Linguistic Ethnography: methodological issues
Seminar 4 March 2006
9:45-4:15pm - Central Meeting Room 1, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.
Programme
9.45
Arrivals and coffee
10.05
Introduction: Janet Maybin
10.15
Keith Richards: Love, hate and indifference: The impact of talk about relationships on the
interpretation of talk in relationships
10.55
Moira Inghilleri: Macro social theory and linguistic ethnography: a bridge (too far)?
11.35
(i) Khadeegha Albouezi and Kate Pahl: Dilemmas of translation and identity:
ethnographic research in multilingual homes
(ii) Ellen Van Praet: Writing a Linguistic Ethnography: a different kind of journey
12.30
Small group discussion
1.00
Lunch
1.45
Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Mike Baynham: “Big” stories and “small” stories: reflections on
methodological/theoretical issues in narrative research
2.35
Alexandra Jaffe: Standards of Evidence and Ethnographic Methods
3.25
Tea
3.40
Response: Brian Street
4.00
Final remarks
4.15
Close
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Abstracts
Keith Richards ~ Centre for English Language Teacher Education, University of Warwick
Love, hate and indifference: The impact of talk about relationships on the interpretation
of talk in relationships
Using examples from two different research sites, this paper explores the relationship between the analysis of
recorded interaction and insights derived from other data sources, showing how retrospectively reconfigured
relationships influence interpretive positioning.
While issues of trust, researcher identity and field relationships receive considerable attention in the literature
(for recent examples, see Russell 2005, Gubrium and Koro-Ljungberg 2005), far less attention has been paid
to issues of deliberate or unintentional deception, except where interviews are concerned (see, for example,
Gardner 2001, Sikes 2000). This paper examines the effects of two cases where undisclosed relationships were
discovered towards the end of the data collection process and explores the implications of this for different
data collection methods. In particular, it engages with the ongoing debate on the use of contextual information
when interpreting talk in interaction, a methodological issue central to linguistic ethnography.
The first of the two core cases in the paper shows how relevant contextual information derived from fieldnotes
led to a reinterpretation of a previously discrepant exchange involving teachers in a staffroom and the
subsequent bracketing out of one participant’s perspective on an important topic of staffroom talk. A second
case reveals how interview data revealed a hitherto unsuspected antipathy that did not, as in the first case,
manifest itself in professional interaction but prompted a re-interpretation of hitherto neglected personal
interaction.
The paper concludes with a discussion of methodological implications for linguistic ethnographers,
specifically with regard to researcher identity and the relationship between textual and contextual analysis.
References
Gardner, G. 2001. Unreliable memories and other contingencies: Problems with biographical knowledge.
Qualitative Research, 1(2): 185-204.
Sikes, P. 2000. ‘Truth’ and ‘Lies’ revisited. British Educational Research Journal, 26(2): 257-70.
Gubrium, E. and Koro-Ljungberg, M. 2005. Contending with border making in the social constructionist
interview. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(5): 689-715.
Russell, L. 2005. It’s a question of trust: balancing the relationship between students and teachers in
ethnographic fieldwork. Qualitative Research, 5(2): 181-99
Moira Inghilleri ~ English and Comparative Literature Department, Goldsmiths College
Macro social theory and linguistic ethnography:
a bridge (too far)?
This paper will consider the role that macro-theoretical perspectives can contribute to the development of
research identified as 'linguistic ethnography'. It will consider this issue through on-going research on
interpreting activity in the political asylum system in the UK.
This research has been concerned to theorise configurations of the social in relation to local, interactional
contexts of interpreting throughout the asylum system and to consider how interpreters, as pivotal players in
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these contexts, contribute to the production or reproduction of the existent social order. While the primary
focus is on the macro-institutional, however, the approach is empirical.
Data is derived from an ethnographic approach, including observation of relevant sites and interviewing of key
participants drawn from each level of organisational structure. Bourdieu's notions of field and habitus lend
important theoretical support to the view taken in the research of interpreting as a socially constituted activity.
Rather than taking micro-textual features per se as the primary locus of data, this research takes the macrosocial as its starting point in order to address the fundamental issue of what constraints there are on
interpreting more broadly.
