Celia Roberts-Language Learners As Ethnographers (2001)

MODERN LANGUAGES IN PRACTICE 16
Series Editor: Michael Grenfell
Language Learners
as Ethnographers
Celia Roberts, Michael Byram,

Ana Barro, Shirley Jordan and Brian Street
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD

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1111
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3
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5 Contents
6
7
8 Part I Language Learning and Ethnography: Theory and Practice
9
1011 1 New Goals 3
1 Language learners 3
2 New times 5
3111 Language learning as social practice 8
4 Language learning and ethnography 10
5 The Ealing ethnography research project 12
6 Purposes and audiences for this book 13
7
8 2 Introducing Cultural Learning into the Language
9 Curriculum 18
20111 Cultural work 18
1 Cultural learning and communicative language teaching 24
2 Cultural studies and language learning 26
3 Ethnography and the intercultural speaker 29
4 The intercultural speaker and cross-cultural communication 31
5 The integration of language and cultural studies in
6 higher education 32
7 Language learning for mobility 33
8 Language lecturers as ethnographers 35
9 Intercultural competence and ethnographic eldwork 36
30111 Learning theories and outcomes 38
1
2 3 Theoretical Issues in Language and Cultural Practices 44
3 Why bother with theory? 44
4 Functional and constructivist perspectives of culture and
5 language 46
6 A cognitive view of culture 50
7 A symbolic view of culture 51
8 A critical view of culture 52
9 Culture is a verb 54
40 Language-and-cultural practices 55
41111 Interactional sociolinguistics 56
iii
iv Contents
1111 4 Representations, Discourses and Practices 64

2 Issues of ethnicity and nationality 64
3 Linguistic relativity 69
4 Discourse, text and practice 77
5 Non-verbal communication and use of social space 83
6 Travelling and the intercultural speaker 85
7
8 5 Ethnography for Linguists 88
9 Ethnography in anthropology 88
1011 Fieldwork 91
1 Ethnography for linguists 94
2
3111 Part II The Ealing Ethnography Project: A Case Study
4
5 6 Teaching Ethnography 101
6 Ethnography as staff development 101
7 Fieldwork at rst hand 103
8 Generating teaching materials 108
9 Evaluation and generalisation 112
20111
1 7 Developing the Principles for an Ethnography Course 116
2 Some fundamental principles 116
3 Looking at everyday life culturally and
4 ethnographically 118
5 Developing a conceptual framework 128
6 Developing an ethnographic method 139
7
8 8 The Ethnography Class 151
9 Introduction: Local level politics 151
30111 Ethnography in the classroom 154
1 A typical session: Local level politics 155
2 Links to ethnography projects 172
3 Class diaries 174
4 Assessment 176
5
6 9 The Student Ethnography Projects 185
7 Ethnography projects: Some examples 186
8 The home ethnography 188
9 Some characteristics of ethnography projects 191
40 Valuing the process 197
41111 Assessment procedures 204
Contents v
1111 10 The Year Abroad: An Ethnographic Experience 210

2 Student interviews 210
3 In the eld 212
4 Preparation and the real thing 214
5 Data collection 215
6 The writing process 219
7 Living the ethnographic life 222
8 Language acquisition 226
9 Summing up 227
1011
1 11 Conclusions and New Perspectives 229
2 Ethnographers as intercultural speakers 229
3111 Individual development in the year abroad 235
4 From language learning to intercultural interaction 238
5 Language learners as ethnographers: A generalisable
6 approach? 241
7
8 Bibliography 248
9 Index 261
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4 Chapter 1
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6 New Goals
7
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1011
Language Learners
1
2 In recent years, language learners have come to be described in terms
3111 of cultural mediators, border-crossers, negotiators of meaning, inter-
4 cultural speakers and such like. Language learning is becoming
5 increasingly dened in cultural terms and these new names and targets
6 for language learners imply a reconceptualisation of the language
7 learning endeavour. In this book, drawing on the developing frame-
8 works for cultural studies in language learning, we add a further name
9 to the list: language learners as ethnographers.
20111 Ethnography can be broadly described as the study of a groups social
1 and cultural practices from an insiders perspective. It is both a method
2 involving the detailed observation and description of particular forms
3 of behaviour and a written (and sometimes audio-visual) account based
4 on social and cultural theories. So, it combines both an experiential
5 element in which ethnographers participate in the life of a community,
6 and an intellectual element, in which theoretical concepts are used and
7 then developed, in order to write culture (Clifford & Marcus, 1986).
8 The attraction of ethnographic principles and practice for language
9 learning lies in this combination of the experiential and intellectual
30111 which are so often presented as dichotomous in language programmes.
1 As Kramsch (1993) suggests, language learning has not been helped by
2 dichotomies such as content versus skills, teacher versus learner centred-
3 ness, and indeed, language versus culture. She advocates, instead,
4 multiple options and, along with the recent literature on cultural studies
5 in foreign language learning, a multidisciplinary approach.
6 An ethnographic approach to language learning is multi-disciplinary
7 in that it draws on social and linguistic anthropology and aspects of
8 sociolinguistics. Conceptual frameworks are developed for observing and
9 understanding daily life in an environment where the language in ques-
40 tion is spoken by native (and other) speakers. This approach also implies
41111 training in methods of observation, analysis and writing which engage
3
4 Language Learners as Ethnographers
1111 learners in a process of encountering otherness and representing that

2 experience not as a set of facts but as one interpretation mediated through
3 their own cultural understandings.
4 The ethnographer goes out into the eld a cluster of huts on a
5 small atoll or the kitchens of a neighbouring housing estate in order
6 to participate in the lives of a specic group and learn about their
7 everyday affairs and what gives meaning to them. Given that language
8 learners will often visit a country or countries where the language they
9 are learning is widely used, they too have a eld in which to partici-
1011 pate and observe. The opportunities for some period abroad as a visitor,
1 on a school exchange or as part of a university course are increasing
2 (Freed, 1995). This is not only evident in Europe, with European Union
3111 student mobility schemes, but in many other parts of the world including
4 the USA, Japan, Latin America and Australia.
5 The idea of using such periods abroad as an opportunity to develop
6 cultural learning by undertaking an ethnographic project is the theme
7 of this book. The programme developed at Thames Valley University,
8 Ealing, in London, as part of a modern languages degree, is used as a
9 case study to illuminate the notion of the language learner as ethnog-
20111 rapher and to illustrate how this idea can be realised within the
1 constraints and opportunities of an undergraduate degree course. A
2 somewhat similar approach has also been developed at university level
3 (Jurasek, 1996), for upper secondary school level (Byram & Morgan
4 et al., 1994; Baumgratz-Gangl, 1990), for teacher education purposes
5 (Kane, 1991; Zarate, 1991), for lower secondary school students (Snow
6 & Byram, 1997; Dark et al., 1997), and for younger learners in a bilin-
7 gual setting (Heller, 1994). There are also interesting connections with
8 the general idea of the student as ethnographer in a range of educa-
9 tional settings, not specically concerned with second or foreign language
30111 learning (Heath, 1983; Egan-Robertson & Bloome, 1998).
1 The case study is focused on advanced language learners under-
2 graduates who spend a compulsory year abroad as part of an applied
3 languages degree. Both the intellectual demands of the ethnography
4 course and the level of linguistic and communicative competence
5 required to undertake and write an extended ethnographic study in the
6 foreign language pre-suppose a certain level of linguistic and educa-
7 tional sophistication. However, the experience of the project suggests it
8 is clearly possible to adapt aspects of the ethnographic approach to upper
9 secondary school level and to other levels, and we hope that this book
40 will act as a stimulus for further creative adaptations. We leave the
41111 notion of advanced level deliberately vague since there is no particular
New Goals 5
1111 stage language learners must reach before they are ready to take on the
2 ethnographic approach. Our experience and those of others (Jurasek,
3 1996) is that those students with the most advanced language skills do
4 not necessarily undertake the most interesting ethnographic projects or
5 produce the best ethnographic assignments.
6 Nonetheless, although there is no self-evident relationship between
7 level of language skill and cultural learning, the central message of this
8 book is that language and cultural learning are not separate areas of
9 learning: cultural learning is language learning, and vice versa. Moreover,
1011 it is no accident that the cultural component of language learning should
1 have begun to receive some attention at a time when issues of language
2 and culture and their relation to notions of identity are being radically
3111 re-thought. At a practical level, the evidence of the case study presented
4 in this book suggests that introducing an ethnographic approach can
5 contribute to enhanced language learning.
6 Although the approach in this book focuses on modern language
7 students and the period of residence abroad, we live in complex and
8 turbulent times when cultural learning is an experience for everyone.
9 The multilingual, multicultural environments which are typical of urban
20111 sites in late modernity provide a continuing source of intercultural
1 contact and learning.
2
3
New Times
4
5 A group of writers within the tradition of cultural studies coined the
6 expression new times in their analysis of the dispersal, fragmentation
7 and conict experienced in the political, economic and cultural life at
8 the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-rst.
9 In the new times in which we live, the old certainties around partic-
30111 ular social class, ethnic, national and other groupings and identities have
1 fallen apart. In their place are new alliances and the formation of new
2 identities. As boundaries are crossed and new maps of social and cultural
3 life are drawn and redrawn, so there is more turbulence, more ambiva-
4 lence and more negotiation is needed.
5 This cultural analysis of change and difference in late modernity can
6 be added to the widely reported changes in the economy, in communi-
7 cations and in the linguistic and cultural elements of urban societies (cf.
8 Kress, 1985). The global village and the internet superhighway have
9 created networks of communication throughout the technological world.
40 The market economy and the enterprise culture lead business to sell to
41111 ever more varied markets. And most fundamental of all, the increasingly
1111 multiethnic, multilingual urban communities which are a commonplace

2 of the late twentieth century world create rich resources for encoun-
3 tering and learning about otherness (Hallam & Street, 2000). But they
4 also produce conditions for marked social stratication and inequality.
5 Issues of diversity and difference within power relations, of contested
6 identities and of the need for tolerance and mutual understanding are
7 the stuff of both everyday and academic discourse.
8 The quest for tolerance and an understanding of diversity are, of
9 course, part of a general liberal ethic of harmony and equality. This is
1011 reected in many recent language curricular statements and is seen,
1 increasingly, as a necessary goal of language learning. The new times
2 studies add an intellectual analysis to the understanding of difference
3111 and otherness. In particular, the studies on race and ethnicity (Bhabha,
4 1990; Hall, 1992) critique the stereotyping of national groups and the
5 commonly held assumptions that national groups speak one language
6 and have one culture. The idea of groups having xed and essential
7 characteristics are challenged as new solidarities within multilingual
8 societies are formed (Street, 1993). The experience of living with differ-
9 ence as part of everyday life, of using ethnicity as a means of highlighting
20111 or down-playing a particular aspect of social identity, is a signicant
1 part of youth culture in most urban settings (Hewitt, 1986; Rampton,
2 1995).
3 One purpose of this book is to claim the experience of difference and
4 dispersal as a central element in the process of learning for advanced
5 language learners. Many language learners already speak several
6 languages or are growing up in multilingual societies where language
7 and ethnic differences are a part of youth culture. They can draw on
8 these experiences in developing a foreign language, and as they interact
9 more in the foreign language and with speakers and writers of it, so
30111 their own identities and sense of self may be further challenged. The
1 traditional binary divide between them and us, which may already
2 be put in question by the multilingual society in which they live, comes
3 under further pressure as they move towards bilingual competence.
4 The idea of new solidarities and of living with difference can, there-
5 fore, be extended to the experience of using the foreign language and
6 interacting with those who speak it. Language-and-culture learning
7 involves a repositioning of the self both intellectually and at the level
8 of felt reality, the apprehension of relationships and material reality
9 and their impact on us as thinking, feeling beings (Althusser, 1971). In
40 this way, becoming part of another groups way of looking at the world,
41111 by learning some of their language varieties, combines more traditional
New Goals 7
1111 priorities of cultural harmony with a more recent cultural and critical
2 analysis of changing boundaries and identities in the 1990s and the begin-
3 ning of the twenty-rst century.
4 The global economy and the rapid pace of change in international and
5 intranational communications have raised many questions about the use
6 of a lingua franca. Many language students will be learning a new
7 language in order to communicate with others who may be native
8 speakers of it or who are also using it as a second or foreign language
9 (Pennycook, 1994; Clyne, 1995). In contexts where a second language
1011 is used as a local lingua franca, for example in certain domains in
1 Francophone Africa or the use of English in Southern India, there is a
2 strong case for curricular content and textbooks which reect styles of
3111 speaking and sociocultural knowledge appropriate to such contexts. But
4 other learners are developing the foreign language in order to commu-
5 nicate internationally. Tying language to culture, it has been argued, is
6 irrelevant in these contexts. The argument is that what learners need
7 is a culture-free language which can be used as a neutral tool with
8 speakers from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. We
9 argue, here, that there is no such thing as a neutral culture-free language
20111 and that what students need is more cultural sensitivity and under-
1 standing, not less. In other words, for many language learners, one of
2 the main goals is intercultural communicative competence.
3 The idea of interculturality acknowledges that communication is
4 always a cultural process and that communicating in a foreign (and in
5 some contexts a second) language involves mediating and establishing
6 relationships between ones own and other cultures. Byram (1997a)
7 suggests that such mediation means that learners need a point of refer-
8 ence outside their own local practices in order to compare and contrast
9 their own ways of interacting and signifying meaning with those outside
30111 their own social group. The issue is what points of reference should be
1 chosen? In developing language learners as ethnographers, a range of
2 different cultural contexts are used, selected on the basis of how well
3 they illustrate the key concepts and methods of the course. For example,
4 students may learn about the housewives in a small village in the Valloire
5 region of France, about the system of patronage in southern Spain, or
6 about the structure of meal times in a British working-class community.
7 The goal is to develop critical cultural awareness (Byram, 1997a)
8 through a process of comparing and contrasting so that when learners
9 come to use the foreign or second language as a lingua franca, they can
40 acknowledge, and have some measure of understanding, that a common
41111 language does not iron out differences and may, indeed, cause further
1111 misunderstandings that do not come to light in a supposedly neutral

