THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION

The ethnography of communication was proposed by the anthropological linguist D.H. Hymes
in the early 1960s in reaction to the earlier neglect of speaking in linguistic analyses and
anthropological descriptions of cultures. Until that time, the principal features of linguistic
description were the phonology and grammar of a language. Equally, anthropological
descriptions of cultures largely excluded patterns of speaking from their investigations (Philipsen
1994). Hymes' work was also a reaction to psycholinguistic views of language which took little,
or no account, of the social and cultural contexts in which it Is used.

The ethnography of communication examines speech events within the social and cultural
context in which they occur and, in particular, examines patterns of language use in specific
groups communities, institutions, and societies. A particular feature of the ethnography of
communication is that it has been discourse-centred since its inception (Sherzer 1992).

The aim of the ethnography of communication is to explore the means of specking available to
members of a particular community. This includes the examination of formal, informal and ritual
events within a particular group of speakers. It explores language use in particular social and
cultural settings, drawing together both anthropological and linguistic views on communication.
This exarrination includes the varieties of language used within the community as well as the
speech acts and genres available to the members of the community.

The basic theoretical contribution of the ethnography of communication is, as Sherzer puts it:
the demonstration that there are coherent and meaningful patterns in language use and
speaking practices in societies around the world, and that there are significant differences
in these patterns across cultures
(1992: 420).

A basic assumption of this view is that when people speak or write, they organise their
communication in ways that are over and above grammatical rules. That Is, what they say must
not only be grammatically possible and acceptable, but also follow rules which are part of the
social and cultural knowledge and ex-pectations of the particular community. This includes a
knowledge of what can be said to whom, in what way it might be said, for what purpose, and on
what occasion (Philipsen 1994).

Analyses in this area draw on a model proposed by Hymes for examining culture-
specific ways of speaking in particular speech communities. These analyses examine
communicative events in terms of categories such as the type of event (or genre), topic,
purpose, setting and participants, message form and content and ordering of speech acts
within the event (including turn taking and overlap phenomena).

Attention is also given to the norms, operating principles, strategies, and values which guide the
production and interpretation of particular speech events (Bauman and Sherzer 1974).
Consideration is given in these analyses to speakers' rules and understandings for the production
and interpretation of the speech events: that is, insiders' views of the particular communication.

Examples of analyses in this area are Hymes' work (1981) on native American folktales,
Sherzer's analysis (1983) of ritual gatherings, curtng events and puberty rites in the Kuna Indian
community, and Saville-Troike's collection (1989) of analyses of village meetings, marriage
proposals, dinner party conversatio.ns and condoling events in a range of different languages and
cultures.

Philipsen and Carbaugh (1986), !!'! their article 'A bibliography of field work in the ethnography
of communication', provide an extensive summary of studies based on 'Hvrnes' original
framework and further developments of it. An important assumption which underlies work
carried out in this area is that there are significant differences in patterns of language use across
cultures, a view which has led work in the ethnography of speaking to be extended to the
examination of speech events within the context of intercultural and inter-ethnic communication
(e.g. Gumperz 1982).

Other important contributions have been made in this area by, for example, Urbon (1986) and
Duranti (1984). Urban has extended Hymes' notion of speech styles, which occur across a
range of different genres, to that of generic styles: that is, particular ways of speaking that have
become associated with particular genres. This work highlights how genre specifications cannot
be achieved by examination of texts alone, but require consideration of the interaction between
the organisation ofthe discourse and the organisation of the event in which it occurs (Briggs and
Bauman 1992).

Thus, language use in the ethnography of communication is studied within particular social and
cultural settings rather than in Isolation from them. Key concepts in the ethnography of
communication include the notions of speech community, communicative competence, patterns
of communication, communicative functions, and speech events (Saville-Troike 1989). Each of
these is discussed below.

