenstein, Saussure, ethnomethodology [and] phenomenology.[2] As with Eaglestone, Ezzy leans toward the idea that McHoul's work is multi-layered.[2]
[edit] Discourse Analysis and Culture
With the idea that members of a community/culture dictate the rules of social interaction via specific languages, McHoul seeks to identify what he sees as the 'problem of culture'.[3] He says, for example, 'A culture is, in fact, where we recognize what you are doing because, for all of us, culturally, that is how we would do it.' In his critique of Cultural Studies McHoul goes on to say, 'culture is only a problem of connecting production ('generating') and consumption ('recognising') when it is speculatively treated as a spectacular field in which cultural objects are always considered as representing something beyond them (such as gendered, economic, or racial 'patterns').'
[edit] Work
[edit] Bibliography
| Publication Title | Publisher | Notes |
| Telling How Texts Talk: Essays on Reading and Ethnomethodology | London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982 | |
| Wittgenstein On Certainty and the Problem of Rule in Social Science | Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle, 1986 | |
| Writing Pynchon: Strategies in Fictional Analysis | London: Macmillan, 1990; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990 | Co-published with David Wills |
| A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject | Melbourne University Press, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998; University College London Press, 1995; New York University Press, 1997, 1998; University of Otago Press, 1998 | Co-published with Wendy Grace |
| Semiotic Investigations: Towards an Effective Semiotics | University of Nebraska Press, 1996 | |
| Popular Culture and Everyday Life | London: Sage, 1998, 1996 | Co-published with Toby Miller |
| Beyond Help: A Consumer’s Guide to Psychology | Ross–on–Wye: PCCS Books, 2003 | Co–publication with Susan Hansen and Mark Rapley, with contributions by Hayley Miller and Toby Miller |
[edit] Edited Work
| Publication Title | Publisher | Notes |
| How to Analyse Talk in Institutional Settings: A Casebook of Methods | London and New York: Continuum, 2001 | Co–edited with Mark Rapley. |
[edit] Translation
| Publication Title | Publisher | Notes |
| Jean–Marie Floch, Visual Identities | London and New York: Continuum , 2000 | Translation of Identités visuelles. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995. Co–translation with Pierre Van Osselaer. |
For full list of publications, see also: http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/~mchoul/.
