By the 1990s there was a solid shift in Intercultural Communication to Interpretive models and theories, and then toward Critical Theoretical approaches, with the incorporation of a research method that evolved in Cultural Anthropology: Ethnography. Ethnography originally developed in the field of cultural anthropology as a means of investigating the cultures and life patterns of people outside of Western cultures. Sociologists adapted ethnography to examine people and cultures closer to home, often those in need of financial and psychological aid, or those facing ethnic, racial, class, or gender oppressions. Folklorists further adapted ethnography to talk about how small groups of people communicate creatively within their communities. In communication studies, ethnography has been adapted to highlight particular communication patterns and behaviors in groups and cultures. We call this method an Ethnography of Communication.
Ethnography of Communication is rooted in two academic processes: anthropological ethnography and narrative paradigm analyses. Ethnography is the process of investigating a culture, group, or organization by observing and sometimes participating in the culture over an extended period of time. Among the first to use this method was anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski believed that in order to fully understand a culture, the ethnographer needs to interact directly and daily with that culture. The in-depth style of observation that resulted allows the ethnographer to collect rich data that reflects multiple layers of the culture being observed. The cultural data that result are explained from the understanding of the observed culture rather than from the perspective of the researcher.
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): "Image of Bronislaw Malinowski with members of the Trobriand tribe, Trobriand Islands, circa. 1912. " is in the Public Domain, CC0
After Malinoski, anthropologist Margaret Mead examined international cultures by looking for forms or patterns in cultures that crossed national and ethnic borders. She found that many patterns of culture were unique to specific cultures, and did not cross borders. Her husband, linguist and cultural anthropologist, Gregory Bateson, focused on how personalities develop within unique cultural settings: a person’s identity is tied to his or her background, and identical people develop differently when they grow up with different backgrounds and values. Bateson also argued that cultural data are specific to the culturalframe or context in which they develop. If you change the context, the background and history of a particular artifact, that artifact cannot mean the same thing.
Communication scholar Dell Hymes proposed ethnography of communication in 1962 as "ethnography of speaking." Using the term "speaking" he created a model for ethnographic process centered on communication patterns. The SPEAKING model looks at eight specific elements of communication reflective of rhetorical theories in communication. In particular, the process draws from Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm that focuses on how humans naturally communicate through storytelling and Kenneth Burke's dramatic pentad that highlights the cultural and social scripts and other theatrical elements that are evident in communication behaviors. Hymes' model is as follows:
S: Scene and setting
P: Participants
E: Ends or end-outcomes
A: Act or the speech act
K: Key or tone
I: Instrumentalities
N: Norms or normalized interactions and patterns
G: Genre or type of speech act
Hymes' model became the basis for what we do in Ethnography of Communication, but the processes we use are not limited to these. This model was predominantly interpretive in nature, as was most traditional ethnography. Performative moments of the speech act remain at the center, but context-driven studies with more critical focus have become the standard of ethnography in communication fields.
Critical ethnography evolved in multiple fields, and is often cited as having started with the work of Clifford Geertz. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz promoted using a type of thick description in ethnographic research: a multilayered description of cultural events, that was enveloped into Ethnography of Communication. Geertz instructs the ethnographer to look at all possible levels of interpretation. This means, that when we, as ethnographers, witness a communication event or occurrence, we must avoid jumping to one particular conclusion about what that occurrence means. For example, Geertz suggests we take into account “the wink” as we saw in an earlier video. If you witness someone winking, what are all the possible things that a wink might mean? It could be an act of flirtation. Or maybe it means someone is telling a joke. Or maybe it’s simply physiological: someone got something in his or her eye. In order to fully understand the wink, we need to know more about the context. If the person winking is involved in a courting ritual, then the wink might be flirtatious. We can’t explain the wink itself without understanding the context.
Finally, folklorist and anthropologist Victor Turner guides us to communication rituals as cultural practices that reinforce and reveal cultural myths. Building on folklore studies as artistic communication studies, we can analyze the way that a culture, or cultural unit (such as a family) is able to pass their traditions and values from one generation to the next through ritualized communication practices. These cultural events all are important aspects of building a community: they provide a space where the members of a community can share values and stories, and get to know one another fully. By focusing on these cultural events, communication ethnographers are able to tell the story of a culture and identify how that culture rhetorically defines reality.
Building on these processes, rhetoric and performance studies scholar Dwight Conquergood began examining marginalized groups of society and how they performed their cultures in both everyday and ritualistic patterns, developing what came to be called performance ethnography. Note that this is not to be confused with ethnography of performance which investigates actual theatrical experience. Performance ethnography looks at how culture is performed through everyday acts, much as performance studies looks at the individual.
Ethnography of communication is focused on understanding culture, and the rhetorical processes that the culture uses to define itself and promote its longevity. This method would evolve and merge with another growing field of cultural inquiry: Cultural Studies, a critical field. In Intercultural Communication, this led to a shift toward critical ethnography, which draw from cultural and critical theories and analytic methods that strongly reflect political ideologies.
Critical ethnographers both use critical methods and apply critical theory to their ethnographic fieldwork and writing. Critical ethnographers focus on phenomena and cultural events as a way of understanding cultures. However, critical theorists incorporate self-reflexivity, or awareness of themselves as a biased researcher, into their work, and use creative writing styles and methods of data collection as a means of reinforcing both their standpoints and the politicized nature of what they see at an ethnographic site.
Critical communication ethnography then became centered on the work of Henry (Bud) Goodall. Goodall helped to develop two unique forms of ethnography that have become common in communication fields: narrative ethnography and autoethnography. Narrative ethnography reflects Fisher's narrative theory, investigating how narratives reflect ideologies and cultural roots. Narratives also illustrate political ideologies and motivations, and can tell us about how a group functions within its own perspective, and in relation to other groups and cultures.
Autoethnography is a combination of autobiographical process and ethnography. By placing one's story into a greater context of a group, it can become a process to help the individual overcome personal tragedy or experience through confession-type practice while at the same time acting as an advocative mechanism. Thus, many autoethnographies come from victims who write their own stories and place their personal narratives within a larger social context. Many authoethnographies have taken on performative aspects similar to performance art.
References
Bateson, G. (1955). A theory of play and fantasy. Psychiatric Research Reports, 2, 39-51.
Burke, K. (1969). A grammar of motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Conquergood, D. (1991). Rethinking ethnography: Towards a critical cultural politics. Communication Monographs, 58, 2, 179-194.
Fisher, W. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51, 1, 1-22.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Goodall, H. (2000). Writing the new ethnography. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hymes, D. (1964). Introduction: Toward ethnographers of communication. American Anthropologist, 66, 6, 1-34. doi:10.1525/aa.1964.66.suppl_3.02a00010.
Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Malinowski, B. (1926). Crime and custom in savage society. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Malinowski, B. (1927). Sex and repression in savage society. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Mead, M. (1928). Coming of age in Samoa. New York: William Morrow & Co.
Turner, V. (1967). The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. New York: Cornell University Press.
Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. New York: Aldine.
