Resti Siti Nurlaila, 2014 The Construction of Hybrid Identity in
Julia Alvarez ’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Univeristas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter explains the methodological aspect of the research. It consists of research question, research design, research subject and context, research procedures, data collection, data analysis and data presentation.
3.1 Research Question
The research is geared towards answering the following questions: 1.
In what ways are hybrid identities of the main characters constructed as evidenced in the novel? 2.
How do the main characters manifest their hybrid identities?
3.2 Research Design
This present research employs a descriptive qualitative method to achieve the aims of the study. This method has been chosen because the data for this research are in the form of words rather than numbers. As Maxwell 1996 states, the
qualitative research focuses on textual or visual data rather than numerical data. According to Creswell 2009, qualitative
Resti Siti Nurlaila, 2014 The Construction of Hybrid Identity in
Julia Alvarez ’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Univeristas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu
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method aims to explore and understanding the meaning of social phenomena by developing the theoretical lens. More explain, Maxwell 1996 describes the purpose of qualitative research is to discover the meaning of the events or
situations; to understand the particular context; to understand the process by which the events take place; to identify unexpected phenomena and generate new “grounded” theories; and to develop causal explanation.
3.3 Research Subject and Context
The subject of this research is a novel entitled How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. The novel, which consists of 307 pages, is the first novel of a Dominican-American writer, Julia Alvarez. It was firstly published by Algonquin
Books of Chapel Hill in 1991. The novel is divided into three chapters in which each chapter consists of five sub-chapters. This research is aimed to figure out how hybrid identities of the main characters are constructed in the novel and
how the main characters manifest their hybrid identity. The focus of this research is the main characters Garcia sisters named Carla, Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia who undergo hybrid identities as the impact of their migration from Dominican
Republic to the United States. Further, the research is framed by concept of hybridity as proposed by Bhabha 1994.
3.4 Research Procedure