Speech Community

The notion of speech community is central to the ethnography of communication. Hymes

(1986) describes a speech commununity as a group which shares rules for the conduct and
interpretation of speech. Gumperz (1986) defines a speech community as a group that has
regular and frequent interaction that is characterised by shared patterns of interaction and
communication. The initial task, then, is to define the particular group. As Coulthard (1985)
observes, this is not always an easy task. For example, speakers who share the same language
may have different norms for the appropriate use and interpretation of language. A common
language on its own, then cannot be the only way of identifying such a group.
A number of criteria for identifying a speech community have been suggested by researchers in
this area, each of which often interact. These include:

• shared language use

• frequency of interaction by a group of people
• shared rules of speaking and interpretation of speech performance
• shared attitudes and values regarding language forms and use
• shared sociocultural understanding and presuppositions with regard to speech.
(Saville-Troike 1989)

Other considerations might include social, historical and political factors, as well as religion,
ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, or occupation. Further, people may be members of more than
the one speech community. For example, they may interact in different speech communities in
their private and professional lives as well as in a number of different groups within each of
these areas. These groups may have some degree of overlap or they may be completely separate
from each other, The notion of speech community, therefore, is a complex one and cannot be
defined by language alone.

Communicative Competence

The notion of communicative competence is also central in the ethnography of speaking.

Hymes' notion of communicative competence involves not only knowing the language, but
also what to say to whom, and how to say it appropriately in any particular situation. That
is, it includes knowing what is grammatically correct and what is not, but also when and where
to use language appropriately and with whom.

It also includes knowledge of 'rules of speaking', as well as knowing how to use and respond to
different speech acts. AIl of this involves taking account of the social and cultural setting,
relationships with other people, and speech community norms, values and expectations.

In judging the communicative effectiveness of an utterance, Hymes (1972) proposed four

criteria which are four facets of a speaker's competence in communication. These are:

1 whether the utterance is formally possible (that is, grammatically correct)

2 whether the utterance is feasible (that is, manageable in the sense of being neither too
long or too complex)

3 whether the utterance is appropriate (that Is, whether it fits the linguistic and soclol
context)
4 whether the utterance is actually done (that is, whether it is accepted regardless of
unorthodox grammar or, for Instance, rejected as archaic, regardless of its perfect grammar).
In Hymes' view, if the utterance gets a 'yes' for each of these questions, it is acceptable
communication; if it gets a 'no' for anyone of them it is ineffective, or perhaps even counter-
productive. The notion of communicative competence has been discussed by other researchers as
well, e.g.Canale and Swain (1980), Canale (1983), Bachman (1990) and McNamara (1995).

Canale and Swain use the term communicative competence to mean the underlying knowledge
and skill required for communication, 'actual communication', to be realised under real-world
conditions. Bachman separates knowledge about language from more general skills involved in
language use. Both of these competences. however, contribute to what he calls 'communicative
language ability'. McNamara considers the notion of communicative competence in relation to
the ossessrnent of second language speakers' ability to perform in target language settings,
arguing that insights from studies in the use of talk in interaction (see Chapter 5) should be
drawn on in models of descriptions of language users' communicative abilities.

Analysing Communicative Activity

The goal of the ethnography of communication is to study the communicative competence of a

specific speech community. It does this by discovering and analysing patterns of
communication that organise the use of language in particular communicative activities. Hymes
describes three units which can be identified to analyse a communicative activity. These are:

• the communicative situation: that is, the context in which the communicative activity occurs

• the communicative event itself: that is, an event which has the same components throughout,
such as the same general purpose, setting, topic, participants, language variety, tone, and rules
for interaction (see Table 6 for an example of this)
• the communicative acts, or 'stages' within the communicative event.

Speech Events

Hymes describes speech events as often coinciding with what other researchers might term
'genres'. Speech events for Hymes, are activities 'that are directly governed by rules or
norms for the use of speech' (19740:52). Hymes gives stories, conversations, lectures and
formal introductions as examples of speech events. These he differentiates from what he terms
'speech acts', such as, a joke which maybe embedded within a particular speech event, such as a
conversation, or a lecture.