2 code. Speakers bring their social identities and their learned ways of
3 using the lingua franca to any intercultural encounter; they do not bring
4 a neutral tool. For this reason, whatever the purpose of language learning
5 may be, the cultural and social dimensions are an essential part.
6 To sum up, the conditions of late modernity require new qualities of
7 the language learner and so a new curriculum, one in which intercul-
8 tural communication and understanding are given priority and students
9 develop intellectual tools to understand the cultural diaspora (Hall,
1011 1990) of which many are themselves a part. Not surprisingly, this is
1 reected in recent policy statements. The notion of cultural learning,
2 cultural studies, sociocultural competence and intercultural commu-
3111 nication are included in policy initiatives on language learning in the
4 UK, in France and Germany and a number of other European countries,
5 the USA, Canada and Australia, and in the documents of international
6 bodies such as the Council of Europe, and UNESCO (for example, Delors,
7 1996; Standards for Foreign Language Learning, 1996; Stern, 1992; van Ek
8 & Trim, 1991). Important though these statements are, realising them as
9 practical action has only just begun. This book is a contribution towards
20111 that goal.
1
2
Language Learning as Social Practice
3
4 The increasing interest in the social and cultural aspects of language
5 learning marks a new turn in theory and research on second language
6 learning and second language acquisition (SLA). Language within the
7 SLA research tradition has tended to mean grammar, and acquisition
8 has been dened in cognitive and psycholinguistic terms (Ellis, 1994;
9 Klein, 1984). Although there has been research on language use in social
30111 interaction, it is largely seen as a means of understanding aspects of the
1 learners linguistic code (Gass & Varonis, 1985; Hatch, 1983; Long, 1983).
2 Recently, there has been more interest in pragmatic and sociocultural
3 theories in SLA (Kasper, 1994; Lantolf & Pavlenko, 1995; Lantolf, 1999)
4 and it may be that at least one strand of SLA will conceptualise the
5 language learning process as a social practice. If this interest continues
6 to develop, then the kind of theories of language learning which
7 underpin this book will connect more closely to at least some approaches
8 within SLA.
9 Some aspects of SLA have drawn on the social psychology literature.
40 But the issues of social identity and acculturation from this litera-
41111 ture tend to deal either with the motivation of individual learners to
New Goals 9
1111 acculturate or with generalisations about groups divorced from any

2 insider perspective on their social relations and interactions (Gardner,
3 1985; Giles & Byrne, 1982; Schumann, 1978). The central concern, there-
4 fore, with cognitive models of SLA and psychological models of
5 integration has tended, until recently, to sideline language as social and
6 cultural practice.
7 The assumption has been that what is important is what is going on
8 in peoples heads, as if language development was a private and indi-
9 vidual achievement. Yet recent studies of language and literacy learning
1011 show it is a social endeavour, often most effective when it is the result
1 of activities in actual situations. This situated learning (Lave & Wenger,
2 1991) can be contrasted with much foreign language learning. Although
3111 survival skills are taught at basic and intermediate levels, at more
4 advanced levels, the foreign language experience becomes increasingly
5 cognitive. Students know a lot about French, German, English or Japanese
6 but the learning no longer connects with the social practices of their
7 everyday life in their rst or dominant language. An obvious exception
8 to this is communicative language teaching at advanced levels, to which
9 we shall return in a later chapter. However, communicative approaches
20111 tend to take a sociolinguistic rather than a sociocultural perspective,
1 focusing on language behaviour without considering the practices and
2 knowledge which give meaning to this behaviour. So whether language
3 learners are studying grammar, appropriate language use, translation,
4 political institutions, the economy or the literature of the target language
5 and culture, there is little opportunity to relate these activities to their
6 habits of thinking, feeling, interacting or valuing associated with their
7 own everyday language(s) and communities. Using a foreign language
8 is not experienced as a social practice until students nd themselves in
9 an environment where the language is all around them, usually in a
30111 foreign country.
1 This book argues that foreign language learning can be a social prac-
2 tice, and so more meaningful and motivating, if it is based on a model
3 of language socialisation. The concept of language socialisation describes
4 the process whereby a child becomes an emergent member of the
5 community in which they are growing up (Ochs and Schieffelin, 1979).
6 It involves both the socialisation required to use language and the process
7 of socialisation through language. The former is concerned with how to
8 use language in specic interactional sequences how to become commu-
9 nicatively competent and the latter with the indirect means of
40 developing sociocultural knowledge (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1979; Schieffelin
41111 & Ochs, 1986). This is a central aspect of primary socialisation. Once at
1111 school, children are expected to learn the institutional practices of

2 schooling and schooled ways of knowing things. This is widely known
3 as secondary socialisation (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). It can also describe
4 the process whereby a young person or adult gradually develops the
5 capacity to use language in ways which make them acceptable members
6 within a new community which they have joined.
7 Although the foreign language learner may not be joining a new
8 community in any permanent way, their goal is to understand the social
9 practices of that community and to behave in ways which will allow
1011 some continuing relationship with it. These are the goals which have
1 led to the policy initiatives on sociocultural competence and intercul-
2 tural communication mentioned above. The process of entering into the
3111 social practices of the foreign language community we call tertiary social-
4 isation. This includes both the ability to communicate in a wide variety
5 of situations in a foreign country, and to learn about and come to some
6 understanding of what is different and unfamiliar in the social worlds
7 encountered abroad (Byram, 1997a; Doy, 1992). In other words, it is the
8 process of language socialisation, taken beyond narrow functional
9 competencies, which requires learners to reconsider the taken-for-granted
20111 natural realities constructed in primary and secondary socialisation.
1
2
Language Learning and Ethnography
3
4 Schieffelin and Ochs (1986) notion of language socialisation, as well
5 as assuming the capacity to interact in socially appropriate ways within
6 a specic community, also involves the indirect means of developing
7 sociocultural knowledge. As children learn, for example, how to behave
8 at meal times, so they are taught implicitly the social rules of interacting
9 and the values associated with them. This process of language sociali-
30111 sation describes well what doing ethnography means. Ethnographers,
1 by participating in the everyday lives of a group, gradually acquire an
2 understanding of how interactions get done, but they also develop an
3 understanding of what meanings are associated with the ways of talking
4 and behaving that they both observe and are involved in.
5 The system of meanings that the ethnographer begins to learn about,
6 will include an understanding of roles and relationships and the social
7 values of messages and how these relate to and serve to maintain wider
8 social structures. Children learn this sociocultural knowledge indirectly
9 as part of their primary and secondary socialisation, but ethnographers
40 have to use a mix of indirect and direct methods, constantly moving
41111 between participation, questioning and analysis. They hang around
New Goals 11
1111 with a purpose, as lurkers and soakers (Werner & Schoeper, 1989).
2 The many different interactions which they observe or participate in,
3 some going on around them, some purposefully orchestrated for their
4 study, continually create new opportunities for language development
5 and cultural understanding.
6 This mix of learning to communicate appropriately and developing
7 an analytic understanding of another groups system of meanings is the
8 goal of language learners as ethnographers. An example from one
9 students ethnographic project illustrates this mix (Barro & Jordan, 1995).
1011 She was interested in the ptanque (a game played with bowls) circles
1 in Aubervilliers in France. Her research involved her in gaining access
2 to a very male-dominated local club, participating in many games,
3111 observing larger competitions, and doing many interviews. She learnt
4 how to perform the ritual communicative practices of the game, to under-
5 stand the social relations around it and how to use (or where necessary
6 avoid using) the nicknames habitually given to players.
7 She also began to learn what these rituals and the nicknames meant
8 to the players and to situate these meanings within the local politics of
9 the club and its functioning within the community. An important under-
20111 standing for her was the role of the club in reecting and maintaining
1 some of the social changes in the area, with players from the troisime
2 ge (third age) category playing alongside but in competition with, in
3 several senses of the word, unemployed youngsters. In gradually devel-
4 oping these understandings, she was involved in the process of language
5 socialisation, learning the specic ways of speaking used by the group
6 to carry out their everyday business and construct their social identities.
7 This student project is typical of what a languages student can achieve
8 during their period of residence abroad. There is no intention that
9 students of modern languages should be turned into anthropologists or
30111 even professional ethnographers. The idea is that they can acquire some
1 theoretical concepts and ethnographic skills so that they are able to
2 understand the local cultural practices sufciently to write an ethno-
3 graphic project, rather than undertake a full-scale ethnography.
4 It is useful to distinguish at this point between the discipline of anthro-
5 pology, and ethnography as method. While any discipline is concerned
6 with particular ways of seeing the world, based upon particular episte-
7 mologies and associated concepts, ethnography is a method for doing
8 eldwork and writing up the results. It is used in disciplines other than
9 anthropology, such as sociolinguistics, sociology and education studies
40 although its foundations are in anthropology, and it is largely from this
41111 discipline that the Ealing ethnography case study is drawn.
1111 We can make a further distinction between methods and purposes.

