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Notes on Ethnography for LG554,

Sociolinguistic Methods I, by PL Patrick

M Agar on Ethnography

Mike Agar is a well-known American ethnographer and author of several useful books, including Language Shock: Understanding the culture of conversation (1996) and The Professional Stranger (1980, rev. 1996). These ideas come from the latter book.

• Ethnography as process: stress on social relationships
• Indexicality (shared background knowledge necessary to interpret a message)
• Ethnography as de-indexicalizing (providing the underpinnings)
• Data collection and analysis are necessarily simultaneous, dialectic…

o not separate ordered stages

• 'Funnel approach', to make best of inherent contradictions (progress from L to R):

humanity	vs.	science
involvement	vs.	detachment
breadth	vs.	depth
subordination	vs.	control
friend	vs.	stranger
[exploitation]*	vs.	[service]*

*[my additions]

George & Louise Spindler are influential anthropologists of education with decades of experience observing teaching and learning in and out of classrooms. They offer the following short principles for practicing ethnographic observation:

Ten Criteria for a good Ethnography

I. Observations are contextualized (immediate/further settings)

II. Hypotheses emerge in situ, judgment is deferred

III. Observation is prolonged & repetitive

IV. Native view of reality is attended

V. Elicit sociocultural knowledge systematically from participants

VI. Instruments are generated in situ as a result of observation

VII. A transcultural, comparative perspective is adopted

VIII. Sociocultural knowledge is tacit, ambiguous, and unevenly distributed:

make the implicit explicit

IX. Don(tm)t predetermine responses in asking questions: unfold emic, native knowledge

X. Any medium for live data collection may be used.

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Last updated on 11 November 2005