In Hymes' view, speech events should be treared as analytically independently of one another, as
one speech event (for example, a sermon) may be invoked in another speech event, or situation
for a certain effect.
Components of Communicative Events

Hymes describes a number of aspects of communication which contribute equally to the

functioning of communicative events. These are the 'constituent factors' of communicative
events. These constituent factors, or components, of communicative events in Hymes' framework
consist of:

• the setting of the event (including time, place and physical setting)

• participants involved in the event (including. persona characteristics such as age, sex, soda I
status, and, relationships)

• the function or purpose of the communicative event' (including the individual goals of
participants)

• the act sequence, or discourse structure, of the communicative event

• the instrumentalities, or linguistic code, used in the event (including the language used, the
channel of communication, e.g. writing or speaking, and the dialect or variety of the particular
language)
• norms or sociocultural rules of interaction and interpretation
• the genre, or type, of communicative event.

Each of these factors interact in the performance of particular communicative events, although
some, on occasions, will be more significant than others. Saville-Troike (1989) preseents a
slightly different arrangement of these components. This is:

• the genre, or type, of event

• the topic of the event in general

• the purpose or function of the event in general, as well as individual participants' goals

• the setting of the event including location, time of day, season of the year, and physical aspects
of the situation

• the key, or tone, of the event

• the participants, including age, sex, ethnicity, social status or other relevant categories
• the message form, including. which language, variety and whether it is
spoken or written

• the content of individual messages In the event

• act sequencing, (including phenomena such as turn taking and, overlap)

• rules for interaction, and which of these need to be observed

• norms of interpretation, including common knowledge, cultural presuppositions, shared

understandings, what should be taken literally, what needs to be inferred, and what can be
discounted.

Thus, both Hymes and Saville-Troike agree that a communicative event comprises a number of
components such as the participants involved in the event the form of the event, the channel
and code of communication, the setting of the event, the function of the event, and the
attitudes and contents that a message may convey and be about.

These frameworks are intended, however, not so much as checklists of categories for analysis, as
initial sets of questions and descriptive possibilities that might guide the examination of ways of
communication within and across communities (Philipsen 1994). Table 6 is a summary of a
Japanese marriage proposal based on Saville-Troike's framework and information provided by
one of her students. It is important to point out, however, that this is one person's view of this
event and may, to some extent be an idealised version of the event. It is, therefore, not always the
case that marriage proposals in Japanese will always proceed in this way, even for people who
may, in many ways, be somewhat traditional. An example of this is that when the Japanese
Crown Prince Naruhito proposed to his bride-to-be (on a hunting trip) she did not accept the
proposal immediately but took nearly three months to give a reply.

He did, however, use the words 'Will you please marry me?'. When she replied ,she said, 'Will I
really do?' and 'If I can be of any help to you, I will humbly accept'. The Crown Prince replied. 'I
will protect you throughout your life' (Asahi Newspaper 1993). His younger brother, Prince Aya,
proposed to his bride-to-be at the traffic lights in Tokyo waiting for the lights to turn green. He
said, 'Will you please be together with me?'. She replied, 'May I please think about it?'
(Asahigraph 1990). (see tables)

On one occasion when I showed Saville-Troike's analysis of Japanese marriage proposals to a

class of native and non-native speaker students, some of the native-speaker students said they
found her example slightly amusing and, in their view, not likely to have any relationship with
what hoppens in real life. Two Japanese students in the class came to the defence of the analysis,
however; one of them saying that this was how he had proposed to his wife, and the other saying
he didn't propose to his wife but she had proposed to him. He, nevertheless, to this day, has not
told his parents this as their view of how a marriage proposal should be carried out was very
much in line with the kind of view presented in the sample analysis.

Data Collection

There are a number of ways that data are collected in this kind of analysis. The actual approach
that is used depends on the relationship the analyst has with the speech community, the type of
data being collected, and the situation in which the research is being conducted. The aim of the
data collection is to provide the basis for descriptions of communicative events in such a way
that they can be cornpored with those in different instances and communities (Philipsen 1994).