2 Whereas the professional anthropologist or sociologist will use ethnog-
3 raphy for the purpose of researching and writing a monograph on a
4 particular group or set of practices, we argue in this book that language
5 teachers and students can use ethnography to develop their cultural
6 learning in general, and their capacity to mediate between different
7 cultural groups in particular. Thus, the purpose of ethnography in this
8 context is to integrate language and cultural processes as will be seen
9 in later chapters. In some respects, the idea of language learners as ethno-
1011 graphers turns the anthropologists concern on its head. Anthropologists
1 (usually) learn a new language in order to understand the cultural prac-
2 tices of the group they are studying. (Many never succeed in becoming
3111 communicatively competent and many rely on local interpreters.)
4 Language learners, on the other hand, who are already able to commu-
5 nicate, at least to some extent, in the local language, immerse themselves
6 in the culture of another group in order to become better communica-
7 tors and mediators in intercultural encounters and so better language
8 users.
9 Connecting language learning to the disciplines of social and linguistic
20111 anthropology and sociolinguistics provides an opportunity to translate
1 general programmatic statements about intercultural learning and
2 cultural awareness and so on, into practical and coherent provision for
3 cultural and linguistic learning. Just as second language acquisition
4 studies have demonstrated what a long and complex endeavour learning
5 a language is, so policy and curriculum developers need to argue the
6 same case for language-and-culture learning. Short programmes of
7 cultural awareness or an assumption that intercultural understanding
8 can simply be caught rather than taught are not so different from
9 the message in the advertisements for language learning books and
30111 tapes which suggest that it is possible to learn to speak a language in
1 three weeks.
2
3
The Ealing Ethnography Research Project
4
5 The general principles outlined above and developed in later chap-
6 ters in detail will be exemplied, here, through the Ealing ethnography
7 research project. The project began as an experiment and was funded
8 as such, but with the intention that it should become part of the normal
9 curriculum.1 There were a number of components to the project, at
40 different levels. At the core of the project was what we will call
41111 throughout the book the ethnography programme. This consists of :
New Goals 13
1111 (1) A taught course in the second year of a four-year languages degree.
2 This is a module of 45 classroom hours in which the teaching of
3 basic anthropological and sociolinguistic concepts is combined with
4 an introduction to ethnographic method.
5 (2) An ethnographic study while abroad. Students are sent to two differ-
6 ent countries, each for a period of four to ve months. They are
7 required to carry out an ethnographic study in one of these
8 countries, usually their rst placement, and this may inuence
9 how they set about their second project which need not be ethno-
1011 graphic.
1 (3) Writing up the ethnographic project on return from abroad and inte-
2 grating these projects into the curriculum. This includes assessment of
3111 the ethnographic project as part of the nal degree award. (See Figure 1.)
4
We will refer to the taught element as the ethnography course and the
5
students write-up of their eldwork as student ethnographic projects.
6
An umbrella to the development aspects of the project was the research
7
element in which the whole process was monitored and research inter-
8
views were conducted with staff and students. To sum up, therefore,
9
the objectives of the experiment were the following:
20111
1 the development of new approaches and methods in structuring
2 the learning experience of the year abroad and its integration into
3 the undergraduate course as a whole;
4 the training of lecturers in the use of these approaches and methods;
5 the evaluation of the approaches and their feasibility on languages
6 programmes.
7
Specically, the research questions we asked were:
8
9 (1) Can modern language lecturers learn to teach an ethnographic
30111 programme?
1 (2) Can students learn to use ethnographic approaches to develop their
2 cultural learning and make the period abroad an active learning
3 experience?
4
5
Purposes and Audiences for this Book
6
7 As we have already suggested, although the period of residence abroad
8 built into modern languages degree programmes in Britain makes such
9 an approach particularly relevant, the idea of language learners as ethno-
40 graphers can be transferred to many other contexts. In many countries
41111 in Europe, America, Australia and elsewhere, there are students on
1111
2
3 SECOND YEAR
4 COURSE
5
6
Concepts Ethnographic
7
Methods
8 e.g. National Identity e.g. Participant
9 & local boundaries observation
e.g. Belief & action e.g. From data
1011 collection to
1 analysis
2
3111
4
5
6 YEAR ABROAD
7 Ethnographic Projects
8
9 The Sevillanos dance
Overseas students in Marburg
20111 Transvestite prostitutes in Madrid
1 Aspects of Catholicism in everyday life
2
3
4
5
6
7 FOURTH YEAR
8
9 Writing up
30111 Ethnographic Projects
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 Figure 1 Ethnography programme
40
41111
New Goals 15
1111 European Studies courses, Business and Language Studies courses, and
2 a range of combined language and science, law and arts courses, who
3 will have an opportunity of working in some capacity abroad or
4 who study as international students in a foreign university and need to
5 develop their linguistic and cultural competence for the new learning
6 environment. Similarly, there are a large number of school exchange
7 programmes where an element of the ethnographic approach can be
8 included both in the preparation for and activities during the stay abroad
9 (Dark et al., 1997; Snow & Byram, 1997). Finally, there are the thousands
1011 of school and college programmes throughout the world where there is
1 no immediate possibility of visiting the country or countries where the
2 foreign language is the dominant language but where an ethnographic
3111 component can be integrated into the language curriculum.
4 This book is thus designed for a number of different audiences. First,
5 there are the Modern/Foreign Languages lecturers, both those in
6 language departments and others in Language Centres, Business Studies
7 Departments and others. Secondly, there are lecturers in European
8 Studies, Latin American Studies and other programmes where students
9 need to be prepared for a period of residence abroad. Thirdly, there are
20111 teachers of upper secondary school pupils (both student teachers and
1 those on in-service programmes). A wider audience still includes trainers
2 in intercultural communication and language for professional purposes,
3 lecturers in anthropology interested in teaching aspects of the discipline
4 to non-anthropologists and in new developments in research methods
5 and in the applications of anthropology and, more generally, all those
6 in departments of education and in other areas involved in innovations
7 in teaching and learning in Higher Education. Finally, this book may
8 also be illuminating to a number of postgraduate students, particularly
9 students of anthropology.
30111 Implied in the argument throughout this book is the case for
1 interdisciplinarity in language learning. Linking language learning to
2 ethnography involved us in putting together an interdisciplinary team
3 including: a language educationist, a sociolinguist, an anthropologist and
4 language specialists from the French, German and Spanish departments
5 with an interest in the social sciences. It must, however, be stressed that
6 this is not a manual on how to train language learners as ethnographers,
7 but more a theoretical book which uses extensive illustration from the
8 Ealing Ethnography course and student projects as a case study of inno-
9 vative approaches. For readers interested in obtaining the materials used
40 on the course and suggestions on how to use them, a contact address
41111 is given in Note 1 at the end of this chapter.
1111 The book is the product of working together as a team over several
2 years. It reects our varied perspectives and backgrounds and although
3 we have learnt a great deal from each other, there is no single voice
4 with which we all speak. As a result, the book speaks with several voices
5 and we have, purposefully, kept it this way. Just as this project was
6 about both conceptual and experiential learning, so the different chap-
7 ters and sections of chapters are written, sometimes, from a relatively
8 more conceptual perspective, and sometimes, a relatively more experi-
9 ential, depending on the author(s) and their focus. A consistent voice
1011 may be a more comforting and comfortable read but learning about
1 otherness from the inside, so to speak, is often uncomfortable. And since
2 this book charts that experience for students (and staff), the voices which
3111 narrate their story should chime with the mix of discomfort and exhil-
4 aration that they have so often reported.
5 The book is divided into two parts. The rst part, Chapters 1 to 5,
6 provides some theoretical background on the relationship between
7 language, cultural processes and ethnography. The second part, Chapters
8 6 to 10, is a case study of the Ealing Ethnography Project. A nal chapter
9 links an evaluation of the project with some thoughts about language and
20111 cultural studies to take us into the twenty-rst century.
1
2
Part I: Language Learning and Ethnography
3
4 (1) A discussion of the problematic relationship between language,
5 culture and language pedagogy. Here, some of the theoretical frame-
6 works from anthropology and sociology set the context for an
7 overview of the language and culture relationship and its relevance
8 for language learning. [First drafts and the main voice of Chapters
9 1 to 4 were from Celia Roberts.]
30111 (2) The development of the concept of ethnography as one possible solu-
1 tion (Chapter 5). [First draft and the main voice of Chapter 5 was
2 from Brian Street.]
3
4
Part II: The Ealing Ethnography Project: A Case Study
5
6 (3) Introduction to the Ealing Ethnography Project, focusing on ethnog-
7 raphy as staff development. [First draft and the main voices of
8 Chapter 6 were from Ana Barro, Shirley Jordan and Brian Street.]
9 (4) Chapter 7 uses examples from the project to illustrate the develop-
40 ment of principles for an ethnography course. [First draft and the
41111 main voices from Ana Barro and Celia Roberts.]
New Goals 17
1111 (5) The next three chapters (Chapters 8, 9 and 10) are a thick descrip-
2 tion of the project itself. Chapter 8 describes in depth how a particular
3 unit was taught, and Chapter 9 looks at the students ethnographic
4 projects and how they were assessed. Chapter 10 focuses on the
5 students experience, particularly the process of doing an ethnog-
6 raphy while abroad. [First draft of Chapter 8 and the main voices
7 were from Shirley Jordan and Celia Roberts. First draft of Chapter
8 9 and the main voices were from Ana Barro, Michael Byram and
9 Celia Roberts. First draft of Chapter 10 and main voice was from
1011 Michael Byram.]
1 (6) An evaluation of the project and its wider implications (Chapter 11).
2 This chapter reviews the whole project and looks ahead to the ways
3111 in which language and cultural processes will be more rmly
4 embedded in the language curricula of the future. [First draft of
5 Chapter 11 and the main voice was from Michael Byram.]
6
7
Note
8
9 1. This book is based on a two-and-a-half year project funded by the Economic
20111 and Social Research Council (R232716): Cultural Studies in Advanced
Language Learning. The original project team was: Celia Roberts and Michael
1 Byram (co-directors), Ana Barro and Hanns Grimm, teacher/researchers, and
2 Brian Street (anthropological consultant). During the course of the project
3 and as a result of some additional funding from the Enterprise in Higher
4 Education Initiative, Shirley Jordan and Marc Bergman joined the team as
5 teacher/researchers. The programme was developed and taught at Thames
Valley University by Ana Barro, Marc Bergman, Hanns Grimm, Shirley Jordan
6 and Celia Roberts. This book is not intended as a how to manual. Rather,
7 it relates some of the current thinking about language and intercultural
8 communication to a specic set of practices designed at Ealing. For those
9 interested in running a similar type of programme, guidance and a complete
30111 set of materials for the Introduction to Ethnography course is available
from: Language and Residence Abroad (LARA) project, School of Languages,
1 Oxford Brookes University, Oxford OX3 0BP.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
41111
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 2
5
6 Introducing Cultural Learning into
7
8 the Language Curriculum
9
1011
1
2 The increased interest in cultural aspects of language learning in the last
3111 decade has led to discussions of what cultural learning might consist of.
4 In this chapter we look briey at some of the inuences that have led
5 to new notions of cultural and intercultural learning in the language
6 curriculum and we start with the problem of what notion of culture
7 language teachers might work with.
8
9
Cultural Work
20111
1 Culture is a notoriously slippery word and like many slippery
2 concepts it is subject to over-denition on the one hand and misunder-
3 standings and over-simplications on the other. It is not surprising that
4 no single denition of culture has ever been arrived at (Kroeber &
5 Kluckhohn, 1952; Geertz, 1973; Williams, 1981; Featherstone, 1992).
6 Recently, there has been a shift away from the noun culture with its
7 connotations of abstraction and reication towards a more active, verb-
8 like notion of cultural practices and processes. It is not so much what
9 culture is but what it does (Street, 1993). And part of doing culture
30111 includes the discussions and struggles over what counts as culture. So
1 what does doing culture look like? An example from an Ealing student
2 project gives a number of insights into the concept of cultural processes
3 and how involvement in them can develop cultural learning.
4
5
Antonias project in Seville
6
7 Antonia spent ve months studying in Seville as part of her year
8 abroad. She also worked as an au pair looking after a ve-year-old
9 called Quino. Her project examined the inuence of Catholicism in
40 everyday life in Seville and in particular how the rituals of food and
41111 eating were connected to religious practices.
18
Introducing Cultural Learning 19
1111 The rst extract introduces a chapter on how people in the family
2 with whom she lived explained the rituals of food, eating and cleanli-
3 ness inside and outside the home both to her as a foreign outsider and
4 to the child of the family, Quino.
5
Decid que quizs existiera una fuerte conexin entre la religin y
6
la comida despus de una conversacin con Maribel en la cual me
7
explic varios aspectos de las estas religiosas en las que participa
8
la familia y mencion varias veces la comida. Me coment por
9
ejemplo que una parte integral de la peregrinacin al Roco es la
1011
comida y el hecho de que todos beben y comen juntos. Dijo que en
1
Sevilla lo celebramos todo con las copas y la comida, cualquier acto
2
social, desde las bodas, los bautizos, ir a misa el domingo, despus
3111
lo normal es tomarse una cerveza, reunirse, hablar, contarse cosas.
4
Pero curiosamente, y lo que me llev a escribir esta seccin del
5
proyecto, cuando quise indagar ms en esta cuestin, ella insisti en
6
que no haba ninguna relacin entre la comida y la religin en s:
7
eso no tiene que ver con la Iglesia, ni con la religin ni con nada.
8
Esto lo matiz con el siguiente comentario: Aqu en Andaluca nos
9
gusta celebrarlo todo . . . hablando de las hermandades . . . cualquier
20111
motivo que haya es normal que terminen en una copa, suele haber
1
un pequeno bar. Otro comentario, acerca del hecho de que, segn
2
se dice, alrededor de una mesa se rman los mejores contratos, me
3
hizo preguntarme por qu se separaban tan claramente los aspectos
4
sociales de ir a misa o a una boda o reunion de hermandad, de sus
5
aspectos religiosos cuando para alguien de fuera como yo, parecan
6
casi inseparables en la prctica aunque quizs no en sus signicados,
7
por lo que decan continuamente mis informantes.
8
9 Translation
30111 I decided that there could be a strong link between religious prac-
1 tices and eating following a conversation with Maribel when she
2 explained how her family participates in religious celebrations and
3 mentioned food several times in this context. She explained that an
4 integral part of the pilgrimage to Rocio is the food and the fact that
5 everybody eats and drinks together. She said several times that In
6 Seville we celebrate everything with food, any social event, from
7 weddings and christenings, to going to mass on Sundays, you
8 normally go for a beer afterwards, to meet friends, chat etc. But
9 what led me to this section of the project was her insistence that
40 there was no relation whatsoever between religion and eating. It
41111 has nothing to do with the Church, or religion or anything. She
1111 then added: Here in Andalucia we like to celebrate everything . . .

2 speaking of hermandades (meetings of religious fraternities) or for
3 whatever reason, you always end up with a few drinks, there is
4 usually a small bar there. Another comment, referring to what
5 is often said to the effect that the best contracts are signed around
6 a dinner table, raised a question for me about the clear separation
7 between the social aspects of going to a wedding, to church or to
8 an hermandades meeting, from what I considered to be religious
9 aspects. To an outsider such as myself, they seemed inseparable in
1011 practice if not in the meanings attributed by my informants.
1
The Andalucians are represented here as a fun-loving, eating and
2
drinking community, maintaining a strict separation between religion
3111
and pleasure. This is the kind of easy stereotype which gives culture
4
a bad name but appears all the more authentic because spoken by a
5
native of the place. But as Cohen (1983) suggests, a community speaks
6
with many voices and the voice used to represent a group to those
7
outside it is not the same as that used to represent that group to itself.
8
In other words, the ways in which a group talks about its own practices
9
within the group may contrast with how they talk about themselves to
20111
strangers, even if, in Agars term, their ethnographic stance makes them
1
professional strangers (Agar, 1980).
2
This extract also raises questions about the relationship between
3
surface practice or behaviour and the meanings associated with it. The
4
connection between religious practice and eating and drinking is prob-
5
lematised by Antonia, suggesting a number of culturally taken-for-
6
granted relationships which became the focus of the study.
7
In the second extract, Antonia pursues this theme, turning to Quino
8
for help:
9
30111 Sin embargo, a m me pareci ser un tema digno de investigacin.
1 Al n y al cabo, la relacin entre comida y religin nos rodea en
2 imgenes de la Pasin de Jess que empez con una cena con sus
3 discpulos, y el primer milagro lo realizaron en un banquete de boda.
4 Quera saber, hasta qu punto se pueden relacionar en la prctica,
5 y por eso me pareci que si los mayores no me lo podan explicar
6 que quizs fuera mejor observar cmo se explicaba al nio de la
7 familia. Las referencias de Quino a signicados que a m me parecan
8 religiosos se expresaban en comentarios como el que me ofreci un
9 da cuando le pregunt por qu coma tanto pan, y me contest
40 porque en la Biblia dice nuestro pan de cada da. En Navidad
41111 aumentaron los comentarios explctos de la familia dirigidos a Quino
1111 que relacionaban valores cristianos como la caridad por ejemplo, con
2 la comida. En un caso Quino me cont que le haban explicado que
3 en Navidad hay que dar dinero a los pobres ya que sin dinero cmo
4 van a comprar turrn?.
5 As las preguntas que elabor para ayudarme en esta parte de la
6 investigacin fueron las siguientes:
7
Cul es el papel de las copas y las comidas en las actividades
8
que son claramente religiosas para la familia como ir a misa, o
9
celebrar las Navidades ?
1011
Qu clase de explicaciones le ofrecen al nio que tiene que
1
aprender estas normas sociales de pequeo ?
2
En qu trminos se lo explican a alguien de fuera, y que se puede
3111
deducir sobre los valores culturales tanto en trminos propios
4
como en trminos de lo que pueden querer dar a entender a la
5
gente que quiera aprender algo sobre la cultura sevillana ?
6
7 Estas preguntas resultaron ser bastante difciles porque siempre me
8 decan cosas que describan lo tpico, lo atractivo de las costumbres
9 y no saban explicarme ni cmo lo haban aprendido ni lo que signi-
20111 caba mas all de que era una costumbre. La segunda pregunta
1 tambin cre problemas porque por un lado, como ya he dicho,
2 solan negar cualquiera relacin que yo sugiriera, aunque por otro
3 lado, yo vea que al nino le explicaban muchas cosas dentro de un
4 marco religioso, y normativo, aunque fuera en el sentido ms amplio
5 de la palabra. Eso me pareci interesante y al nal consegu mucha
6 informacin observando y hablando con el nino.
7
8 Translation
9 Nonetheless to me it warranted further investigation. After all, the
30111 links between religion and food can be seen in images of the Last
1 Supper and Christs rst miracles were performed at a wedding
2 banquet. If my friends couldnt explain these things perhaps I could
3 look at how these matters were explained to the child. One day for
4 instance he explained to me that the reason he ate so much bread
5 was Because it says in the Bible . . . our daily bread. At Christmas
6 I heard more explicit comments directed at Quino relating for
7 example Christian charity to the need to give money to the poor.
8 So in Quinos words: without money how can they buy turron? (a
9 nougat-type sweet traditionally eaten at Christmas).
40 So the questions I used to guide my research for this section were
41111 the following:
1111 What is the role of eating and drinking in activities that are
2 clearly religious in nature for the family? (such as going to mass
3 or Christmas)
4 What kind of explanations are offered to children as part of their
5 socialisation into these practices?
6 In what terms are these aspects explained to an outsider such
7 as myself? Here I was interested in nding out about their
8 cultural values not just in their own terms but also as they show
9 themselves to outsiders who are interested in nding out more
1011 about their culture.
1
These questions proved to be quite difcult because my informants
2
tended to only talk about things that were typical, attractive customs.
3111
They did not know how to explain how they had learned them, or
4
what they meant to them in any other terms. The second question
5
also raised problems; on the one hand, they denied any links I
6
suggested and, on the other hand, I could see that explanations to
7
the child were often framed in broadly religious, normative terms.
8
This situation seemed interesting to me and in the end I got a lot
9
of information from observing and talking to the child directly.
20111
1 In this extract, the childs use of religious discourse and the rituals
2 surrounding food come into focus. Furthermore, the links are made
3 between a childs socialisation into understanding the implicit links
4 between food and religion and the explicit discourses presented to
5 the child and to the outsider. The student reects on her own role and
6 is analytic about the different versions of cultural values that may be
7 proffered.
8 For the student ethnographer, therefore, cultural learning involved
9 both specic cultural knowledge about religious practices, about family
30111 dinner-table behaviour and conversation, and a more implicit cultural
1 awareness of a general kind. This included the process of relating and
2 comparing her own English Catholicism with Sevillano Catholicism,
3 becoming sensitive to the discourses of religion and family life in partic-
4 ular local contexts and analysing the way members of a community will
5 represent themselves to outsiders.
6 If we link together the two student projects that we have considered
7 so far, the local ptanque club in France and the Sevillano project, we can
8 draw out some features of cultural learning. It is perhaps easier to start
9 with what cultural learning is not.
40 It is not simply a question of acquiring facts about another country,
41111 although such facts are indeed useful. Nor is it about reading off from
1111 particular events generalised beliefs, values and attitudes in an unprob-

