COMMUNICATION THEORY Assignment 1

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Encyclopedia of Communication Theory Ethnography of Communication

Contributors: Author:Patricia Olivia Covarrubias Baillet Edited by: Stephen W. Littlejohn & Karen A. Foss Book Title: Encyclopedia of Communication Theory Chapter Title: "Ethnography of Communication" Pub. Date: 2009 Access Date: October 28, 2020 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Print ISBN: 9781412959377 Online ISBN: 9781412959384 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959384.n133 Print pages: 356-360

© 2009 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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The ethnography of communication (EOC), originated by linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes, is a field of study fundamentally concerned with the idea that culture and communication are inseparably intertwined. Within communication, the shared belief and value systems comprising culture are constructed. And within communication, people build the social structures that comprise their everyday communal way of life. Thus, whenever community members communicate, they display the verbal and nonverbal elements particular to their society while simultaneously creating (and recreating) the value systems that structure that society. By attending, then, to people's routine communication, many of the core abstract elements that characterize their worldviews or cultural life can be observed, understood, compared, contrasted, and theorized. The EOC offers both theoretical and methodological lenses in order to illuminate the particular cultures of a particular group of people.

History

The ethnography of communication was initially called the ethnography of speaking (EOS) by Dell Hymes in 1962. Hymes's goal for his approach to the analysis of discourse centered on the role of speech in human behavior. This work coupled two fields of study—linguistics and ethnography. With the interrelationships among language, culture, and society as a traditional anthropological concern, Hymes's proposal diverged from linguistic approaches that, until that time, studied speaking as grammars or abstract linguistic systems. Hymes's proposal also diverged from ethnographic or anthropological models that traditionally studied culture as geographic boundaries, languages, races, and/or ethnicities. Hymes sought to make speech the object of investigation and rectify the problem of taking it for granted. In 1964, Hymes renamed his perspective the ethnography of communication in order to more expressly account for the context-dependent uses of nonvocal (e.g., drumming and whistling) and nonverbal (e.g., gestures, silence) communication.

In 1992, Gerry Philipsen broadened the EOC by introducing speech codes theory (SCT). SCT offers a communication-based analytic framework designed for describing, explaining, and/or predicting cultural communication within the context of speech communities. As an interpretive tool, SCT seeks to answer questions about the existence of codes, their substance, the ways in which they can be discovered, and their social force on the members of cultural communities. Ultimately, the study of codes serves to describe the sets of precepts and rules by which different societies enact and interpret their ways of life. In other words, SCT helps reveal how people feel and talk about what is going on in their collective lives. It helps bring to light, for example, what identities and interpersonal relationships community members can and do construct, how community members relate to their physical (natural) and metaphysical (spiritual) environment, and how different peoples approach uses of time.

Since its inception, the EOC has resulted in hundreds of studies applied across a variety of contexts, including family, leisure, and organizational life; online communication; broadcast media; and myriad other oral and written applications. Over time, the EOC has been subject to criticisms not dealing with matters of power in social interaction. Indeed, the EOC does not advocate prejudging the incidence of particular social meanings (e.g., power and status) prior to examination of the situated interaction in question. To do so would undermine the community-based, culture-rich description the EOC calls for. Because this is a point that has too often been misunderstood, it should be underscored that the EOC can and does take power into account when it is made obvious by speech community members themselves. In such cases, ethnographers must remain open to hearing, describing, interpreting, and reporting on performances of power. For example, Philipsen's critique of a controversial speaking event involving Chicago mayor Richard Daley unveils key power-laden rules for the conduct of public discourse. Further, in a study combining the ethnography of communication and critical Whiteness theory, Patricia Covarrubias demonstrates how silence-mediated discrimination against American Indian college students is enacted in some college classrooms, thereby exposing power-laden structures.

Assumptions

The EOC operates according to particular assumptions. These assumptions reveal what practitioners study

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and how they study it—what, from a given perspective, counts as evidence, how evidence is interpreted, what generalizations are made about communication and communicators, and, ultimately, how those generalizations are written and presented. The EOC includes the following assumptions:

• 1. Communication can be described in terms of systems of rules. Community members make communication choices beyond grammar. They make choices based on what is appropriate in their sociocultural contexts. For example, blue-collar workers in Chicago, who acknowledge their speech contrasts with Standard English, deliberately use their speaking practices to garner valued in-group memberships. In fact, community members' attempts to adopt Standard English often are interpreted as symbolic moves to reject their group of origin.

• 2. People are users of symbols, and the particular configuration of symbols nestles the structures of sociocultural life. For example, using the Spanish pronouns usted (formal you) or tu (informal you) can help create relationships based on hierarchy or along more democratic alignments in many Latino contexts.

• 3. Communication is patterned. Even though an individual's personality and personal idiosyncrasies can influence communication choices, much, if not most, of human communication is structured. By and large, people's daily lives comprise many communication sequences that are repeated across contexts during the course of a routine day (e.g., what counts as polite and impolite ways for addressing others; what is the expected order of conversation in classes, at business meetings, or during doctors' appointments or religious services; and what favorite words or jargon routinely come up in conversation).

