Ethnography for Language Learners (original) (raw)

1980, Foreign Language Annals

ABSTRACT If language is part of culture, there is also a sense in which culture is a component of language. When going abroad to learn or practice a foreign language, students should have some awareness of the target society's ethnography. If they adopt the role of ‘foreign tourist,’ they may be treated as outsiders, whereas a basic acquaintance with proxemics, kinesics, and sociology will help them play a more profitable role. The move from one society to another may not simply be horizontal, but may also involve diagonal change from one class or status to another, without the subject's realizing it. Some familiarity with elicitation techniques, especially in distinguishing implicit background information from the surface messages in which it is embedded, can help in learning how a language is used.

Teaching ethnography as Modern Languages method: legacies and future practices for global citizens

Language Culture and Curriculum, 2019

Most modern languages degrees in the UK include a Residence Abroad component, the key aims of which are to help students acquire a greater understanding of a new language and culture and to develop research skills. While the acquisition of linguistic competences has been well documented, cultural learning on the year abroad is less well researched. This article is based on an innovative pedagogic project carried out at the University of Southampton, in which students were provided with training in ethnographic methods and digital skills prior to their year abroad. This training was designed to foreground the process of cultural encounter and learning that students go through in order to carry out their individual Year Abroad Research Projects (YARPs). The paper will present results based on our analysis of the 'raw data' collected by students for their individual ethnographic YARPs, as well as individual interviews, focus group discussions, and the students' reflective blog posts. It also draws on evidence from a semester long module entitled 'Learning about Culture: Introduction to Ethnography'. We will highlight the main areas of successful cultural learning, and the places in which students come up against obstacles in their ethnographic encounters.

Re-conceptualising Ethnography to Teach Culture in Foreign Language Classrooms

FORUM DE L’ENSEIGNANT , 2016

Ethnography in foreign language teaching is seen not as a source of material for teachers, but as a methodology to be adopted by the teachers/learners in order to learn/explore the foreign language culture. The aim of this paper is neither to emphasise the necessity to teach the target language culture nor to trace the history of teaching culture along or within a foreign language but to conceptualise an ethnographic approach to teaching culture. As a process approach to teaching culture, this approach repositions learners as researchers and researched and teachers as facilitators. Following ethnographic methodology, the learners look at culture through an ethnographer's lens. They make use of ethnographic techniques such as observations, description and interpretation of the "behavioural repertoire" of a given society to generate new knowledge.

Ethnography and Modern Languages

Modern Languages Open

order to ensure transparency in the development of this document, it arose from a Translating Cultures and Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community (School of Advanced Study) workshop hosted at the Institute of Modern Languages Research in November 2017 and the ideas within are consequently indebted to all those who contributed to the day (see Wells for details of all of the speakers at the event, in addition to F. Carpenedo, B. Spadaro and G. Wall who took detailed notes). An initial document was subsequently drafted by N. Wells and C. Forsdick, and circulated to all speakers and attendees for further comment. The authors listed alphabetically here are those who contributed with valuable additional responses, suggestions and comments and who subsequently were actively consulted and involved in producing the final version.

Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Research (2019) Chapter 1

Learning & Using Languages for Ethnographic Research, 2019

Summary Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Research breaks the silence that still surrounds learning a language for ethnographic research and in the process demystifies some of the multilingual aspects of contemporary ethnographic work. It does this by offering a set of engaging and accessible accounts of language learning and use written by ethnographers who are at different stages of their academic career. A key theme is how researchers’ experiences of learning and using other languages in fieldwork contexts relate to wider structures of power, hierarchy and inequality. The volume aims to promote a wider debate among researchers about how they themselves learn and use different languages in their work, and to help future fieldworkers make more informed choices when carrying out ethnographic research using other languages. Review: Power, privilege, hierarchy, and dependence shape and often complicate ethnographers’ forays into unfamiliar languages. These thoughtful, reflexive essays, addressing an impressive range of field experiences, incisively reveal and explore the shifting ground of the authors’ linguistic interactions in relation to dynamics that are often invisible, usually risky, and always unpredictable. - Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University, USA This refreshing collection of articles reflects on issues of language in ethnographic research that anthropologists have tended to sweep under the carpet: The delicate issue of the ethnographer’s language competence; challenges of language learning; complications of multilingual fieldwork settings; and the ethnographer’s anxieties related to their own incomplete language mastery. Highly valuable for anyone doing ethnography in a language that is not one’s own! - Axel Borchgrevink, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway What does learning a language well enough to conduct research really require? This treasure trove of fifteen rich case studies takes readers on a global tour of anthropologists’ searching inquiries into their sophisticated linguistic travels and travails. The joys and confounding challenges of mastering a foreign language will never again appear either opaque or generic. - Alma Gottlieb, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Linguistic Ethnography: Studying English Language, Cultures and Practices

The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies, 2018

The understanding of languages as bounded, enumerable codes closely tied to distinct national and ethnic cultures has been questioned from a range of perspectives for the past three or four decades. Alternative ways of seeing and studying language have been contributed by research affiliated with the strand that has become known as linguistic ethnography and combines ethnographic methodology (observations, interviews etc.) with micro-analysis of recorded interactions (employing tools from conversation analysis and linguistics). This chapter unfolds the theoretical and empirical directions suggested by the linguistic ethnographic approach through examples of situated use of forms of English from research conducted among youth in heterogeneous urban contexts in Denmark. Through this lens the chapter presents the foundation for the recent debates about the conceptualisation of language and discusses their relevance to the study of English. Thereby the chapter illustrates the potential of starting with the lived local realities of language users and linking these to larger-scale socio-cultural processes through an ethnographic perspective and a close investigation of contexts.

Learning languages as culture critically through ethnographic interviewing: INTRODUCTION

Eighth International Conference on the Development and Assessment of Intercultural Competence (University of Arizona, CERCLL), 2022

Note: After viewing this Introduction, see the video "Learning languages as culture critically through ethnographic interviewing: PRESENTATION" available on Academia.edu or at http://boylan.it/icc/talk/index.htm _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ENGLISH_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Results of an experimental module in English for Intercultural Communication (at Sapienza University of Rome, 2020) based on the online and classroom materials created for the EU project Picture and featuring real/virtual encounters with native speakers. Links to materials used and student results. ITALIAN________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I risultati di un modulo sperimentale di inglese per la comunicazione interculturale (presso La Sapienza Università di Roma, 2020) usando i materiali cartacei e online sviluppati per il progetto UE “Picture” e bastato su incontri reali/virtuali con nativi parlanti. Sono forniti link ai materiali e ai risultati degli studenti.

Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Research

2019

In this chapter I discuss several ways in which language learning was a valuable process in itself for my research in Morocco. Pre-research language learning cannot be expected to completely mitigate the risks and limitations of being an outsider in a foreign research context. However, I found that cultural learning was an inherent and invaluable element of my language preparation in both French and Moroccan Arabic. Unpicking the illusionary goal of becoming fluent in the language(s) and culture(s) of research contexts, I illustrate how some of the costs of learning a language may not be as insurmountable as many assume. I show how my stay at a language school provided a forgiving and powerful environment for research preparation, acting as a variety of rehearsal space. Finally, exploring the value of untranslatable and in-between linguistic terms, I consider how they helped build an understanding of the social phenomena of my research.

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Ethnography, linguistic ethnography, and participant observation

Kubokawa, J. M., Day, A. E., & De Costa, P. I., (in press). Ethnography, linguistic ethnography, and participant observation. The encyclopedia of applied linguistics. Wiley. , 2025