2 lematic way. This can only foster the misconception that there is some
3 essential set of national characteristics which add up to French, Japanese,
4 or Spanish culture and which are waiting prone to be discovered by
5 students on their arrival. Rather, cultural learning involves understand-
6 ings, developed over time, of a number of inter-related cultural processes
7 which include:
8
communication ways of speaking and interacting and means of
9
self-presentation, such as the linguistic rituals of the ptanque game
1011
or the childs language socialisation at the dinner table;
1
the structuring of social relations around what is meaningful to the
2
group; for example the hierarchies, privileges and reputations of
3111
the ptanque club members, the negotiation of both social and busi-
4
ness relations over a good meal or eating and drinking as both
5
celebratory and an afrmation of order;
6
the ways of representing ones own group both to different
7
members of the group and to those outside and the discourses used
8
to do this; for example the ways in which the Sevillanos represent
9
themselves as fun-loving;
20111
the connection of local meanings and relations to a larger system
1
of meanings associated with wider social, political and economic
2
relations; for example youth unemployment and its impact on
3
the ptanque club, and the religious institutions which support
4
Catholicism in Seville.
5
6 Analysing and understanding these cultural processes implies a certain
7 way of knowing about the world which is based in anthropology
8 and sociolinguistics. In particular, the idea of language learners as
9 ethnographers draws on social and linguistic anthropology and interac-
30111 tional sociolinguistics. Cultural and social anthropology are concerned
1 with the belief systems, values and behaviours of a community. But
2 whereas cultural anthropology tends to focus on beliefs and values
3 as cultural systems in their own right, social anthropology ties this
4 cultural dimension to the institutional structure of social relation-
5 ships. Beliefs and values are learnt and used within these relationships,
6 although not necessarily determined by them (Hannerz, 1992), as is illus-
7 trated in the two ethnographic projects above. For example, Quinos
8 understanding of the power of the Church and its Christian values
9 are learnt through family interaction and participation in the commu-
40 nitys religious rituals.
41111 Linguistic anthropology has been dened as the study of language
1111 as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice. (Duranti, 1997:

2 2). The interest here is not just in language use but in language as a
3 symbolic resource and means of representation. Linguistic anthropolo-
4 gists have a particular interest in language as performance and in the
5 ways in which the structure and vocabulary of a language signal cultural
6 and social relationships. In very many respects linguistic anthropology
7 cannot be easily differentiated from interactional sociolinguistics. The
8 differences may be only a matter of degree. So an interactional perspec-
9 tive on sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982a and see Chapter 3) links together
1011 the ne-grained detail of face-to-face interactional processes with an
1 understanding of how social knowledge enters into these processes.
2 There is relatively more focus here on the detailed ways in which people,
3111 as they talk, create contexts for each other and so create and sustain
4 social relations through talk. Whereas, in linguistic anthropology there
5 is relatively more interest in how both spoken and written language
6 represent aspects of cultural and social knowledge (see Chapter 4). For
7 the purposes of this book, interactional sociolinguistics and linguistic
8 anthropology will be treated as overlapping multi-disciplinary areas
9 which students can draw from when relating wider ethnographic studies
20111 to specic language practices.
1 Both social and linguistic anthropology and interactional sociolin-
2 guistics link local action and meanings with wider social and cultural
3 concepts and institutions. This means that the strength of a study on a
4 particular group or event lies not only in its sense of felt reality the
5 dusty thud of the ptanque balls or the social frisson which meets
6 the young player who outs the games ritual but also in its contri-
7 bution to concepts which both frame and deepen our understanding of
8 this particular group or event, and of other contexts and activities and
9 wider social processes.
30111
1
Cultural Learning and Communicative Language
2
Teaching
3
4 The rst of the list of cultural processes mentioned above, and a central
5 aspect of language socialisation, is communication. Given that some
6 anthropologists dene culture as communication (Hall, 1959) and that
7 the notion of communicative competence, on which communicative
8 language teaching is based, originated in anthropology (Hymes, 1972),
9 it could be argued that language learning through its emphasis on
40 communicative language teaching already has a signicant sociocultural
41111 dimension (van Ek, 1986).
1111 Hymes notion of communicative competence stresses the cultural in

2 the development of communicative competence. Just as children acquire
3 grammatical competence so they acquire competence for use:
4
From a nite experience of speech acts and their interdependence
5
with sociocultural features, they develop a general theory of speaking
6
appropriate in their community, which they employ, like other forms
7
of tacit cultural knowledge in conducting and interpreting social life.
8
(Hymes, 1972: 279)
9
1011 And later, when discussing the notion of appropriacy he argues:
1
From a communicative standpoint judgements of appropriateness
2
may not be assigned to different spheres, as between the linguistic
3111
and the cultural; certainly the spheres of the two will intersect.
4
(Hymes, 1972: 286)
5
6 Hymes notion of communicative competence, therefore, implies the
7 native speakers intuitive grasp of social and cultural rules and mean-
8 ings that are present in their ways of speaking. For example, as we
9 discussed in Chapter 1, the student in Aubervilliers gradually became
20111 more communicatively competent as she learned the specic ways of
1 speaking used by the players in the ptanque club to construct their social
2 identities both as bowls players and as players in the wider social game
3 that served to construct their community.
4 However, despite its roots in Hymes work, it is probably fair to say
5 that, in the 1970s, communicative language teaching (CLT) has drawn
6 more from speech act theory in developing notional and functional
7 approaches (Candlin, 1981; van Ek, 1975; Trim, 1983; Richterich &
8 Chancerel, 1978; Widdowson, 1978; Wilkins, 1976) and, in the 1980s and
9 1990s, on discourse analysis and notions of social variety (Canale
30111 & Swain, 1980; McCarthy & Carter, 1994; Richards & Schmidt, 1983;
1 Widdowson, 1990) and, with a more cognitive turn, on task-based
2 learning (Legutke & Thomas, 1991; Prabhu, 1987; Skehan, 1999), than on
3 cultural dimensions of language.
4 This is not the place to go into a wide-ranging discussion of CLT. It
5 has done a great deal to dene the social contexts of language use, to
6 introduce and debate authenticity in language learning materials and
7 to provide a rich environment for relatively unself-conscious language
8 use. However, the recent interest in cultural studies in language learning
9 and the idea of mediating between languages and cultures can be
40 viewed as something of a critique of CLT. To be specic, the focus on
41111 communicative language behaviour informed by functional approaches
1111 and traditional sociolinguistics has tended to eclipse the conceptual and
2 methodological tools of anthropology and more interpretive and inter-
3 actional sociolinguistics:
4
As a generalization one can say that language teaching theory is fast
5
acquiring a sociolinguistic component but still lacks a well-dened
6
sociocultural emphasis. (Stern, 1983: 246)
7
8 It is ironical that despite being originally anchored in anthropological
9 notions of communicative competence, so much CLT oats free from
1011 its theoretical moorings. Communicative competence has come to be
1 interpreted somewhat narrowly and prescriptively, as appropriate
2 language use rather than competence in the social and cultural prac-
3111 tices of a community of which language is a large part (Dubin, 1989;
4 Fairclough, 1992).
5 The concentration on appropriate language use does not mean that
6 the cultural dimension is ignored. Most CLT textbooks include a cultural
7 element and recent developments in content-based and genre-based
8 materials in English language teaching (Mohan, 1986; Cope & Kalantzis,
9 1993, 2000) are concerned with the sociocultural dimensions of academic
20111 literacies. Nonetheless, the difference between the majority of CLT texts
1 and the approach suggested here is that we are suggesting a way of
2 looking at cultural learning which is more explicit, systematic and more
3 demanding of learners than the communicative approach has often
4 implied. We have already indicated, when discussing the Sevillano
5 project, what this cultural learning looks like and the ways in which it
6 links understanding everyday interaction and organisation of the local
7 environment to wider social systems and cultural processes. In the next
8 section, we examine some of the recent studies which demonstrate
9 how CLT is developing what Stern calls: a well-dened sociocultural
30111 emphasis.
1
2
Cultural Studies and Language Learning
3
4 Sterns wide-ranging and in many respects prescient survey of theories
5 in language teaching makes a strong case for a clearer sociocultural
6 dimension based on anthropology and sociolinguistics. He argues that
7 despite attempts to assert the inter-relationship of language and culture
8 in the 1970s and 1980s (Rivers, 1983; Seelye, 1984, 1988) and produce what
9 he calls a cultural syllabus (Stern, 1992): the anthropological concept
40 of culture has been much more difcult to incorporate into language
41111 teaching than most of the writings have admitted so far (Stern, 1983).
1111 He suggests several reasons for this including the slipperiness of

2 culture as a concept, the lack of ethnographic descriptions and the
3 confusion over the various kinds of cultural teaching. Ethnographic
4 descriptions of modern urban life could, he asserts, form the basis for
5 pedagogical guides for teaching the sociocultural component of the
6 syllabus. But given, he argues, the dearth of such studies (at the time
7 of writing):
8 Teachers who generally are untrained in the methods of social science
9 are obliged to rely on their personal experience, background knowl-
1011 edge and intuitions as a basis for their teaching of culture. There is
1 a real danger, therefore, that such teaching has similar defects as the
2 teaching of Kulturkunde in Germany of the twenties and thirties:
3111 stereotyping and prejudice. (Stern, 1983: 253)
4
5 Sterns is perhaps one of the rst clear statements linking the sociocul-
6 tural dimension of language learning to ethnography. However, the
7 link relates to studies to inform teaching rather than to the idea of
8 language learners as themselves ethnographers. He also asserts that:
9 Culture teaching must not be confused with a formal course in social
20111 and cultural anthropology and needs to be more informal and personal
1 (Stern, 1992: 222).
2 Over the last 10 years, several different strands of cultural studies in
3 language learning have developed:
4 the reworking of literary and textual approaches using discourse
5 and textual analysis (Brgger, 1993; Carter & Long, 1991; Kramer,
6 1990; Kramsch, 1993, 1996; Kramsch & McConnell-Ginet, 1992;
7 Murphy, 1988; Wallace, 1992; Widdowson, 1988, 1990), in aspects
8 of British Studies (Basnett, 1997; Kramer, 1997; Montgomery, 1993),
9 and in the notion of a discourse syllabus (McCarthy & Carter,
30111 1994);
1 the specication of content areas such as work, life and study and
2 the social structures and relations in which they are embedded
3 (Andersen & Risager, 1979; Sercu, 1995; van Ek & Trim, 1991) and,
4 particularly in the German tradition, with a focus on social prob-
5 lems and human rights (Buttjes & Byram, 1991; Kramer, 1997);
6 the combination of communicative language teaching with cultural
7 awareness (Baumgratz, 1985; Baumgratz-Gangl, 1993; Candlin,
8 1987; Meyer, 1991; Valdes, 1986), and with a critical perspective,
9 linking critical thinking to moral development (Melde, 1987);
40 an anthropological/ethnographic strand focusing on the practices
41111 of daily life (Barro & Grimm, 1993; Barro & Jordan, 1995; Buttjes
1111 & Kane, 1978; Byram & Fleming, 1998; Byram et al., 1994; Roberts,
2 1993, 1995; Zarate, 1986, 1991, 1993);
3 preparation for the year abroad (Barro et al., 1998; Jurasek, 1996;
4 Parker & Rouxeville, 1995; Roberts, 1995, 1997); and understanding
5 the language practices in students bilingual community (Heller,
6 1994). While drawing on a number of other strands, the language
7 learners as ethnographers project described in this book belongs
8 with this last area of work.
9 What is clear from the growing literature on cultural studies and
1011 language learning is the gradual shift from literature and background
1 studies towards a cultural studies paradigm (Buttjes, 1991: 11). This
2 includes elements of the more traditional aspects of language courses in
3111 terms of content areas but adds a cultural theory and ethnographic
4 dimension. The most inuential of the studies of culture, combining
5 cultural theory and ethnography, is that originally associated with the
6 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham and now a
7 major multidisciplinary movement. The origins of this movement lie in
8 the reaction against cultural elitism and the reworking of the tools of
9 literary criticism for the analysis of everyday cultural practices (Hoggart,
20111 1957; Thompson, 1968; Williams, 1958, 1976, 1981). For the theme of this
1 book, the most signicant element of Cultural Studies, in the Birmingham
2 mode, is the focus on everyday life and popular culture experienced
3 both within relations of domination and as resistance to them. The
4 sociologists and the anthropologists cultural lens is turned on the
5 everyday practices of modern urban living: the soap opera, the street
6 market or the classroom. These practices are analysed in terms of the
7 values, meanings and beliefs which constitute them in particular
8 local contexts what Willis calls the bricks and mortar of [their own]
9 most commonplace understandings (Willis et al., 1977: 185). Yet these
30111 local and everyday meanings are also analysed in terms of the wider
1 power relations and economic conditions within society. So, for example,
2 aspects of contemporary fashion or new forms of family life are studied
3 both for the meanings they have to those involved and as markers of
4 accommodation or resistance to the dominant view of what fashion,
5 art or family is.
6 The inuence of Cultural Studies in language learning programmes is
7 most typically found in the analysis of texts (as in the rst strand in the
8 list above). Here discourse analysis plays a central role, drawing on
9 literary traditions of textual analysis and applying them to media and
40 a range of other popular cultural texts which may be print-based, lm,
41111 visual images and so on, to develop our understanding of social patterns.
1111 The aim is to bring the more general social analysis of cultural themes
2 down to a level where there can be an active engagement with the text.
3 Brgger, for example, drawing on Bakhtins work on the socially charged
4 nature of language (Each word tastes of the text and contexts in which
5 it has lived its socially charged life) argues for a cultural semantics in
6 the teaching of American Studies. He gives as an example a study of
7 the discourses used by Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union address.
8 In a close textual analysis, he argues that Reagans talk holds in tension
9 three positions: the ideology of the new, an ambivalent, middle position
1011 and the ideology of the restoration of the old. Brgger argues that this
1 tension helps to make Reagans conservatism appear dynamic and
2 appeals to the ambivalence in the USA between a nostalgic, laissez-faire
3111 position and a belief in progress and social change. This example is fairly
4 typical of a critical, textual approach to cultural studies in undergrad-
5 uate language learning, linking the analysis of specic texts to wider
6 social and cultural themes. The texts are at the centre of the cultural
7 learning and are used to bring out the ideological resonances of such
8 topics as gender, popular culture, life-style, and national and commu-
9 nity politics.
20111 We cannot attempt here to discuss the major themes and impact of
1 Cultural Studies (see Fiske, 1989; Grossberg et al., 1992; Hall, 1992) but
2 there is no doubt that Cultural Studies has developed a rich set of inter-
3 pretive tools for the analysis and critiquing of texts that cultural learning
4 within a modern languages framework has much to learn from (see
5 Basnett, 1997). However, Cultural Studies has tended increasingly to deal
6 with texts and their semiotic analysis rather than with social and cultural
7 practices in an ethnographic way. It is also dauntingly theoretical. Culture
8 is presented as text for theoretical analysis, rather than as processes to
9 be engaged with from which students forge their own text. Cultural
30111 learning, therefore, if it depends solely on a Cultural Studies approach,
1 can remain at the level of learning about rather than in and through.
2
3
Ethnography and the Intercultural Speaker
4
5 The notion of language learners as ethnographers is a new departure
6 in that it retains the cultural as it is used in Cultural Studies but draws
7 much more explicitly on anthropology and sociolinguistics. This has
8 two main advantages. First, it shifts the emphasis away from written
9 and audio-visual texts and towards the fashioning of texts out of partic-
40 ipant observation. Secondly, in doing this, it builds a bridge between
41111 communication skills, as generally presented in CLT, and conceptual
1111 understandings of cultural processes. In this way, it can connect texts