• 4. Communication is distinctive. What resources are available for performing communication, how communication is performed, and how communication is valued differ across sociocultural contexts. For example, the Koasati language of Louisiana provides no word for good-bye, thus suggesting a place to inquire about how interpersonal separations are viewed in this culture. Extending compliments between European-American communicators would most likely be considered a friendly move, whereas this might not be the case with some Chinese or Japanese communicators, whose norms about modesty would prompt them to feel uncomfortable in the same situation.

• 5. Communication is socially consequential, and people bear the consequences of breaches to the normative structures defined by a given society. For example, a European-American man who uses talk to resolve conflicts rather than using physical aggression could be evaluated as homosexual by some blue-collar workers in Chicago.

• 6. Communication is strategic, and conversants can and do artfully use verbal and nonverbal codes as cultural resources within which to achieve individual and group outcomes. Having a drink with a romantic partner every evening to talk over the day and meeting with the same group of friends for lunch regularly to blow off steam are two examples of using verbal and nonverbal codes as resources. In such situations, everyday communication rituals involve getting together with the same people and generally talking about the same topics and using the same tone, and with each shared conversation, relationships among participants become either closer or more distant. In these particular cases, episodes of communication, involving a sequence of actions, are used in culturally preferred ways to reaffirm a sense of self and a sense of relationship through talk.

• 7. Communication is not absolutely determined by culture or group. Because, as Hymes noted, speech communities are organizations of diversity, people are free to circumvent, challenge, and revise communicative patterns. For example, some construction workers in Veracruz, Mexico, resist adhering to their community's generally agreed on norms for using pronouns; young employees expressly use the informal tu with elders, a practice that in earlier decades would have been seen as very disrespectful.

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The EOC as Theory and Method

The EOC's theoretical call, ultimately, is the description of a people's means of communication and the meanings these strategies have for those who use them. As a theoretical lens, the EOC seeks to generate explanations about how, in the particular case, community members use particular communication symbols (e.g., words, phrases, silences) to make sense of their experiences. Listening for these symbols enables ethnographers (and others) to isolate the sets of ideas that inform a community's worldview. Theorizing includes identifying the rules for social behavior—prescriptions (what is allowed) and proscriptions (what is not allowed)—that shape the interpersonal structures of communities.

The EOC's methodological call, ultimately, is the abstraction of an emic (culture specific, insider-focused) descriptive framework. This outcome is possible via the ethnographer's engagement through participation, observation, and interviews in the field within particular communities. That is, the EOC requires the researcher to join a particular group to study the group's culture. In a way of speaking, the ethnographer works “from the inside,” to be better poised to investigate naturally occurring communication patterns in the course of community members' everyday activities. To isolate patterns, the ethnographer listens and watches for who says what to whom, where, how, why, and for what social objectives. By examining these patterns, the ethnographer can then extract themes and other details that will serve as evidence for articulating a coherent statement about the particular community's culture.

Speech Communities and the EOC

If, as Hymes proposed, culture should not be delineated by a geographic region, a language, an ethnicity, or a race, then what should be the unit of observation? In 1968, Hymes offered an alternative unit of observation—the speech community. He defined speech community as a group of people who share at least one code or system of rules for enacting and interpreting their own and others' communicative conduct.

Codes, as defined by Philipsen, are historically transmitted, socially constructed systems of symbols and meanings, premises and rules that pertain to communicative conduct. That is, the components of codes, which inextricably are woven into communication itself, are the observable expressions of beliefs of existence (what is and is not) and of value (what is good and bad). Codes comprise the inspectable infrastructure that orients a people's real time, communicatively based social behaviors.

Moreover, participants within speech communities reveal themselves to be users of multicodality. In other words, members of speech communities use multiple codes to conduct their daily lives. For example, construction workers in Veracruz, Mexico, routinely use two codes of communication—the code of confianza (code of trust, confidence, honesty, confidentiality) and the code of respeto (code of respect). Workers used these distinctive and contradictory paradigms to manage their interpersonal networks and, in turn, negotiate workplace cooperation.

According to Hymes, communication practices should be studied according to the following basic social units—communicative situation, communicative event, and communicative act. Additional elements such as particular words, social dramas, narratives, and even silence are available for the ethnographer to investigate.

Communicative situation is the general context of the communication. A communicative situation maintains a more or less consistent frame for observing and interpreting the particulars of communication. Examples include a class in school, a birthday party, a committee meeting, a court trial, a religious service, a dentist appointment, or a dinner with friends.

Communicative events are locally defined contexts for communication that occur, generally, within communicative situations. Communicative events constitute entry points for ethnographic analysis as they suggest unified sets of components (e.g., the same setting, the same participants, the same general topic, and the same rules for interaction). Examples include a conversation between friends during a birthday

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party, a call to worship during a religious service, or the opening and closing at a conference. It is during communicative events that sociocultural rules surface and can be inspected.

