|
Murodullayeva Sarvinoz MT-1806
Final work
Card 8
Linguistic Ethnography
Linguistic ethnography is a theoretical and analytical framework which takes an epistemological position broadly aligned with social constructivist and post-structuralist approaches by critiquing essentialist accounts of social life (Creese, 2008; Rampton, 2007). But it also draws widely on work in linguistic anthropology (Hymes, 1968; Erickson, 2004; Gumperz, 1982; Silverstein, 2003; Wortham, 2003). Rampton argues that linguistic ethnography is ‘a site of encounter where a number of established lines of research interact, pushed together by circumstance, open to the recognition of new affinities, and sufficiently familiar with one another to treat differences with equanimity’ (2007: 585). The mention of old familiarities and new affinities captures well linguistic ethnography’s pedigree in anthropological linguistics with which it shares a theoretical base, as well as its more open and utilitarian approach to forging new connections. Oriented towards these particular epistemological and methodological traditions in the study of social life, linguistic ethnography argues that ethnography can benefit from the analytical frameworks provided by linguistics, while linguistics can benefit from the processes of reflexive sensitivity required in ethnography (see section 7.2). This chapter will focus mainly on linguistic ethnography’s contribution to interactional studies. However, in addition to the study of interaction, the study of situated literacy practices is also well represented in linguistic ethnography where the focus is on community-based literacy research (Barton and Hamilton, 1998; Gregory and Williams, 2000), multilingual literacy (Martin-Jones and Jones, 2000) and cross-cultural perspectives on literacy (Street, 1984). As with interactional studies in linguistic ethnography, such research starts from an understanding of literacy as social practice, that is, looks at how people actually use literacy in their lifeworlds and everyday routines, rather than viewing literacy as a measurable cognitive achievement concerned predominantly with educational success.
Linguistic ethnography conjoins two fields of study arguing that there is more to be gained in their unison than in their separation. Ethnography is said to be enhanced by the detailed technical analysis which linguistic brings, while linguistics is said to be enhanced by attention to context. Ethnography offers linguistics a non-deterministic perspective on data, while linguistics offers ethnography a range of established procedures for identifying discursive structures (Rampton, 2007). Rampton et al. (2004) argue for ‘tying ethnography down and opening linguistics up’ (p. 4) and for an enhanced sense of the strategic value of discourse analysis in ethnography. According to this argument, ethnography provides linguistics with a close reading of context not necessarily represented in some kinds of interactional analysis (such as Conversation Analysis (CA) and systemic functional discourse analysis (SFDA)), while linguistics provides an authoritative analysis of language use not typically available through participant observation and the taking of fieldnotes (p. 6). The ethnographic approach is one which sees the analysis of small phenomena as set against an analysis of big phenomena, and in which ‘both levels can only be understood in terms of one another’ (Blommaert, 2005: 16). For example, Creese (2005) describes the interactional practices of teachers in multi-adult classrooms, and shows how teachers’ interactional practices unwittingly reproduce structural hierarchies in schools. Using linguistic ethnography, she illustrates how facilitation pedagogies best suited for language teaching and learning hold little currency in a context where pedagogies of transmission dominate classroom practices. Creese’s study shows how small phenomena, such as the interactional differences between teachers, can only be understood against an analysis of big phenomena: the systemic and structural privileging of curriculum transmission. A linguistic ethnographic analysis then attempts to combine close detail of local action and interaction as embedded in a wider social world. A further example of this is Maybin’s work (2006) on primary school classrooms, where she explores the relationship between the multilayered ecology of the classroom and the dialogic possibilities that intersecting children’s voices create. Through a combination of linguistic and ethnographic analysis of children’s voices in and out of schools, Maybin found that ‘meaning-making emerges as an ongoing dialogic process at a number of different interrelated levels: dialogues within utterances and between utterances, dialogues between voices cutting across utterance boundaries and dialogues with other voices from the past’ (2006: 24).
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