2 and practices, the cognitive and the palpable, learning about and
3 living/doing culture.
4 An ethnographic view of cultural studies in language learning subor-
5 dinates the daunting cultural theory of Cultural Studies to what Geertz
6 calls thick description (Geertz, 1973) (and see Chapter 3). This involves
7 extended participation in the everyday lives of a group; a detailed
8 description of some aspects of these lives and an analysis and interpre-
9 tation of them through the eyes and ears of the outsider. Ethnographers
1011 are both participant and observer, both part of and separate from the
1 community they are studying. This experience of closeness and distance,
2 of being oneself and yet part of another group, denes the new iden-
3111 tity of the language learner liberated (or condemned) to be forever
4 in-between. But language learners are not just in-between, they are also
5 go-betweens, as the recent literature on mediating between languages
6 and cultures suggests (Buttjes & Byram, 1991; Byram, 1997b; Kramsch,
7 1993). For language learners to be mediators, the notion of communica-
8 tive competence as understood by language educators is too limiting.
9 The recent literature mentioned above assumes that language learners
20111 also need to have cultural competence. But just as the notion of commu-
1 nicative competence assumes bilingual competence as the ultimate
2 goal so cultural competence suggests that bicultural competence is the
3 ultimate goal. Hymes original notion was based on a native speaker
4 model but its incorporation into FL/SL learning has not brought with
5 it a discussion of how such a model could possibly be attainable.
6 Similarly, the goal of biculturalism is in virtually all cases an impossible
7 one (Paulston, 1992).
8 A more realistic suggestion and one that is more in tune with the
9 idea of multiple identities and blurred boundaries of the new times
30111 mentioned in Chapter 1, is that of an intercultural speaker (Byram &
1 Zarate, 1994; Byram, 1997a; Kramsch, 1998; Doy, 1992). An intercultural
2 speaker is aware of both their own and others culturally constructed
3 selves. Rather than assuming that they know in some straightforward
4 factual way either their own or the others cultural worlds, they are
5 aware of a constant process of formation and transformation. Culture is
6 not a given but constituted in the everyday practices of groups and indi-
7 viduals. So, an intercultural speaker is always alert to what is both
8 patterned and predictable in these practices and what is changing and
9 contested: they are always in process.
40 Such a speaker operates in what Kramsch calls a sphere of intercul-
41111 turality (Kramsch, 1993: 205). The great strength of an intercultural
1111 speaker is that they understand that meaning is relational. No one can
2 say that a word or utterance has an absolute meaning, but intercultural
3 speakers can come to what Gee (1996) calls a consensual meaning. The
4 example he gives is from a law case in which the denition of sausage
5 was in dispute. What ingredients could or could not be included for
6 a sausage still to be a sausage? It is a matter of discussion and negoti-
7 ation as the differences between a saucisson and a sausage amply
8 demonstrates. The great strength of the notion of the intercultural speaker
9 is that the learners are not expected to become native or near-native
1011 speakers but to become intermediaries, mediating between potentially
1 conicting behaviours and belief systems in their own and others social
2 lives (Byram & Zarate, 1994). The old dichotomy of native and non-
3111 native speaker breaks down as the intercultural speaker is someone, who
4 in a comparative and relative way, is learning about their own and
5 others cultural practices in a mutually reinforcing relationship. As well
6 as a comparative perspective, the intercultural speaker takes a critical
7 perspective both on their own cultural practices and that of others
8 (Byram, 1997a; Doy, 1992; Kramsch, 1996; Melde, 1987; Singerman, 1996
9 and the nal chapter of this book).
20111 So, both functionally and symbolically, the intercultural speaker can
1 replace the old non-native speaker label with its decit connotations
2 and uni-directional assumptions about learning to communicate in a
3 second language. Instead, language learners and language users more
4 generally are learning from each other and working out together the
5 grounds for mutual understanding.
6
7
The Intercultural Speaker and Cross-cultural
8
Communication
9
30111 Given the slippery nature of culture, it is not surprising that the
1 notion of intercultural should be claimed by a number of discipline
2 areas which tag it with different assumptions and meanings. Fields other
3 than anthropology and sociolinguistics have employed the term inter-
4 cultural but, we would argue, in different ways from those suggested
5 here. For instance, cross-cultural and intercultural are used in the
6 social-psychological literature and in cross-cultural training programmes
7 in more functional and reductionist ways than in this book.
8 The work on intercultural and cross-cultural communication
9 (Brislin, 1993; Gudykunst, 1989; Kim, 1998; Kim & Gudykunst, 1988;
40 Ting-Toomey, 1988) draws on a general communication theory and
41111 is concerned with comparing cultural differences across such broad
1111 dimensions as individual/collective, personal/positional or even more

2 generally as high versus low context cultures (Hofstede, 1984, 1994). In
3 this tradition, attitude surveys are used to construct general statements
4 about a national group. For example, Japan is said to have a high context
5 culture (dependence on implicit assumptions and shared values) whereas
6 America is said to be a low context culture (one in which roles and rela-
7 tionships are more explicitly negotiated). Similarly, the cross-cultural
8 training approach (Bennett, 1986; Brislin, 1994; Gudykunst & Hammer,
9 1983) although it combines experiential and reective components,
1011 concentrates on developing a rather general cultural awareness through
1 decontextualised exercises or imaginary and role play games.
2 By contrast with these models of culture, the approach taken here
3111 focuses on the lived experiences of everyday life in a local and holistic
4 way. Instead of broad brush statements about a culture, difference and
5 otherness is studied in all its local particularity. Differences are not turned
6 into inventories of facts and used to explain history or communication
7 problems, as in the cross-cultural communication studies. Instead, behav-
8 iour and meanings are analysed to understand differences (Thornton,
9 1988) and thick descriptions are written to develop particular cultural
20111 knowledge as well as general cultural awareness.
1 Within the disciplines of anthropology and its use of ethnography,
2 cultural awareness and cultural knowledge cannot be separated. For
3 example, in Sophies project on the Carnaval, she was learning about the
4 myths and historical events which are part of a groups memory but she
5 was also becoming aware of the ways in which the carnavaliers were
6 constructing their identity and how they positioned themselves in rela-
7 tion to the women who also worked for the Carnaval.
8
9
The Integration of Language and Cultural Studies in
30111
Higher Education
1
2 We turn now to the implications of this discussion for teaching and
3 learning languages in Higher Education. The idea of integrating language
4 learning with other approaches and subjects is not a new one, nor is an
5 interdisciplinary language programme a new development. Language
6 and literature or language and a range of social science subjects is the
7 norm in many countries. However, both the extent and the nature of
8 the integration of these different subject areas is often not clear, nor
9 is the link between language skills work and Area Studies, Civilisation
40 or Landeskunde. The difculty with traditional literature degrees and
41111 with more recent applied languages programmes has been to integrate
1111 knowledge-based, intellectual elds of enquiry with what are generally

2 seen as skills-based, performance models of language learning. There is
3 also the issue of how more objective information-based background
4 studies in politics, history, economics and so on can be related to Cultural
5 Studies. Even where cultural, media and communication studies are part
6 of the modern languages curriculum, the connection between these and
7 language learning is far from fully developed. Furthermore, as we have
8 suggested above, Cultural Studies with its focus on cultural theory and
9 the analysis of text as object can provide only a partial solution.
1011 An ethnographic approach, as well as linking language and cultural
1 processes, puts the period of residence abroad, with careful prepara-
2 tion beforehand and debrieng and integration into the mainstream
3111 curriculum afterwards, centre stage as a means to integrate linguistic
4 and cultural learning, and the classroom and eld experiences.
5
6
Language Learning for Mobility
7
8 There is a good case for linking cultural learning systematically to any
9 direct experience of staying in the foreign country. Language learning
20111 for mobility (Byram et al., 1992: 7) prepares students for any period of
1 residence abroad and also for any contact with similarly mobile students
2 who visit their country.
3 In many parts of the world:
4
The possibility of including the experience of a foreign country as
5
part of language learning is developing very quickly; language
6
learning is becoming a practical subject in the eld, just as the
7
natural sciences changed from demonstrations by the teacher to
8
proper experimental work by the learners with trips into the eld
9
to investigate the phenomena in their eco-systems. (Byram, 1994: 7)
30111
1 We are not suggesting here that ethnographic learning is a question
2 of collecting samples or simply giving practical experience, as a science
3 or geography eld trip is designed to do, but the idea of being in the
4 eld participating in and observing new practices gives a new dimen-
5 sion to the language curriculum. An immediate issue arising from this
6 increase in student mobility is the quality of experience and learning
7 which the students achieve. However, simply spending a period abroad
8 may not create signicant changes in competence, understanding or
9 ways of thinking. An intellectually rigorous and personally challenging
40 set of goals is needed for this period of learning away from the home
41111 institution.
1111 Recognising the learning opportunities of an exchange visit or stay

2 abroad, there is now some literature on the pedagogy of exchange
3 (Zarate, 1986; Alix & Bertrand, 1994; Byram, 1997c). The experience of
4 the stay and how it involves the whole social person (Baumgratz-Gangl,
5 1990; Byram & Alred, 1993) creates an environment for systematic
6 cultural learning (for example, see Zarate on the observational diary
7 (Zarate, 1991) and Keller in relation to stereotypes (Keller, 1991).
8 For university students, the Erasmus and Socrates programmes in
9 Europe and the year abroad for modern language students, compulsory
1011 in virtually all British universities, provides an opportunity for a rela-
1 tively extended period abroad. This is not quite the one or two years
2 that an apprentice anthropologist might spend (although even PhD
3111 students may only spend nine months or so actually in the eld) but
4 certainly long enough to engage intensively with a community over
5 many months and to make an ethnographic project a valid and produc-
6 tive learning experience.
7 Renewed interest in Britain and the USA in assessing the value of the
8 Year Abroad has led to a number of recent discussions on how best to use
9 it and how effective it is (Coleman, 1996; Freed, 1995; Parker & Rouxeville,
20111 1995). Coleman estimates that, annually, some 12,000 UK students spend
1 a year abroad but that the effectiveness of what is perceived as a costly
2 operation is not clearly established. The great majority of studies
3 either try to assess the students linguistic competence (Coleman, 1995;
4 Dyson, 1988; Freed, 1995; Meara, 1994; Towell & Hawkins, 1994) or the
5 effect of the year on their attitudes and stereotypes towards the foreign
6 nationals they encounter (Coleman, 1996; Willis et al., 1977).
7 While the great majority of ndings conrm the value of the period
8 abroad in terms of language prociency, quite what aspects of linguistic
9 competence do improve is less clear (Coleman, 1996). The research on
30111 the affective aspects of the year abroad are more controversial although
1 it must be emphasised that assessing attitude is itself highly problem-
2 atic. Colemans study suggests that one in six students return with more
3 negative stereotypes of foreign nationals than when they went. However,
4 neither set of studies addresses the sociocultural dimensions of learning
5 and the relationship of communicative competence, cultural awareness,
6 cultural knowledge and empathy. These issues may be raised in the
7 preparation for the year abroad (Byram, 1988) but have not been system-
8 atically carried through into course development, structured learning
9 while abroad and assessment on return.
40 The discourse of mobility assumes a period of time in the eld
41111 where students, borrowing concepts and methods from anthropology,
1111 can undertake ethnographic projects. If language learners are to develop

2 an ethnographic frame of mind and a set of methods for this eld work,
3 then their teachers will also need to become ethnographers.
4
5
Language Lecturers as Ethnographers
6
7 The social science components which make up the Area Studies,
8 Civilisation or Landeskunde element of modern languages degrees are
9 usually taught by those with discipline specialisms in politics, history,
1011 economics and so on. It is relatively rare for anthropologists to teach on
1 these courses. Few British universities have departments of anthropology
2 and even fewer teach courses in social anthropology relevant to language
3111 students (but see Delamont, 1995).This situation is similar in other coun-
4 tries too. However, even if there were anthropologists available for every
5 modern languages course, the argument of this book is that language
6 specialists, with some additional ethnographic training, are best placed
7 to develop the language learner as ethnographer.
8 First of all, they have an inside view on the students linguistic compe-
9 tence and on the opportunities that might be available for ethnographic
20111 studies during a period abroad. On most courses in Britain, for example,
1 it is staff from language departments who visit students while abroad
2 and can provide essential supervision in the early stages of the ethno-
3 graphic project.
4 Secondly, language staff are in a unique position to integrate language
5 and cultural studies. The theories underpinning communicative language
6 teaching make available to language teachers some of the inter-connect-
7 edness of language and cultural practice, as we suggested earlier. This
8 is evident, for example, in norms of appropriacy, the sociocultural knowl-
9 edge required to undertake activities such as managing conversation or
30111 a bureaucratic encounter, and the misunderstandings that can arise in
1 intercultural encounters. These are precisely some of the issues which
2 students meet during their residence abroad.
3 The nal reason why languages staff, with appropriate training in this
4 area, are well placed to develop language learners as ethnographers
5 focuses on the difculty and apparent irrelevance of much anthropo-
6 logical literature to non-anthropology students. Language teachers,
7 provided they have the appropriate guidance and materials to start them
8 off, can select what is accessible and relevant to students both in terms
9 of key introductory texts (see Delamont, 1995; Spradley & McCurdy,
40 1988) and ethnographic studies of the areas students will be visiting.
41111 Since the aim of the ethnography programme is to integrate language
1111 and cultural experience, it is important for language staff to develop