One way in which data might be collected is through introspection: that is, where analysts think
about and analyse their own speech communities. These analyses can, however, be quite
idealised and subjective and often need to be combined with other forms of analysis. Analysts
might also use participant observation. Here, analysts are also members of the speech community
and observe the behaviour of their own community. Data might also be collected without
participation, by simply observing and analysing a particular situation.

However, this is seldom sufficient and needs to be complemented by the use of other approaches
also. Analysts may also use interviews to gather data in which they ask community members
about their interactions, what they do, and why they do things the way they do. However, it can
be difficult for analysts to maintain the perspective of outsiders even as non-participant
observers. It is also often difficult to suspend prior assumptions about events.

There is also the possibility that too much participation can change the nature of the event they
are examinjng, or too little participation might mean they do not get to see enough data (Farah
1997). It is important, then, for fuller and more reliable descriptions, that a number of different
approaches to gathering data be drawn on.

An Ethnography of Writing

Grabe and Kaplan in their book (1996), propose an 'ethnography of writing' as a way of getting
students to consider the social and cultural context in which texts occur and their impact upon
what they write. They suggest starting from the basic question 'Who writes what to whom, for
what purpose, why, when, where, and how?' (p.203) and then moving to a detailed discussion of
the context of production and interpretation of the students' texts. For instance, in the case of
essay writing this might include:
• the setting of the text (e.g. a first-year course at a university; a final year of secondary school

• the purpose of the text (e.g. to display knowledge and understanding in a particular area, to
demonstrate particular skills, to convince the reader)

• the content of the text (including what claims are acceptable in particular areas of study, and
what claims are not what is appropriate content and what is not)

• the writer of the text their role and purpose in writing the text

• the intended audience for the particular text their role and purpose in reading the text how they
will react to what they read, and the criteria
they will use for assessing the text

• the relationship between reader and writer of the text and how this impacts on what should be
said, and how it should be said

• general academic expectations and conventions for the particular text, as well as particular
expectations, conventions and requirements of the area of study

• text-type requirements for the particular genre and how this is signalled (or not) in any
instructions that are given to the writer

• the background knowledge, values, and understandings it is assumed the

• writer of the particular text will share with their readers, including what Is Important to the
Intended ouolence and what Is not

• the relationship the texts has with other genres (e.g. lectures, set texts, journal articles,
research reports): that Is, what other texts it is assumed writers and readers have a knowledge of
and how they might display this.

In the case of teaching (native- and non-native speaker) students to write texts such as essays
through to theses and dissertations, I have found this list of questions extremely useful. For
example, It is not always clear to students who they are actually writing for: that is, who the
'primary' readership of their text actually is. Theses and dissertations, for example, are written for
a primary readership of one or more examiners, but also a secondary readership of the student's
supervisor and anyone else the student derides to show their work to for comment and feedback.

It is the primary reader, however, that will be the final judge of the quality of the piece of
writing, rather than the secondary reader whose role is to guide the student through the research
and writing process. So it is really these 'unknown' and 'imagined' readers students need to keep
in mind as they are writing, rather than the person they are interacting with as they are working
or) their text.

Students can be asked to examine some of the texts they ore reading in preparation for their
writing and discuss how different contextual features' may lead to the particular style,
positioning, presentation, and use of language in texts. The reading questions presented in Figure
1 are a suggestion for how this might be done. Thus, the reading moves beyond the text to
explore its context as well as reasons for the linguistic choices made in the text.

What is the text about?

What is the setting of the text (e.g. in a text book, a newspaper)?
What is the tone of the text (e.g. formal, informal)?
Who is the author of the text?

What is her or his educational background? academic status?

social status?
What is her or his purpose in writing the text?
Who is the intended audience of the text?

What is the relationship between the author and intended audience of the text?
What rules or expectations limit how the text might be written?
What shared cultural knowledge is assumed by the text?
What shared values and understandings are implied by the text?

What text-types seem to be most represented in the text 1 (e.g. descriptions, instructions,
arguments)?
What other texts does this text assume knowledge of?
How is the language of the text influenced by each of these factors?

Figure 1: Reading questions for an ethnographic analysis of written texts