A Comprehensive Guide to Discourse Analysis and Ethnography
Scollon & Scollon, Discourse and Intercultural Communication
Discourse Analysis: A Polysemic Term
Discourse analysis is considered polysemic because it encompasses multiple perspectives. On one hand, it involves the meticulous linguistic study of texts in use, focusing on their analysis and interpretation. On the other hand, discourse refers to socially shared patterns of thought, perception, and behavior reflected in diverse texts across various genres. In this latter sense, discourse analysis draws upon critical, sociocultural, sociological, and historical analysis.
Intertextuality/Interdiscursivity
All texts are inherently intertextual, representing a tapestry of voices engaged in implicit relationships with one another.
Key Concepts:
- Interdiscourse: The implicit or explicit connections between a discourse and other discourses. Interdiscursivity highlights how a discourse relates to a broader network of discourses. In any communicative act, we are situated within a multitude of discourse systems (e.g., gender, generation, profession, institution, ethnicity). Each system manifests through a complex web of discourse forms.
- Intertextuality: The explicit or implicit relationships present within a text that connect it to other texts. Intertextuality serves as a literary device, forging interrelationships between texts to enrich meaning.
Contextualization Cues: Relevance and Purpose
Contextualization cues are metacommunicative signals (particularly paralinguistic and prosodic elements like tone of voice and intonation) that shape the interpretation of primary communication. These cues can contribute to complementary schismogenesis by reinforcing existing stereotypes.
Social stereotypes significantly influence how we interpret contextualization cues. Understanding how stereotypes form is crucial to comprehending the impact of these cues on communication.
Key Concepts:
- Complementary Schismogenesis: A process in social interactions where subtle initial differences become amplified, potentially leading to a breakdown in communication between groups (e.g., racial divisions).
The perpetuation of social, economic, and racial discrimination through discourse is a social practice. This implies that communication between groups is understood based on the interpretation and use of contextualization cues. Misinterpretations of these cues can create distance and fuel schismogenesis. Furthermore, this interpretation process generates stereotypes, further exacerbating divisions between groups.
The Concept and Role of Culture
The concept of culture has undergone a transformation, becoming increasingly intertwined with other units or discourses viewed as manifestations of social practices. In discourse analysis, cultural units have dissolved into fluid forms of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Culture is now perceived as a dynamic array or complex of discursive formations.
All communication is inherently constitutive of cultural categories, highlighting the co-constructive nature of communication. Identities and meanings are shaped through the very act of interaction.
Interdiscursive Communication: Aim and Significance
Understanding how individuals, through their actions, come to claim specific identities (e.g., generational identity) amidst a multitude of other identities present in their habitus is crucial. This understanding is as important as comprehending how individuals are positioned as culturally or ethnically different from one another.
An interdiscursive approach to intercultural communication encourages researchers to move beyond preconceived notions of group membership and identity. Instead, the focus shifts to how participants, within specific circumstances, produce concepts like culture as relevant categories for exchanging interpersonal ideologies.
Mediated Discourse and Its Relation to Culture
The application of discourse analysis to intercultural communication has given rise to the concept of mediated discourse. This perspective shifts the emphasis from individuals and their interpersonal, intercultural, or interdiscursive relationships to mediated action as a form of social action. The central concern becomes social change rather than individuals in isolation.
Mantzoukas, Exploring Ethnographic Genres and Developing Validity Appraisal Tools
Ethnographic Approaches in Qualitative Research
This section explores the aims, methods of data collection and analysis of classical, critical, and interpretive ethnography in qualitative research.
1. Classical Ethnography
- Aims: To provide an accurate and objective representation of the cultural reality of the studied social or ethnic group. The goal is to offer a”thick descriptio” that elucidates the interconnectedness of various elements within the society.
- Method: Researchers immerse themselves in the group for extended periods, conducting objective participant observation. The aim is to minimize interference and observe the culture as it unfolds naturally.
- Analysis: Data analysis aims to produce authoritative accounts, leading to classifications, taxonomies, and general statements about the social phenomena under investigation.
2. Critical Ethnography
- Aims: To deconstruct, interpret, and analyze cultural reality, uncovering historical contingencies and revealing the underlying forces shaping that reality. The focus is on understanding how daily life can be transformed and empowering participants.
- Method: Data collection primarily involves confrontational, dialogical, and reflective interviews. Participants are strategically selected for their knowledge and insights. Culture is viewed as a historically situated construct. Non-participant observation and analysis of historical documents may complement interviews.
- Analysis: Data analysis employs sociological and reflective imagination, producing excerpts from interviews that are interpreted and contextualized. The analysis often culminates in the creation of images and metaphors that reframe the familiar in a new light.
3. Interpretive Ethnography
- Aims: To construct and narrate cultural reality, providing rich, detailed, and emotionally evocative accounts of participants’ worlds. The goal is to find or create meaning, critique existing realities, and envision possibilities for change. The researcher aims for personal engagement with participants to unearth meaning and convey the immediacy of the researched world.
- Method: Data collection employs multiple methods (e.g., interviews, observations, videos, pictures). The process often begins with a personal reflection from the researcher and continues across various sites and contexts. The focus is on capturing moments of cultural activity where discourses and power relations are actively produced.
- Analysis: Data analysis involves juxtaposing sites and relationships, comparing emergent themes, and constructing a coherent narrative that interweaves complex discursive issues. The reader is invited to engage with the narrative, deconstructing and reconstructing it in a creative manner.