2 themselves as ethnographers so that they can teach an integrated course
3 rather than bolting on what would be seen as an outsider course given
4 by someone from a different discipline. As we detail below, in Chapters
5 5 and 6, such an approach entails an explicit staff development compo-
6 nent for languages lecturers.
7
8
Intercultural Competence and Ethnographic Fieldwork
9
1011 The task of the lecturer is to develop the student into an intercultural
1 speaker, as we have dened it above; in other words to help them
2 develop their intercultural competence by linking the cultural knowl-
3111 edge, processes and methods learnt on the ethnography course to the
4 experience of living abroad. The comparative and conceptual are allied
5 to the communicative. Students draw on sociopolitical and historical
6 knowledge but use it in a practical way to observe and grapple with
7 how meanings are produced in everyday practices. In this sense, the
8 experiential aspect of the year abroad is also a conceptual and intellec-
9 tual process.
20111 If we look at the idea of family, we can see how ethnographic eld-
1 work can add an intercultural dimension to this well-worn topic which
2 is generally covered only at the linguistic and communicative levels. At
3 the linguistic level, this topic includes the vocabulary of familial rela-
4 tionships and, in more formal settings, the language of bureaucratic
5 categories. The family setting may also be used to present and practise
6 certain syntactic structures. At the communicative level, students may be
7 taught a range of functions for communicating with a foreign family.
8 For example, they may learn how to greet, offer a present or thank the
9 parents of the family with whom they have had an exchange. At a
30111 more advanced level, they may develop an appropriate register that will
1 facilitate the communicative competence involved in participating in a
2 family dinner.
3 At the level of intercultural competence, the theme of family involves
4 understanding the discourses attached to the word family as it is used
5 interactionally within a particular community. This goes beyond text-
6 book knowledge of the family, to a dynamic understanding of what
7 family means to a particular group, how those meanings are lived out
8 in the routine practices of everyday life, and how they relate to institu-
9 tional constructions of the term. For example, Rachel in her study of the
40 blind students in Marburg, Germany, found that many of them distanced
41111 themselves from their families in unexpected ways and had to manage
1111 a tension between recognising the support the family gave them, on the
2 one hand, and resisting it, on the other. Given that this understanding
3 is local and dynamic, it is difcult to see how someone could be consid-
4 ered as interculturally competent without direct experience in the
5 everyday life of the community with whom they are, at least temporarily,
6 resident and without a reective stance that enables them to locate that
7 experience in its broader theoretical and ideological context.
8 Added to this dynamic understanding of otherness is the capacity to
9 mediate between ones own cultural practices and those of others. By
1011 developing social relations with the group to be studied, the student
1 ethnographer, in effect, learns from her own mistakes. Every time she
2 uses her own conventions and assumptions to get things done or make
3111 a comment, she discovers how her ways of doing or thinking differ from
4 those of her informants:
5
(The ethnographer) . . . can take advantage of a performative
6
inadequacy not by trying to accomplish the impossible task of
7
becoming a member, but by systematically exploiting the fact that
8
s/he is not a member and acting on the basis of his or her cultural
9
rules to nd out to what extent they differ from those of the actors.
20111
Ellen, 1984: 32
1
2 So, a comparative perspective develops in which the social construc-
3 tion of family in one community can be explicitly discussed in relation
4 to that of another community and both can be used to critique the other.
5 By raising family practices to an analytic level, an explicit discourse level,
6 and using these discourses in intercultural encounters, potential misun-
7 derstandings can be tackled and stereotypes challenged.
8 The interconnectedness of the experiential, the analytic and the intel-
9 lectual creates the conditions for intercultural understanding and critical
30111 cultural awareness. Language lecturers and learners become immersed
1 in a process of cultural and language learning. So, as we suggested in
2 Chapter 1, the notion of intercultural competence assumes that cultural
3 learning is language learning and vice versa.
4 Implied in this discussion of intercultural competence is the issue of
5 methods. As we have suggested above, going out into the eld gives
6 students the opportunity to participate in the lives of others and collect
7 data which can then be subjected to a cultural analysis. The raw mate-
8 rial of ethnography is the daily lives of, usually, ordinary people
9 (Sheridan et al., 1999). It cannot be stressed enough that doing ethnog-
40 raphy involves studying the ordinariness and dailiness of peoples lives.
41111 This may mean looking at kitchen table society (Gullestad, 1984), at
1111 how friends and family weave together the fabric of their social lives
2 around the kitchen table; or how employers and passengers manage
3 interactions at the Gare du Nord (one of the main railway stations in
4 Paris) (Lacoste & Levy, 1994); or the way in which an ice hockey team
5 in Eastern Germany constructs itself as a group (student project). The
6 wider sociopolitical and historical contexts feed in, of course, to this
7 everyday living but it is the texture of these lives, material, social and
8 symbolic which an ethnographer studies.
9 Up until the 1960s, anthropology students went out into the eld
1011 with little more advice than to take a notebook and pencil with them.
1 Precisely how an ethnographic study was to be conducted and then
2 written remained a mysterious process. The methods of participant obser-
3111 vation, interviewing and analysis are now the subject of numerous
4 methods books and it is increasingly evident that doing ethnography is
5 an enormously skilful task, involving the whole social person. The central
6 chapters of this book illustrate both its complexity and yet its relative
7 accessibility to those from other disciplines.
8 This account of the engagement of the whole social being in a highly
9 skilled activity presents the work of the period abroad in a rather different
20111 light from usual. It is often regarded by universities and students as
1 time out from their regular studies. Precisely how students can best
2 use this period and what the outcomes are meant to be is often vague.
3 Developing the language learner as ethnographer and requiring an ethno-
4 graphic study to be made while abroad provides clear learning and
5 cultural objectives within a framework of student autonomy.
6
7
Learning Theories and Outcomes
8
9 Before considering learning outcomes in more detail, it is useful to
30111 discuss the learning theories which have some relevance to a programme
1 of cultural and linguistic learning. Ethnography involves putting oneself
2 in someone elses shoes. In other words, to take the metaphor further,
3 it involves nding out about and adapting to the shapes and contours
4 of the others shoes. Being in someone elses shoes does not make you
5 that other person, but it is a constant reminder to you that the experi-
6 ence, however temporary and unlike you, has become a part of you.
7 In the developmental psychological literature this capacity is
8 described as empathy (see Byram & Morgan, 1994: 2530). Unlike
9 sympathy, it does not imply a compassion for others plight, but it does
40 indicate the ability to understand the other, to apprehend their point
41111 of view and their felt experiences. This ability to understand others
1111 implies a process of social interaction and dialogue. In the literature

2 within sociology and social psychology, the capacity to develop under-
3 standing in and through interaction is called intersubjectivity (Schutz,
4 1964; Henriques et al., 1984).
5 This empathy or intersubjectivity can be related to the stages of moral
6 development that children and adolescents go through (Piaget & Weil,
7 1951; Kohlberg et al., 1983). Although this model has been criticised for
8 being too inexible, the later stages of development are relevant in
9 considering how the period abroad can affect attitudes and stereotypes.
1011 These stages involve the process of decentring and reciprocity in which
1 young people learn that there are other ways of looking at the world
2 apart from their own; to understand the perspective of others, reect on
3111 their own perspectives and start appreciating how they are seen by
4 others. Melde (1987) citing Habermas, adds to this the educational aim
5 of developing a critical awareness and capacity to argue through the
6 differences between ones own and others values and belief systems.
7 It is possible to sum up the understanding which leads to empathy
8 as consisting of three interlocking dimensions: (1) the local, immediate,
9 palpable: the capacity to feel in ways which approximate to others; (2)
20111 making sense, apprehending and seeing the meaning of concrete,
1 everyday behaviour (this is the element that sociologists would call inter-
2 subjectivity); (3) the comparative, discursive and critical: the ability to
3 argue through anothers point of view.
4 Although emotion has generally been viewed as too awkward a
5 concept to deal with in the sociological and anthropological literature
6 (but see Besnier, 1990; Lutz & Abu-Lughod, 1990) and at Higher
7 Education (HE) level, moral and attitudinal development of students is
8 not usually seen as a suitable subject for discussion, the notion of an
9 intercultural speaker implies a mix of the affective, the reective and
30111 the intellectual suggested in the three dimensions above. A purely
1 conceptual and analytical interpretation of empathy is inadequate.
2 However, within the constraints of HE, it is the more reective and
3 intellectual dimensions of empathy which can be explicitly taught and
4 assessed, and so, inevitably, there is more emphasis on these aspects in
5 this book.
6 In addition to empathy, the theories of experiential learning (partic-
7 ularly Kolbs learning cycle, 1984) are relevant for the language learner
8 as ethnographer. Although Kolbs theory was not applied to ethnog-
9 raphy, it is possible to relate it to the ethnographic learning while abroad
40 which we propose in this book. His learning cycle suggests a recurring
41111 circularity in which experience (the time spent in the eld), reection
1111 (data analysis and the writing of the ethnographic project) and learning
2 (integration of the experience and the reection into the curriculum after
3 the return from abroad) reinforce each other. The three elements of expe-
4 rience, reection and learning may also be integrated in any one
5 component of the Ealing ethnography programme. Direct experience is
6 central to this cycle and the shock of immersion in a new way of living,
7 and how that culture shock can be managed, has been documented
8 (Furnham & Bochner, 1986).
9 Although the connection between theories of empathy, experiential
1011 learning, culture shock theory and cultural learning are only specula-
1 tive, such theories are broadly relevant to those aspects of cultural
2 learning concerned with attitude change, ethnocentrism, challenging
3111 stereotypes and intercultural competence. In addition to these elements,
4 the intercultural learner has to enter into the conceptual worlds of others,
5 to experience the knowledge structures necessary to get things done and
6 make sense of the information that surrounds them.
7 In language learning theory, the notions of schema (Bartlett, 1932) or
8 script theory (Schank & Ableson, 1977), widely used in social psychology
9 and aspects of discourse analysis, have become important and we draw
20111 on them here for cultural learning purposes. Everyday practices such as
1 using public transport, going to a restaurant or playing a sport rely on
2 scripts that are internalised as part of our socialisation (and see Chapter
3 3 on the ethnography of communication). Similarly, to make sense of
4 advertisements, newspaper copy or a TV documentary requires networks
5 of cultural references organised in schemata which can be readily
6 accessed. Part of the process of cultural learning is to acquire these
7 schemata rst in ones own and then in the second and subsequent
8 languages as part of primary, secondary and tertiary socialisation. They
9 feed into the discourses of everyday life and provide cognitive maps for
30111 both routine and not so familiar social practices.
1 Schema development involves learning the signicance of particular
2 concepts in context. Agar (1991) illustrates this well in his attempt to
3 nd out the signicance of the Viennese German word Schmh (Agars
4 rough gloss on this would be that things are not what they seem to be
5 but are, ironically, much worse). He collected data on this word through
6 anecdotes and interviews, chipping away at the surface meaning of the
7 concept which he saw as heavily puttied with associative meanings.
8 Work on schemata and semantics in cognitive linguistics and linguistic
9 anthropology has considerably enhanced our understanding of how
40 knowledge is stored in script like forms and of the processes of clas-
41111 sication of concepts relative to particular cultural groups. But as with
1111 the psychological theories, direct use of these themes in developing

2 cultural learning is, at best, suggestive. Schema theory has been criti-
3 cised for its implications that scripts are xed structures of knowledge
4 whereas work on connectionism in psychology (Churchland, 1995; Gee,
5 1992) and on interaction in sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982a and b),
6 suggests that such knowledge is negotiated in interaction and is vari-
7 able depending on the context. This reinforces the point that cultural
8 knowledge is not separate from language use but that the two are inter-
9 dependent.
1011 Finally, the work on language learner autonomy (Holec, 1981; Little,
1 1994) is of some relevance. Autonomous learners are those who set
2 their own learning goals, decide the means whereby they can achieve
3111 them, how they can evaluate them and how long they need in order to
4 achieve them. Much of the practical work arising from the studies of
5 language learner autonomy (particularly at the Centre de Recherches
6 et dApplications en Langues [CRAPEL]) has been concerned with either
7 learning to learn strategies (Wenden & Rubin, 1987) or the development
8 of self-access centres (for example, Sheerin, 1989). However, any period
9 of residence abroad is, in many respects, a more complete experience of
20111 autonomy. Language learners as ethnographers have to set their own
1 goals, choosing an ethnographic topic to research; decide on the means
2 to produce an ethnographic project, how to gain access, what methods
3 to use and so on; evaluate their own data and be reective about the
4 process of writing up. They also have to choose how much time to put
5 into the ethnographic project in order to meet their goals.
6 The learning theories briey discussed here are drawn from
7 psychology and linguistics. Another obvious source for descriptions
8 and theories of cultural learning are ethnographers themselves. There
9 has been, however, surprisingly little in the monographs and diaries
30111 of ethnographers about their own language and cultural learning.
1 James Clifford in the introduction to what is now a classic text on ethno-
2 graphic writing (Clifford & Marcus, 1986) suggests that anthropology
3 has had to reposition itself by challenging some of the old assumptions
4 about the discipline and its methods. These old assumptions account
5 for the lack of interest in the ethnographers role and in the processes
6 of learning which they must, inevitably, have gone through. Until
7 recently, ethnographers saw themselves as standing outside the objects
8 of their study, writing with authority about people who it was assumed
9 could not speak for themselves. There was no hint of their own cultur-
40 ally constructed selves in the relatively stylised descriptions of actual
41111 eld experience.
1111 The recent interest in ethnographic writing is part of the more general
2 repositioning of anthropology which has also included reections on
3 participant observation (Stocking, 1983) and eld notes (Sanjek, 1992)
4 as well as more wide-ranging eldwork accounts (Beaujour, 1981;
5 Crapanzano, 1986). It is in these reections on eldwork and writing up,
6 that the ethnographer as learner emerges, particularly in their discus-
7 sions of how to translate from one cultural experience to another (Agar,
8 1985; Asad & Dixon, 1985, and see Chapters 3 and 4).
9 This brief overview of some sources of learning theories sets the
1011 scene for looking at the type of learning outcomes planned in the project.
1 We are anticipating Chapters 10 and 11 here in order to provide a frame-
2 work for the next few chapters. It will be obvious from the discussion
3111 so far that a major learning outcome will not be knowledge about
4 a culture or the other of an encyclopedic or positivist kind. For
5 example, information about political structures, regional or economic
6 policy or the history of changing national boundaries might be useful
7 background knowledge but it is essentially book-based information,
8 usually presented as facts in an unproblematic way and abstracted from
9 the everydayness of peoples ordinary lives. By contrast, the learning
20111 envisaged here is more personal and reexive. It falls into four broad
1 categories:
2
(1) Local social and cultural knowledge
3
This involves developing an understanding of ones own and others
4
particular cultural practices in local contexts. It includes ways of
5
communicating and developing an understanding of how social rela-
6
tions are structured around what is meaningful to a group. The
7
particular and local is set within a wider conceptual framework. So,
8
local meanings are connected to larger systems of meaning. For
9
example, the general notion of exchange or reciprocity could be
30111
used to understand how a group of neighbours managed their social
1
relationships or youth unemployment is considered in terms of its
2
impact on the ptanque club in France.
3
(2) Processes of interrogation and relativisation
4
This involves developing in students the habit of constantly inter-
5
rogating the source of their knowledge and so questioning their own
6
assumptions about how they construct meanings, values and atti-
7
tudes. This, in turn, leads to developing the habit of relativising, of
8
seeing ones own and others worlds as socially constructed and not
9
natural, normative or universal. Allied to this is learning how a
40
group represents itself to itself and to those outside.
41111
1111 (3) Observation, social interaction and analytic skills

