Ethnography of speech
The ethnography of speaking (or: ethnography of communication ) is a method of sociolinguistics , ethnography , anthropology and sociology that tries to derive the social organizational structures and norms of this society from the use of language in a society . The research approach was developed , among others, by the linguists and anthropologists John Gumperz and Dell Hymes .
theory
The ethnography of speaking understands language as action (compare speech act theory and the concepts of John Searle and John Austin ). Language action is seen as conditioned by social and cultural rules and framework conditions as well as the attitudes of the speakers and is therefore only to be understood in the respective cultural context. The ethnography of speech seeks to derive these social and cultural factors from language use, with the function of language being in the foreground (and the form of language being secondary). The ethnography of speech sees as important organizational units:
- the speech event ( "speech event") representing a single unit of language use (eg. as a sermon)
- the call situation ( "speech situation") extending from a plurality of speech events composed (z. B. a service, which consists of the speech events sermon reading etc.)
- the language community ( "speech community")
- the roles of the speakers in society and the particular situation
- the social rules and norms of society that make (language) behavior predictable
- Rituals and behavioral routines, the most strongly predetermined and therefore most surely predictable (speech) behaviors
Ethnographic methods are now also used in conversation analysis (as ethnographic conversation analysis ). There are also references to:
Methods
The ethnography of speaking makes use of qualitative ethnographic methods, mainly participatory observation and interviews , which are interpreted on the basis of the categories of the particular group being examined. Conversation situations or language events are then regarded as valid categories if the members of the examined language community also name them as categories.
literature
- Bielefeld sociologists working group (ed.), Everyday knowledge, interaction and social reality. Volume 2: Ethno Theory and Ethnography of Speech. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1973.
- Arnulf Deppermann: Ethnographic conversation analysis: For the benefit of an ethnographic extension for the conversation analysis. In: Conversation Research. Online journal on verbal interaction, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann and Martin Hartung, 2000, pp. 96–124 ( PDF )
- Werner Enninger and Joachim Raith: An Ethnography-of-Communication Approach to Ceremonial Situations. A Study on Communication in Institutionalized Social Contexts: The Old Order Amish Church Service. In: Journal for Dialectology And Linguistics. Booklets. NF; Volume 42. F. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1982.
- John Joseph Gumperz and Dell Hymes. Directions in sociolinguistics; the ethnography of communication. Holt, New York 1972.
- Dell Hymes: The ethnography of speaking. In: Anthropology and human behavior. Ed. by Thomas Gladwin and William C. Sturtevant. Anthropological Society of Washington DC, Washington DC: 1962, pp. 13-53.
- Muriel Saville-Troike: The ethnography of communication: an introduction. 2nd ed., Blackwell, Oxford / New York, 1989.