Its methodological concerns are not with the micro-level features of interpreted exchanges themselves, but
with how these exchanges are socially and institutionally-framed. The perspective taken is that the ways
interpreters work – the particular ‘communicative competencies’ that they bring to an interpreted event - are
influenced by the social and political contexts in which both their work and the training that may inform their
professional practice occurs. It maintains that interpreters – though not unreflexively – are caught up in larger
social configurations of power and control – both internal and external to their professional field of practice.
References
Inghilleri, M. (2003) Habitus, field and discourse: Interpreting as a socially-situated activity,International
Journal of Translation Studies, 15, 2, 243-268.
Inghilleri, M. (2005) 'Mediating Zones of Uncertainty: interpreter agency, the interpreting habitus and political
asylum adjudication', The Translator, 11, 1, 69-85. (ISSN 1355-6509)
Khadeegha Albouezi & Kate Pahl ~ School of Education, University of Sheffield
Dilemmas of translation and identity:
ethnographic research in multilingual homes
This presentation will draw on ethnographic research in multilingual settings, and focus on life history work in
homes.
The first study is of women’s life histories and literacy practices at home, drawing on observations and
interviews with women from the Yemeni community in Sheffield. The second is a study of a Turkish woman’s
written life stories, which forms part of a longer study of the family’s communicative practices at home.
The presentation will explore how language issues affected the informants’ views of the researchers and
presented ethical dilemmas. In one case, the researcher spoke the same language, Arabic, as the informants
and was identified as being similar to them. Issues then arose as assumptions were made about what the
researcher would implicitly know or not know. The researcher in this case found that sensitive data was
implicitly understood by the informants as being unusable for the research study, creating an interpretative
challenge. In the case of the Turkish household, translation issues became imperative, as the type of written
language used for the life stories needed careful and sensitive understanding, embedded as it was within the
life story of the informant and in the end translators agreed that the researcher herself should learn Turkish. In
both cases, ethical issues arose as a result of these experiences.
The focus of the presentation will be on the reflexive space of linguistic ethnography in multilingual homes of
women, and how women researchers negotiate that space, and engage with these dilemmas.
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Ellen Van Praet ~ English Department, Ghent University, Belgium
Writing a Linguistic Ethnography: a different kind of journey
In many respects, a linguistic ethnographer embarks on a “different kind of journey” (Tyler, 1986:140). The
vicissitudes of the field force a linguist to step back from the traditionally “one-sided monologism of linguistic
science” (Bakhtin, 1973) and replace the epistemological ideal of a neutral view from nowhere by multiple
views, each situated somewhere. In a Bakhtinian sense, a linguistic ethnographer commences on a journey
which is essentially and inescapably dialogic. Instead of an objectivist interrogation of arbitrarily defined
others, he enters into a dialogue with informants and becomes an integral part of the research area.
Drawing on the experience of writing a linguistic ethnography of weekly meetings in a British embassy, this
paper focuses on the linguistic ethnographer’s methodological concern, struggle and attempt to render ‘the
dialogue’ and make the reader aware of the often invisible interactive and dynamic process which constitutes
ethnography, a process where informants are active and influential, and where a researcher constitutes an
integral part of the research area “moving and acting within it, rather than drawn from a transcendent,
detached point” (Marcus, 1994:567).
Mike Baynham ~ University of Leeds
Alexandra Georgakopoulou ~ Kings College, London
“Big” stories and “small” stories: reflections on methodological/theoretical issues in
narrative research
For us methodological issues are very closely interrelated with theoretical issues: a given theoretical stance
opens up particular methodological possibilities and choices, while foreclosing others. We are specifically
interested in the theory of how narrative constructs identity, agency and social space/positioning in both
transitory and enduring ways and in a variety of contexts. Our starting point is that narrative and identity
theory needs to move beyond constraining models of conventional generically based narrative analysis
towards more distributed, dynamic and nuanced accounts. We will build our presentation around the notion of
small and big stories: small stories typically though not exclusively occurring in ordinary conversational
exchanges (Georgakopoulou 2006a, 2006b, fthc; Georgakopoulou & Bamberg, 2005) and big stories
(lifestories, autobiographical accounts) again typically but not exclusively elicited in interview contexts
(Baynham 2004,2005 and forthcoming). Neither of these fit the canonical Labovian, short range narrative of
past personal experience of landmark events which, in retrospect, now seems strangely decontextualized. At
the same time small narratives tend to be researched within the terms set by post-Labovian narrative analysis,
at best remaining on the fringes of inquiry into narrative and identity, while at worst being treated as not
narrative at all.