2 This involves developing a number of skills out of ethnographic
3 methodology and the opportunities for interaction created by the
4 demands of an ethnographic project. Students gradually acquire a
5 palpable sense of being with a group, of rubbing shoulders with those
6 in it as cultural beings. For example, they learn how to establish eld
7 relations in the foreign language, how to observe systematically and
8 how to draw on conceptual categories to analyse data. The group a
9 student chooses to work with may involve them in learning to inter-
1011 act with people with very different social identities from their own
1 and who use varieties of the target language far removed from the
2 language of the foreign language classroom and written texts.
3111 (4) Personal development
4 This involves developing initiative, autonomy, self-condence and
5 exibility. These personal skills and orientations are, as we have
6 suggested above, rarely described in ethnographies although
7 the more recent reexive eldwork accounts are suggestive of the
8 learning that ethnographers have experienced. Language students
9 need to develop these general personal skills for the specic inter-
20111 cultural contexts they are likely to be working in. For many students,
1 this type of personal development was one of the most important
2 aspects of the ethnography programme (see Chapter 10) .
3
The planned learning, therefore, is a blend of intellectual inquiry, concep-
4
tual development and affective change. It can be summed up as the
5
development of an ethnographic imagination (Atkinson, 1990) a new
6
way of seeing social life based on an intense engagement with it. There
7
is no intention, perhaps it is worth repeating, of turning students into
8
anthropologists or even ethnographers in any full sense of the term. The
9
aim is to help students develop enough of an ethnographic imagination
30111
so that, as language people (Evans, 1988), they can come to understand
1
better and so mediate between different language and cultural practices
2
and, like all good ethnographers, in doing so, understand themselves
3
and their own cultural contexts.
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
41111
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 3
5
6 Theoretical Issues in Language and
7
8 Cultural Practices
9
1011
1
2
Why Bother with Theory?
3111
4 We argued in the previous chapter that a model for the language
5 learner is the speaker with intercultural competence. This chapter and
6 Chapter 4 explore some of the theoretical issues around the idea of an
7 intercultural speaker. Inevitably they draw on theories from studies of
8 both culture and language but there is no neat portmanteau term for
9 looking at the two together. Agar in his book Language Shock (1994) uses
20111 the notion of languaculture and others have used a variety of hyphen-
1 ated terms such as language-in-culture. This lack of an easy term makes
2 it difcult to explore the theories which bring language and culture
3 together, but the aim of this chapter, and indeed the whole book, is to
4 do just that. There are several reasons why it is worth discussing the
5 theoretical background in more detail. Much language teaching is
6 conceived as practical action and any theories tend to be discussed in
7 terms of learning theory despite the fact that theories about language
8 and culture drive the teaching and learning process, albeit implicitly. An
9 obvious instance of this is the assumption that language and culture are
30111 separate and that culture, therefore, has to be tacked on so to speak to
1 the teaching of speaking, listening, reading and writing (Kramsch, 1993:
2 1). Similarly, it can be very difcult to help language students recognise
3 their own theories about other cultural groups and, indeed, more gener-
4 ally, their implicit theories about social reality which inuence their
5 views on learning and on experiencing otherness. As students, for
6 example, of French or German, they tend to discuss the French or the
7 Germans in terms of facts about them as national groups. Unlearning
8 these assumptions, and that involves seeing them for what they are
9 theories not facts is a major part of the ethnography programme.
40 As we have already indicated in the previous chapters, the theories
41111 drawn on in the notion of language learners as ethnographers come
44
Theoretical Issues 45
1111 mainly from social and linguistic anthropology and that branch of soci-
2 olinguistics closest to anthropology called interactional sociolinguistics.
3 There is an analogy between the social anthropologist going out into the
4 eld, living and studying in a particular community and the foreign
5 language student using their time abroad to learn about a new set of
6 social, cultural and communicative experiences. The metaphor of the
7 eld is a useful one but it can be misleading if it is assumed that
8 the eld is somewhere out there rather than part of ones everyday life:
9
Social anthropology is concerned with the whole of life, and not just
1011
something you do until six oclock. The study of social anthropology
1
encourages you to have a new kind of consciousness of life; it is a
2
way of looking at the world, and in that sense it is a way of living.
3111
(Pocock, 1975: 1)
4
5 So before language students go out into the foreign eld, they need to
6 start looking at their own worlds in an anthropological way. Many of
7 the tasks on the ethnography course, and what we call the home ethnog-
8 raphy, are designed for this purpose. The aim here is to bring to the
9 surface, so to speak, the implicit knowledge and ways of acting which
20111 make us part of a particular community. We experience these from the
1 inside and they need to be made strange, if we are to understand our
2 own process of socialisation generally, and language socialisation, in
3 particular. Foreign-language learners, even if they spend some time
4 in the target language country, rarely experience the gradual accretion
5 of ideas, values and ways of doing interactions which we experience
6 with our dominant and, in some cases, second languages.
7 Incorporating some aspects of social anthropology into the modern
8 languages degree gives students concepts and methods which help them
9 to reect on their own sociocultural knowledge and use this reection
30111 to compare their lives with those of the group they study while abroad.
1 Interactional sociolinguistics puts a magnifying glass on interactions
2 themselves and examines the processes of language use and socialisa-
3 tion of different groups. As we have already suggested, it forms a bridge
4 between communicative language teaching and anthropology, drawing
5 on the anthropological theories of the ethnography of communication
6 and the ne-grained detail analysis of conversation developed within
7 one branch of sociology. In Chapter 4, some of the theories of language
8 which are particularly relevant for developing the language learner as
9 ethnographer will be discussed but a more general framing will be
40 given rst. We describe two different analytic perspectives on the social
41111 world, three views of culture arising from them and the interactional
1111 sociolinguistic perspective which combines cultural practices and

2 detailed analysis of interaction.
3
4
Functional and Constructivist Perspectives of Culture
5
and Language
6
7 The foundation of much thinking in anthropology and linguistics in
8 the last 70 years or so has been within a functional paradigm. A societys
9 activities and ways of thinking are seen as matters of responding to
1011 needs and demands. So, for example, people gossip because they need
1 to afrm social relations, or interviews are run the way they are because
2 that is an effective way of eliciting information from people. Beliefs and
3111 values are described in terms of behaviour; for example, the French bour-
4 geois families Le Wita (1988) studied taught their children not to interrupt
5 their parents in the drawing room. The functional message was that
6 children should not be disruptive. Similarly, language is seen as action
7 words are deeds in a functional view of the world. This functional
8 view of language, based on speech act theory, informs most commu-
9 nicative language teaching in which language functions and the
20111 situations in which they occur are interconnected. For example, language
1 students will all be familiar with course books that teach how to give
2 instructions for cooking a local delicacy, how to make requests in work-
3 place settings or how to describe your weekend to friends.
4 Functionalism has been an important inuence in understanding
5 culture since Malinowskis early work (see Chapter 5) and remains a
6 signicant element in ethnography. After all, we eat because we are
7 hungry and gas leaks are repaired because otherwise we might die. Most
8 informants when talking about their lives to ethnographers will describe
9 it in functional terms. So, an important part of an ethnographic project
30111 is to describe what people do and to understand, in their terms, why
1 they do it. As Malinowski asserted, understanding what meanings an
2 activity might have or indeed what a particular word means requires
3 the ethnographer to be involved in practical action:
4
Meaning does not come . . . from the contemplation of things, or
5
analysis of occurrences, but in practical and active acquaintance with
6
relevant situations. The real knowledge of a word comes through
7
the practice of appropriately using it within a certain situation.
8
(Malinowski, 1923: 325)
9
40 Functionalism also connects to realism and to the idea that it is possible
41111 to see and describe the world as it is that there is a reality out there
1111 waiting prone to be discovered. Until quite recently, ethnographers

2 would see their task, unproblematically, as one of getting close to the
3 social reality of the new community. The idea of being there, it was
4 considered, gave them the authority to describe another culture as real.
5 This assumption is still, of course, a dening aspect of ethnography (see
6 Chapter 5) and underlies the arguments for a period abroad. It is assumed
7 that by being there, seeing how society goes about its business, language
8 students will learn what that society and culture is. But this functional
9 realism, if the dominant or only view can, as we have already suggested,
1011 lead to generalisations and negative stereotypes of other cultures. This
1 is what anthropologists and sociologists have critiqued as essentialism
2 a view of national and ethnic groups as having certain essential char-
3111 acteristics which dene them as if every member of that group thought
4 and behaved in the same way. So a functional, realist approach has
5 to be critiqued by drawing on a different way of seeing and knowing
6 the world.
7 An alternative paradigm, but one that is not incommensurable with
8 functionalism, is constructivism. In this perspective social life is seen as
9 constructed or constituted out of interactive behaviour and texts. So
20111 language is not simply a tool for expressing some prior reality; it actively
1 helps to create that reality. The real world, it is argued, does not exist
2 out there as a set of concrete, objective facts; it is constructed by us as
3 social beings in our everyday lives and language is the chief instrument
4 for doing this. If we return to Le Witas study of upper middle-class
5 Parisian families, mentioned above, (a part of which is read, either in
6 French or English, by students in Unit 5 of the ethnography course on
7 Families) we can see the active construction of the notion of family
8 within dominant class relations. Children are taught not to interrupt so
9 that parents and their friends can converse in peace, but such socialisa-
30111 tion is also, de Wita suggests, part of a large symbolic order in which
1 this class is perpetuating notions of self-control as a means of repro-
2 ducing their class power. She also discusses such routines as everyday
3 lunches and dinners, learning how to negotiate the drawing room as a
4 social space or the summons to sit down for dinner (passer table).
5 Deuxime preuve: le moment de passer table. On assiste alors
6 une curieuse scne: le groupe est arriv dans la salle manger et
7 reste en arrt quelques pas de la table. Il ne saurait tre question
8 dy prendre place en ordre dispers et avant larrive de la matresse
9 de la maison [. . .]
40 Chaque lment du groupe participe ainsi la vacuit du moment.
41111 On pourrait comparer cette scne une longue rgle de politesse o
1111 chaque partie sexcuserait de faire attendre le tout. voluant discrte-

2 ment autour de la table chacun patiente donc sans chercher faire
3 quoi que ce soit. (Le Wita, 1988: 88)
4
Another ordeal is the moment of sitting down to eat. The summons
5
to do so gives rise to a curious scene. Having entered the dining
6
room the group will come to a halt a little way from the table. There
7
can be no question of just sitting anywhere and taking their places
8
before the hostess arrives . . .
9
Every member of the group shares in the emptiness of the moment.
1011
The scene might be compared to one prolonged rule of politeness
1
in which every party apologises for holding everyone else up.
2
Circling the table discreetly, everybody waits without attempting to
3111
do anything. (trans. Le Wita, 1994: 767)
4
5 These are part of a set of ritualised practices which teach self-control,
6 one of the crucial characteristics, Le Wita argues, of Bourgeois person-
7 hood:
8
9 Lascetisme bourgeois est une mthode de conduite visant
20111 surmonter le status naturae, soustraire lhomme la puissance
1 des instincts, le librer de sa dpendance lgard du monde et
2 de la nature. (Le Wita, 1988: 83)
3 Bourgeois asceticism is a mode of conduct aimed at overcoming the
4 status naturae, removing man from the power of instinct; and freeing
5 him from his dependence upon the world and nature. (trans. de
6 Wita, 1994: 72)
7
8 The mode of conduct which has everyone circling the table actively
9 constructs an element of self-control. The ritual of seating becomes
30111 as, if not more, signicant than the act of eating. A functional perspec-
1 tive would say that everyone is simply waiting to be told where to
2 sit. But from a constructivist point of view, the dinner guests are
3 performing a ritual which helps to build up the notion of what it
4 means to be a bourgeois family in Paris in the 1980s. The fact that
5 everyone does not just sit down and enjoy the meal both reects
6 and constructs the notion of self-control as an aspect of bourgeois
7 asceticism.
8 Constructivism is also a dening element of ethnography, especially
9 in more recent ethnography, in that facts, reality are not taken
40 for granted but are seen as constitutive and representative of some
41111 version of reality. So, for example, the Spanish student who did his
1111 home ethnography on Reyes, the Twelfth Night celebrations in Spain,

2 began to see these celebrations in more than simple functional terms or
3 as some xed or natural reality we give presents because it is the
4 custom. He began to analyse the practice as a constructed reality based
5 on a cultural system of obligations and reciprocity which help to main-
6 tain the idea of family.
7 Language is the fundamental means of constructing social reality
8 because it classies and xes the ow of experience so that we can
9 think , talk, know and write about it in ways which make it accessible
1011 to others ( Berger & Berger, 1972; Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Schutz,
1 1964). It is through language that we are socialised and it is language
2 itself which makes social life real:
3111
First of all, of course, it is the childs micro-world itself that is struc-
4
tured by language. Language objecties reality that is, the incessant
5
ux of experience is rmed up, stabilized into discrete identiable
6
objects. Language also structures, by objectication and by estab-
7
lishing meaningful relations, the human environment of the child.
8
It populates reality with distinct beings, ranging from Mummy . . .
9
To the bad-little-boy who throws tantrums next door. And it is by
20111
means of language that the fact becomes established that Mummy
1
knows best, but that bad-little-boys will be punished: and, inciden-
2
tally, it is only through the power of language that such propositions
3
can retain their established plausibility even if experience offers little
4
or no proof. (Berger & Berger, 1972: 69)
5
6 The idea that reality is socially constructed and that language not only
7 reects and expresses reality but constitutes it, is an entirely new way
8 of looking at things for many language students. It requires a shift in
9 perspective from a positivist view from seeing social reality as a posi-
30111 tive fact whose origin is not questioned to a constructivist one where
1 social reality is made out of the interactions and discourses of a partic-
2 ular time in history. A constructivist take on the experience of living
3 and learning abroad would be a cautious and relative one. Conversations
4 overheard, rituals observed and informants comments would all be
5 treated as versions of reality constructed by speakers as they interacted,
6 as representations of reality. People would be observed getting things
7 done, making things work functioning within certain contexts but
8 as well as describing these activities in functional terms, the construc-
9 tivist pauses to question how these activities have come about, what
40 makes them signicant and how participants work at making them into
41111 reality.
1111 Both the functional and the constructivist paradigms have informed
2 the three models of culture which are now presented: the cognitive,
3 the symbolic and the critical.
4
5
A Cognitive View of Culture
6
7 In the cognitive view, culture is seen as knowledge. This is a mentalist
8 perspective in which culture is abstracted from actual behaviour and
9 practice and instead consists of knowledge structures. These can then
1011 be analysed as interlinked components. For example, in cognitive and
1 linguistic anthropology, language is used to draw up taxonomies such
2 as names for family relationships, plants and animals. These linguistic
3111 components are then related to cultural concepts within a particular
4 society or group. For example, kinship terms are traditionally studied
5 to understand the ways in which family is constituted. A well-known
6 example is the way in which different languages categorise uncles, aunts,
7 cousins, etc. In some languages, a distinction is made between relations
8 on the husbands and on the wifes side such as aunt on the husbands
9 side and so on, whereas in others there is no such distinction. The
20111 anthropologist most closely associated with this approach is Ward
1 Goodenough and his denition of culture represents the classic one
2 within this school:
3
A societys culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or
4
believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members
5
. . . Culture is a not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of
6
things, peoples, behaviour, or emotions. It is rather an organization
7
of these things. It is the form of things that people have in their
8
mind, their models for perceiving, reacting and otherwise inter-
9
preting them. (Goodenough, 1964: 36)
30111
1 So people organise the way they do things in their heads and these men-
2 tal representations or models are what cognitive and linguistic anthro-
3 pologists deem is culture. In an interesting collection of essays on cultural
4 models (Holland & Quinn, 1987), the model of an American marriage
5 draws on the metaphors commonly used: broken marriages, working
6 hard on your marriage, trying to mend the relationship and so on. These
7 build up a cultural model of marriage as a fragile thing which can be
8 easily broken. There are links here with the cognitive models, such as
9 schema, scripts and frames, of articial intelligence (see Chapter 2) and
40 both cognitive anthropology and schema and script theory are concerned
41111 with learned behaviour that is behaviour based on cultural knowledge.
1111 A Symbolic View of Culture