Communicative acts refer to the use of language to do or perform some act, to bring about some reality in the world. Examples of speech acts include commands, promises, requests, warnings, threats, compliments, apologies, suggestions, gossip, cursing, joking, and declarations of marriage. Speech acts help identify meaningful contexts for action in particular cultures. For example, cursing and swearing might be appropriate at a bar or a construction site, whereas this behavior would not be as acceptable during the delivery of a eulogy. Each context would suggest different interpersonal meanings.

Thematized terms are words that become core symbols for particular communities. Core terms or words point to concepts whose meanings are shared by community members. These terms point to places for action that are significant and relevant to the particular community members and indicate very important shared attitudes, feelings, and perspectives. For example, for the Israeli Sabra community member, the term dugri defines a type of communication that is immediate, blunt, and frank and expresses disagreement. The concept also is used as a cultural element to affirm a particular group identity. The particular Sabra communicators set themselves apart from other interactants because they can and do establish common ground by speaking dugri to each other.

Personal address involves the expressions speakers use to point to self and other in interaction. Because personal address inherently invokes relationships among communicators, this serves as uniquely rich means for accessing cultural meanings. Personal address can include a variety of options and a variety of combinations of options. Each possible configuration conveys different meanings depending on the context. For example, titles might be followed by a last name (e.g., Mr. Smith) in a boardroom or by a first name in a kindergarten classroom (Miss Jenny) to show respect. Nicknames are very prevalent in Mexican societies to indicate intimacy and friendship. Honorifics (e.g., san) are common in Japanese cultures to show respect (e.g., okaasan, or mother). Honorific titles are common in many societies (e.g., Dr., Your Honor, Madame President) to showcase the importance of status and authority. Occupational titles (e.g., Arquitecto [Architect] and Contador [Accountant]) are common in cultures where people set themselves apart by attaining a formal education.

Social dramas are communicative sequences in everyday life wherein the local sociocultural rules for behavior are invoked and publicly challenged. A social drama also can involve the alienation or integration from a social group of the person whose conduct is brought into question. An example of a social drama is the sex scandal involving president Bill Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky when the president's sexual conduct was challenged by an entire nation. Another example is the controversial event involving accusations of nepotism against Chicago mayor Richard Daley.

Narratives, or stories, are sequential accounts that are told from a particular point of view. These are useful sites for hearing culture, especially when these narratives are told and retold. The fact that the stories are retold suggests that they are important and probably entail cultural significance. A narrative that is part of European-American folklore is that of Horatio Alger. Horatio Alger stories are rags-to-riches narratives that are told and retold to illustrate how impoverished persons might be able to achieve the American Dream. These stories embody American cultural values about hard work, determination, and concern for others.

Silence is the absence of oral speech. Because silence, like speech, also is subject to a community's rules for appropriate conduct, silence offers rich possibilities for gaining insight into what is going on in a particular context. Many American Indian students, for example, use silence very differently from many of their European American counterparts. For Native students, silence often is generative or productive and positive, and they use this communication resource to shape individual and group identities, connect with other community members, and promote a traditional way of life.

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SPEAKING as Device for Locating Codes

In 1974, Hymes introduced an etic (universal, researcher-centered) descriptive framework designed to guide the uncovering, understanding, and description of communicative patterns in any culture. Culture-specific communication patterns, an emic (culture-specific, insider-focused) framework, could be abstracted within these categories. Under the mnemonically coded acronym SPEAKING, the etic framework comprises eight social units useful for describing patterns of communication and for isolating cultural themes—scene or setting (physical arena and/or psychological situation); participants (persons involved in the interaction and their relationships to each other); ends (purposes and outcome of the interaction); key (tone or manner in which the communication is enacted); instrumentalities (channels or codes of communication); norms of interaction and interpretation (rules for how one should behave and rules for ascertaining what the particular behavior means); and genre (categories or types of speech acts and events).

The framework is not intended as a mechanical checklist. Rather, it is intended to provide an initial set of questions to guide the discovery and subsequent accounting of a community's ways of life as reflected and constituted by its way of communicating. SPEAKING also serves as a useful tool for making sociocultural comparisons.

Conclusion

As a theory and a method, the EOC seeks to expose the cultural systems of meaning making—including the tensions and contradictions—that orient a people's everyday communal life. Dedicated to the production of nuanced understandings, the EOC centers inquiry squarely on communication. Moreover, the communication studied is that of the particular people producing it. A focus on locally produced communication helps reveal how interactants use verbal and nonverbal codes to achieve particular personal and social outcomes. It also helps describe how community members affirm, challenge, and/or transform their cultures by changing their ways of communicating. Finally, the EOC helps create cross-cultural understandings via comparative analyses and theories.

• ethnography of communication • ethnographer • ethnography • coding • context communication • speech acts • construction workers

Patricia Olivia Covarrubias Baillet http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959384.n133 See also

• Critical Ethnography • Cultural Performance Theory • Culture and Communication • Social Construction of Reality • Social Interaction Theories • Speech Act Theory • Speech Codes Theory