Smart, Ethnographic-based Discourse Analysis: Uses, Issues and Prospects
Method vs. Methodology
- Method: A set of procedures for collecting and analyzing research data.
- Methodology: A broader framework that encompasses both methods and underlying assumptions about the nature of reality and knowledge.
Interpretive Ethnography in the Geertzian Tradition
This approach examines a social group’s discourse practices (in written, spoken, or symbolic forms) to understand how members perceive and navigate their shared conceptual world. The goal is to gain an insider’s perspective on the group’s interactions, beliefs, values, problem-solving strategies, knowledge creation, and learning processes.
Ethnography vs. Case Study
- Case Study: Focuses on a limited number of informants or a single significant event.
- Ethnography: Examines the local culture of a social group as a collective, producing a comprehensive account of their shared conceptual world.
Thick Description
A thick description provides a detailed account of the discursive system employed by a social group to construct their shared reality. It offers a nuanced understanding of their unique conceptual framework.
Combining Ethnographic-based Discourse Analysis
Ethnographic-based discourse analysis can be combined with other approaches within a research project, provided that the methodologies share similar social-constructionist assumptions about the nature of reality and knowledge construction.
Martin & Rose, Genre Relations
Genre Categories
Martin and Rose define various genre categories based on their communicative purposes and structural features:
- Recount: A chronological record of events, often resembling a running commentary.
- Report: A factual text that generalizes about experiences or phenomena, often drawing on research (e.g., experiments with aims, steps, results, and conclusions).
- Description: A detailed account based on firsthand observations, often infused with the author’s feelings and perspectives.
- Procedure: A text that outlines steps or instructions for accomplishing a task (e.g.,”how-t” guides).
- Just So Story: A narrative that explains the origins of something in the world.
- Anecdote: A brief story with an unexpected twist or disruption, often evoking emotional empathy.
- Explanation: Similar to a Just So Story but more scientific in nature, providing reasons for how something came to be.
- Exemplum: A narrative that presents an incident (a noteworthy event) followed by a moral judgment or reflection.
Additional Concepts from Teacher’s Presentation
Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis examines spoken and written language in use, extending beyond sentence boundaries to analyze communication exchanges. It delves into larger units of language and how they function within specific contexts.
Discourse
Discourse encompasses all forms of oral and written communication. It extends beyond the analysis of linguistic forms (syntax, morphology, etc.) to consider language in its social and cultural context. Discourse is the source of knowledge and the means by which we create and interpret new knowledge. It reflects patterns of belief, action, and language, carrying cultural nuances that shape our expressions.
Elements of Discourse Analysis
- Context: Non-linguistic factors that influence communication, including situational and cultural contexts.
- Participants: Individuals involved in the communication process, both as producers and interpreters of discourse. Their characteristics (e.g., gender, class, age) can significantly impact discourse.
- Process: The dynamic interplay of elements within a communicative interaction.
Textual Characteristics
- Adequacy/Variety: The appropriateness of language use in relation to the context, including dialectal variations and standard varieties.
- Register: The level of formality, objectivity/subjectivity, and mode (oral/written) of the text.
- Coherence: The overall sense and understandability of a text, ensuring that it is relevant and focused.
- Cohesion: The use of linguistic devices to connect ideas and sentences within a text, enhancing its coherence. Cohesive devices include:
- Lexical Cohesion (e.g., hypernymy, hyponymy, antonymy, synonymy, complementarity)
- Grammatical Cohesion (e.g., reference, ellipsis, conjunction)
Requirements of a Communicative Interaction
A communicative interaction requires the following elements: sender, message, receiver, channel, effect, context (situational and cultural), time, and place.
Genre
Martin & Rose’s Definition:
Genres are staged, goal-oriented social processes enacted through different types of texts. They help us predict how situations will unfold, manage information, and interact appropriately. Genres are staged because they involve multiple steps, goal-oriented because they aim for a specific outcome, and social because they are shaped by and for specific audiences.
Other Definitions:
- Swales: Recognizable communicative events with shared purposes within specific communities.
- Celce-Murcia & Olshtain: Characterized by communicative purpose, audience, style, and format.
Metafunctions, Register, Tenor, Field, and Mode
Metafunctions:
- Ideational: Represents reality and actions (field).
- Interpersonal: Represents interactions and relationships (tenor).
- Textual: Organizes meanings into a coherent discourse (mode).
Register:
A framework for analyzing context, encompassing field, tenor, and mode.
- Field: The social activity or domain of the discourse.
- Tenor: The relationship between interactants.
- Mode: The role of language in the communication.
Discourse Analysis and Narrative (Johnstone)
Structuralist Narratology
- Propp’s Theory: Analyzes the structure of folktales.
- Labov’s Model: Examines oral narratives of personal experience.
Narrative Clauses and Functions
- Abstract: Summarizes the narrative.
- Orientation: Introduces characters, setting, and situation.
- Complicating Action: Presents events leading to the climax.
- Resolution: Resolves the conflict or tension.
- Evaluation: Highlights the significance or unusual aspects of the story.
- Coda: Provides closure or a concluding statement.
Key Aspects of Narrative Analysis
- Narrative embeddedness
- Linguistic features of storytelling
- Motivations for telling stories
- Development of narrative skills
- Variations in narrative style and structure
Narrative Research Across Disciplines
Narrative analysis is used in various fields to understand how stories shape our understanding of the world.