Defining the ethnography of communication

“Communication” in antropologhy and linguistics 

The ethnography of comunications builds a single integrated framework language communication has a central rule in both antropologycal and linguistic studies. Linguistic and antropologhy are diciplines whose data, problems, methods, and theories are often seen as clearly distinct from one another. Since language is the central means by which people communicate with one another in everyday life, understanding communication is an important goal for linguists. The understanding of communication is also important for antropologhists : the way we communicate is part of our cultural repertoire for making sense of – and inteacting with – the world.  Antropologhists often ignore language as cultural behavior and/or knowledge, neglecting the way that language is a system of use whose rules norms are as integral a part of culture as any other system of knowledge and behavior. Thus, the status of linguistic communication as a grammatical system that is used for communication and that is part of culture – and a framework for analyzing it as such – was surprisingly neglected prior to Hymmes’ work. We noted above that antropologists often pay little attention to language cultural behavior and/or knowledge. Note that it has asssumed here that “behavior” and “knowledge” are both “part of” culture. Culture thus comprises a general “world view” : a set of assumptions and believes that orient and organize the way people think, feel, and act.

 

Methodology : an etic grid for ethnography

The methodology is based on distinction between ‘emic’ and ‘etic. Linguists studying the sound system of an unfamiliar language try to discover phonemic patterns with the help of a phonetic classification. The classificatory grid that Hymes (1972b) proposed is known as SPEAKING grid: each letter is an obbreviation for a different possible component of communication. The SPEAKING grid can be used to discover a local taxonomy of communicative ‘units’ that are ‘in some recognizable way bounded of integral’ (Hymes 1972b: 56). The largestsuch unit is the speech situation: the social occasion in which speech may occur. The smallest unit is the speech act: although Hymes (1972b) does nit explicity define this, his example include act that can be defined through their illocutionary force, as well as those that cannot be do defined.