What happens when narrative analysis decisively shifts focus away from highly bounded and canonical
narrative genres and begins to see narrative as multiple genres embedded in a wide range of social practices
and distributed through discourse? Ethnographic interview data where big stories are typically elicited for a
range of purposes such as the study of self-identity and spatialization practices have come to be viewed as a
methodology of choice across a wide spectrum of the social sciences. Small stories on the other hand tend to
be identified in everyday talk partly on the basis of being defined (& looked out for) as "a format of
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telling"/talk-in-interaction (i.e. raising interesting issues of misalignment, co-construction, and identity-atwork).
Given the relative lack of cross-fertilization between narrative and identity analysis of big and small stories,
we will ask how a linguistic ethnography perspective can facilitate dialogue and theory construction, perhaps
indeed cutting across and problematizing the distinction between big and small stories? How can small stories,
understood as momentary and fleeting shifts into narrativity, be seen as a characteristic feature of the
ethnographic interview, exhibiting and occasioning conversational features of alignment and identity work,
while casual conversation itself can be the occasion for “the big story”. Our practical issues for discussion are:
a) how do you identify and analyze such fleeting and transitory small stories in both interviews and
conversation b) what analytical categories work with big stories told over time that seem to blend and shift
into other kinds of talk?
References
Baynham,M. (2004) "Narrative in Time and Space: beyond 'backdrop' accounts of narrative orientation".
Narrative Enquiry, 13/2, 347-366.
Baynham, M. (2005) “Network and Agency in the Migration Stories of Moroccan Women”. In Baynham,
M.& De Fina, A .(eds.) Dislocations/Relocations: Narratives of Displacement, Manchester: St Jerome.
Baynham, M. (2006 forthcoming) “Performing self, family and community in Moroccan narratives of
migration and settlement.” To be published in De Fina,A., D. Schiffrin &M. Bamberg (eds.) Discourse
and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Georgakopoulou, A. (2006a, forthcoming) “Small and large identities in narrative (inter)-action”. To be
published in De Fina,A., D. Schiffrin &M. Bamberg (eds.) Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Georgakopoulou, A. (2006b, forthcoming) “The other side of the story: Towards a narrative analysis of
narratives-in-interaction” Discourse and Society 8(2).
Georgakopoulou, A. & Bamberg, M. (2005) “Small is beautiful: small stories as a new perspective in narrative
analysis”. Paper presented to the 9th International Pragmatics Association Conference, Riva del Garda,
10-15 July 2005.
Its pervasiveness extends well beyond interview and conversational contexts, and is encountered
for example in classroom and institutional discourse but this is beyond the scope of our paper.
Alexandra Jaffe ~ Department of Lingusitics, California State University
Standards of Evidence and Ethnographic Methods
Drawing on the author's own research on Corsican bilingual schools, this paper explores the relationship
between ethnographic research practices and sound standards of evidence for analytical claims. The
presentation will consider time, breadth, intensity, and systematicity. I hope to illustrate how sustained and
systematic observations over time make it possible for the ethnographer to assess behaviors/events at a
specific moment in light of histories of interaction, particulars of relationships between people, histories of
individual practice, explicitly expressed philosophies or ideals—not to mention histories that go beyond the
ethnographic moment (for example, personal and professional trajectories and patterns of socialization or
apprenticeship; intergroup relations etc.).
Time depth also allows the ethnographer to make empirically grounded assessments of whether a particular
utterance or event or interaction is widespread/habitual/ representative vs. relatively unusual—either for an
individual, or for a collectivity. Both the unusual and the habitual can be telling examples, but they are telling
in different ways, and it is crucial to be able to make appropriate distinctions.
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The second theme, breadth of ethnographic research, clearly relates to an ideal that can only ever be partially
realized, particularly in complex societies: that the ethnographer's goal should be to try to come to a grasp of
the wholeness of the lives of the people being studied. That means attempting to observe those people in
multiple contexts, or to observe multiple aspects of a particular setting (for example, an institutional one). The
impossibility of doing this fully is one of the constant frustrations of the ethnographic project, but it is one that
should be an enduring reminder of the limits of any individual ethnographer's understanding.
Finally, I want to emphasize that though there are many emergent and contingent dimensions of ethnographic
research, ethnographic observations, interviews and other data collection can be held to standards of rigorous,
systematic research design.
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