Linguistic Ethnography: Studying English Language, Cultures and Practices (original) (raw)

Linguistic Ethnography: Links, Problems and Possibilities. 2007

Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2007

This paper describes the development of 'linguistic ethnography' in Britain over the last 5-15 years. British anthropology tends to overlook language, and instead, the U.K. Linguistic Ethnography Forum (LEF) has emerged from socio-and applied linguistics, bringing together a number of formative traditions (inter alia, Interactional Sociolinguistics, New Literacy Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis). The career paths and the institutional positions of LEF participants make their ethnography more a matter of getting analytic distance on what's close-at-hand than a process of getting familiar with the strange. When linked with post-structuralism more generally, this 'from-inside-outwards' trajectory produces analytic sensibilities tuned to discourse analysis as a method, doubtful about 'comprehensive' and 'exotic' ethnography, and welldisposed to practical/political intervention. LE sits comfortably in the much broader shift from mono-to inter-disciplinarity in British higher education, though the inter-disciplinary environment makes it hard to take the relationship between linguistics and ethnography for granted.

Integrating Linguistically into Danish Society

The direction of our research was met with questions of how to construct useful data, upon a topic that is largely disputed, as to whether there exist insecurities of a linguistic manner; by this we are concerned with the everyday of transnational’s, examining their issues living in Denmark. We used transcripts to create a platform for our discourse, which focuses on the individual and their everyday life and their language attainment. Moreover, this language attainment is investigated within the phenomenological nature of everyday life, put in relation to a broader sociolinguistic and discursively constructed cultural framework. In more detail, the imagined Kinship discourses are investigated sociolinguistically and phenomenologically. Our results revealed to us, the societal affects upon language learning and the code-switching that may occur, when one is under pressure to communicate, under prestigious pretense, that is deemed by society (Baldaqui 2009:2).

A Broader View of Language in School: Research from Linguistic Ethnography

Children & Society, 2009

Arguing that educational research into language and literacy has neglected the social and cultural dimensions of children's language use, this article presents a review of recent research from linguistic ethnography which combines close attention to children and teachers' language use with an analysis of context and social practice. This research reemphasises the complex role of language in children's socialisation and learning and the importance of recognising connections and disjunctions between children's language and literacy practices in and outside school, the influence of societal patterns of linguistic inequality and children and young people's uses of language among themselves.

Methodological foundations in linguistic ethnography 2014

Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 125, 2014

This paper provides a sketch of the assumptions, values, frameworks and techniques that currently characterise linguistic ethnography, and in keeping with the dynamic that makes it such a productive and appealing perspective, we will ground our account in a series of historical, institutional and/or methodological encounters, looking at the questions and possibilities that these interactions generate. So we consider the relationships between: linguistics and ethnography; elements interacting in the communicative process; linguistic ethnography and researchers from different disciplines; and linguistic ethnography and non-academic professionals.

WP125 Rampton, Maybin & Roberts 2014. Methodological foundations in linguistic ethnography

This paper provides a sketch of the assumptions, values, frameworks and techniques that currently characterise linguistic ethnography, and in keeping with the dynamic that makes it such a productive and appealing perspective, we will ground our account in a series of historical, institutional and/or methodological encounters, looking at the questions and possibilities that these interactions generate. So we will consider the relationships between: * linguistics and ethnography * elements interacting in the communicative process * linguistic ethnography and researchers from different disciplines * linguistic ethnography and non-academic professionals

The Complexities of the Field in a Linguistic Ethnographic Research

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

In critical sociolinguistics, language is viewed as a fundamentally social phenomenon that is defined discursively, rather than in terms of individual beliefs and attitudes, and because linguistic practices are themselves intersubjective. Moreover, the broader cultural, historical, and political aspects have also become relevant in the study of language, requiring new ways of addressing sociolinguistic issues. Linguistic ethnography may be a central tool in this inquiry, as it looks at everyday practices in order to understand wider social structures. In this paper, I argue that a festival as a place of encounters provides an adequate context for such research. After discussing the different concepts of the field in doing ethnographic work, I examine the online presence of the festival in question. Tusványos is an event organized in Transylvania every year, with the intention of bringing together Hungarian participants from Hungary and Romania, as well as Romanians.

Reflections on linguistic ethnography

Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2007

In his opening article, Rampton portrays Linguistic Ethnography (LE) as consisting of a broad range of work, sharing family resemblances and reflecting features of the particular niche in which it has developed. The subsequent articles explore various issues and relationships relevant to LE. There is obviously much that could be said about these contributions, from many angles, but I will focus on just a few points here that seem of significance from my perspective: the nature of LE as an approach; realism versus constructionism; and the question of methodological warrant.