I'm glad to say that I have now finished all my marking am able to concentrate on PhD work.I have a trial copy of NVIVO and I'm starting to code my data. This is time-consuming but reasonably straightforward. I haven't yet decided whether or not to spend the £400 and actually buy NVIVO; I'd like to see how useful it is going to be first.

Work on Foucault has also gone reasonably well. I think he and I are beginning to come to an understanding! I'm getting to the point where I can start to contemplate putting all of this together. I'd like to be able to apply some of the ideas from both Foucault and Bahktin to the data that I have collected from my interviews. I can already see, for example, that some of the ideas about dialogue and how this develops from a master/slave relationship through a platonic type dialogue could be seen as too linear, too structured from a Foucauldian perspective. What I am seeing in the 1st year interviews is a lot of confusion about whyand how they should be reading.

I have tutorials tomorrow.