2
3 The symbolic or semiotic take on culture sees it as a system of public
4 meanings. Cultural meanings do not reside in peoples heads but are
5 shared and acted out publicly among those who could be said to have
6 the same culture. These cultural meanings are realised in symbols and
7 in behaviour which itself is seen as symbolic action. We eat certain kinds
8 of food, live in certain kinds of households not just because it is func-
9 tional to do so but because it has symbolic signicance. For example,
1011 our notion of who we are is linked to what food we classify as edible
1 or not (as we discuss in Unit 16 of the ethnography course on Belief and
2 Action). Similarly, we greet others the way we do, present ourselves in
3111 certain routinised ways and manage issues of embarrassment or impo-
4 sition in particular ways, not because we need to do so in this specic
5 form but because as members of a community, it is the way we act out
6 our identity and sense of communality and our relation to others. These
7 actions have symbolic meanings.
8 This approach is closely associated with Clifford Geertz and his notion
9 of culture as socially established structures of meaning:
20111 Believing, with Max Weber, that man (sic) is an animal suspended
1 in webs of signicance that he himself has spun, I take culture to
2 be those webs, the analysis of it to be, therefore, not an experimental
3 science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.
4 (Geertz, 1973: 5)
5
6 So, whereas Goodenough would see culture as knowledge in, so to
7 speak, the spiders head, Geertz sees it as public behaviour the web
8 which has symbolic signicance to those who can bring meaning to it.
9 So, he is asking the question: How do people come to make meanings
30111 out of their lives? What are the structures and layers of meaning in
1 which people are enmeshed? Each interpretation of meaning is itself
2 embedded in another so that cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete
3 worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is. So
4 the cultural learner has to pick his (sic) way through piled up struc-
5 tures of inuence and implication (1973: 7).
6 Geertz uses the philosopher Gilbert Ryles notion of thick descrip-
7 tion to illustrate the interpretive complexities in trying to understand
8 behaviour and the value systems embedded in it. Ryle illustrates
9 the notion by comparing the difference between a blink and a wink. A
40 thin description might be a rapid contraction of the eyelid. But a thick
41111 description must not only describe and account for the context in which
1111 the wink/blink occurs but also explain whether it was a wink or not.
2 In other words, did it have symbolic signicance? Was it a conspirato-
3 rial sign or a reex action? Or was it a fake wink because the winker
4 wanted the others to think there was a conspiracy going on? And so on.
5 For the language student, resident abroad, every piece of observation
6 raises questions such as these, whether it is learning about the symbolic
7 signicance of the Sevillano dance or understanding the routines and
8 use of social space in the kitchens of the student hostels at Marburg
9 University. What meanings do these behaviours have? How is their
1011 action symbolic of wider themes and assumptions? This approach to
1 culture with its emphasis on systems of meaning and symbolic action,
2 on complex and unresolvable interpretations and on context as some-
3111 thing both brought in and brought about in interaction may be quite
4 daunting. But it encourages the habits of observation, interrogation and
5 reection which characterise the intercultural speaker. These issues are
6 tackled in the ethnography course in different ways. Students are rst
7 introduced to the idea of shared cultural knowledge and thick descrip-
8 tion in Unit 4 where they use observations from their daily lives to
9 distinguish between description and interpretation. Later in the course,
20111 they are introduced to the symbolic signicance of gift giving (used by
1 the Spanish student in the Reyes project mentioned above) and how
2 symbolic signs and classication shape our notions of what is accept-
3 able, appropriate and so on (see Chapter 6 for detailed examples).
4
5
A Critical View of Culture
6
7 More recently, the symbolic and cognitive views of culture have been
8 criticised for presenting a relatively unproblematic, static and ahistorical
9 image of culture. A critical perspective has been added to the descrip-
30111 tive and interpretive in anthropology, linguistics, applied linguistics and
1 ethnography and other discipline areas. Issues of power and political
2 responsibility are at the centre of this debate. A critical perspective goes
3 beyond description to ask critical questions about how such things came
4 to be, how did the dominant view come to prevail? (Asad, 1973, 1980;
5 Grillo et al., 1987):
6
The verication and naturalisation of culture hides the kinds of
7
questions about power and social change that are currently in the
8
forefront of anthropological enquiry. (Street, 1993)
9
40 Current anthropology has been particularly sensitive to the colonial
41111 associations of its earlier days and so its critical turn has been signicant
1111 in redening itself. In particular, a critical view of culture challenges

2 the essentialist notion of a group having a culture some essential set
3 of meanings that dene them. So just as ethnographers writing today
4 would not talk about a group they had studied as, for example, The
5 Nuer, as the Oxford anthropologist, Evans-Pritchard described the tribe
6 he studied, so language students need to resist the temptation to talk of
7 The Germans, Parisians, Eastenders and so on. There is a danger in
8 taking dominant cultural practices as the givens of a culture. In any
9 community there are varieties and struggles over meaning which are
1011 observable in the actions of small groups.
1 This perspective assumes that we are all interpreting the world from:
2
within particular discursive practices, entailing particular interests,
3111
commitments, inclusions, exclusions and so forth [and that] aspects
4
of these discursive practices may serve to sustain relations of domi-
5
nation and may hence be ideological. (Fairclough, 1996: 45)
6
7 (and see Gee, 1999 and the section on discourse in Chapter 4). In other
8 words, any analysis of a text or piece of interaction must be understood
9 as coming from a particular set of values and beliefs and can be inter-
20111 preted in different ways according to the values and beliefs of the analyst.
1 We have all had the experience of presenting our case as if it were the
2 facts, whether we are defending our countrys foreign policy, the value
3 of a university education or an accusation that we are racist. We talk
4 from particular positions and with our interests in mind. Critical anthro-
5 pologists and linguists argue that these positions and interests need to
6 be recognised and unpacked so that we can see the ideology working
7 away and can identify, in particular, how dominant groups come to
8 establish their view as the normal and natural one.
9 This ideological view can be contrasted with an autonomous model
30111 (Street, 1984) in which language and culture are separated off from their
1 historical and social contexts and are treated as neutral knowledge
2 systems and tools. A critical position would not, for example, just accept
3 the assumptions about what constitutes knowledge or appropriate acad-
4 emic language in a particular school system, but would ask how this
5 knowledge and these values come to be the dominant ones. In a similar
6 vein, Chris, the student who undertook an ethnographic study of trans-
7 vestite prostitutes in Cadiz, had to try to understand not only the
8 symbolic meanings around why they dressed the way they did or
9 approach potential clients in particular ways in other words develop
40 a thick description he also had to ask how this group comes to resist
41111 dominant values and social relationships. So, he attempted a critical
1111 interpretation of how this state of affairs was constituted and repro-
2 duced. In constantly interrogating how texts and practices come to be
3 produced, this critical view owes much to social constructivism and
4 symbolic anthropology. But it goes further, in questioning categories
5 which are apparently presented as natural, value-free and shared and
6 asks about the relationships of power which have caused these cate-
7 gories and ways of thinking to be seen as the real or the right ones.
8 As Kramsch argues, culture is arbitrary but is cloaked in rightness to
9 justify itself (Kramsch, 1995).
1011
1
Culture is a Verb
2
3111 All three views of culture are drawn on, in developing the notion of
4 the language learner as ethnographer but in different measure. The cogni-
5 tive view is useful in helping students focus on the cultural models
6 implied in language, but its static, mentalist assumptions can lead the
7 student ethnographer to revert to a folk view of people having cultures
8 which can be caught like butteries in a net. The critical view is impor-
9 tant, similarly, in challenging essentialist notions and in pushing students
20111 beyond interpretation to explanations of cultural practice which include
1 the dimension of power. And this critical appreciation is something to
2 be developed in both the foreign culture and in the learners own culture
3 (Melde, 1987). It is also useful in helping them to be reexive about their
4 own ethnographic writing about their own interests and commitments
5 and see their own writing as ideological. But since ethnography is a
6 new method for the great majority of students, it is difcult to teach
7 them to adopt a strongly critical approach when they are still in the
8 early stages of learning about the more traditional one. So, the critical
9 perspective acts as a lens, focusing students on the habits of interroga-
30111 tion questioning the categories and ways of thinking that are presented
1 as natural and universal and asking how texts and interactions come to
2 be produced. It is in this more general sense of critical that this perspec-
3 tive is used in the language learners as ethnographers project.
4 It is the symbolic/semiotic view of culture which is drawn on most
5 heavily the focus on meanings and the interpretation of meanings. But
6 Geertzs notion of culture as action is taken further here. As we
7 mentioned, at the beginning of Chapter 2, even using the word culture
8 suggests something too noun-like, as if it were an entity, something that
9 can be readily named. Instead a more active verb-like notion is needed
40 (Street, 1993) or as Ochs says members of society are agents of culture,
41111 not merely bearers of culture (our italics ) (Ochs, 1997: 416). Culture is
1111 doing rather than being. We can get somewhat closer to this active,
2 dynamic view of culture if we talk about cultural processes or practices
3 (and see the section on practice in the next chapter).
4 So far, we have suggested two general ways of looking at the world,
5 the functional and the constructivist, and three views of culture which
6 draw to varying degrees on these two views. In the nal part of this
7 chapter, we will look at one aspect of cultural practice styles of commu-
8 nicating and self-presentation as part of a wider ethnographic approach.
9
1011
1
Language-and-Cultural Practices
2 The following conversation was overheard in a small restaurant in a
3111 relatively afuent suburb of West London. Two women with young
4 children were discussing their au pairs. One was telling the other how
5 the week before she had had to have a serious talk with her au pair.
6 The young woman had invited a male friend into her bedroom without
7 introducing him rst to the family. Her employer had admonished her
8 for this lapse and told her In England, if you are staying in someone
9 elses house, you introduce any visitor to the head of the household.
20111 The woman went on to tell her friend that her au pair had explained
1 that this was not the custom where she came from.
2 A number of issues arise out of this bit of eavesdropping which link
3 back to the points made in Chapter 2 based on the student ethnogra-
4 phies of the ptanque game and the familys religious practices in Seville.
5 They also provide a connecting link to the theories of language- and-
6 cultural practice described below:
7
8 Communication the presentation of self through styles of
9 speaking, what are accepted topics (here the grumbles about the
30111 au pair) and how these styles of speaking express and construct
1 a particular social identity. For example, here cultural misunder-
2 standings are dealt with explicitly by a rule-giving approach to
3 social etiquette.
4 The everydayness and smallness of things: the ways in which
5 passing interactions build up patterns of behaviour and values
6 how gossip and chat have values embedded in them.
7 The structuring of social relations and the formation of boundaries
8 between different groups here the distinction made between
9 family and visitor.
40 Representations of ones own group and others. Here the concept
41111 of the head of the household indexes a particular model of family.
1111 Part of this representation is the natives stereotyping of her own

2 customs to present a single voice to the outsider: In England you
3 behave like this.
4 The connections of the local to larger systems of meaning associ-
5 ated with social, political and economic relations. For example, the
6 grumbles about servants topic is part of a cultural theme, histor-
7 ically, of the dominant class and the head of the household notion
8 is one, fundamentally contested, way of structuring family rela-
9 tionships.
1011
Of course, it is not possible to simply read off from this one small
1
instance the cultural practices of a group. But keeping an ethnographic
2
eye and ear open might over time lead to the identication of some
3111
interesting patterns among this group of women in this West London
4
suburb. To draw these kinds of points out of a little piece of observa-
5
tion requires the observer to have some background in the theory and
6
methodology of some aspects of anthropology and sociolinguistics and
7
we now turn to these. We shall look at ve themes the rst one in
8
this chapter and the remaining four in the next:
9
20111 Interactional sociolinguistics the ways in which styles of commu-
1 nicating index social identity and the need for a method which
2 examines the ne-grained detail of interaction.
3 Issues of ethnicity and nationality how language is used to repre-
4 sent ethnic and national identity.
5 Linguistic relativity the idea that language inuences our view
6 of the world.
7 Discourse, text and practice the relationship between lived expe-
8 riences and the discourses and practices which represent it and
9 the way these are written up as text.
30111 Non-verbal communication and the use of social space the signif-
1 icance of the human body in language-and-cultural practices.
2
3
Interactional Sociolinguistics
4
5 Taking a social constructivist view, interactional sociolinguistics draws
6 on the literature in the ethnography of communication and conversation
7 analysis and is most closely associated with the work of John Gumperz.
8 His work draws together detailed studies of interactional life, social iden-
9 tity and cultural practices to answer the question: How do people come
40 to make sense of, and to, each other and how do these interpretive
41111 processes feed into the structuring of social groups and identities?
1111 Another way of putting this is Sacks denition of culture as an infer-

2 ence-making machine (Sacks, 1994). If we examine the ways in which
3 people make inferences about what they see and hear and we trace these
4 inferences through innumerable interactions, we begin to see the patterns
5 of social life which sustain us as groups and individual social beings.
6 Similarly, misunderstandings when the inference-making machine
7 breaks down can act as a magnifying glass to show us the different
8 language-and-cultural practices across different groups.
9 Misunderstandings are central to this approach because they bring to
1011 the surface the styles of communicating which have caused the misun-
1 derstandings in the rst place (Tannen, 1984). What was judged as
2 rude or incompetent behaviour, for instance, turns out to be based on
3111 culturally communicative styles. For example, Beales work (1990) on the
4 contrast between Australian English speakers and French English
5 speakers suggests that the two groups manage aspects of social relations
6 in the workplace quite differently. Whereas the Australian English
7 speakers will chat briey about how they spent their weekends to any
8 colleague in the workplace, the French English speakers manage the
9 Monday morning contacts in different ways. If their colleagues are
20111 friends, they tend to talk at some length about their weekends while
1 with colleagues with whom they only have a distant relationship, greet-
2 ings would be minimal and no weekend chat is embarked on. Beale
3 reports that both sides found this difference uncomfortable. The context
4 created by the Australian English speakers by such exchanges as: Did
5 you have a good weekend? Yes, ne thanks spoken with a falling tone,
6 gives off a message that contact has been made but that no real interest
7 in the others weekend has been conveyed or is, indeed, necessary. For
8 the French English speakers in Beales study Did you have a good
9 weekend? creates a context in which, at the least, several exchanges are
30111 expected. As McDermott and Gospidinoff (1979) put it, people make
1 environments for each other which are not always ones they are comfort-
2 able living in. Not surprisingly misunderstandings were reported on
3 both sides and negative judgements were made of the other group.
4 This study illustrates some of the points made above about the West
5 London women: the smallness and everydayness of passing comments
6 and specic styles of self-presentation (Goffman, 1959), the boundary
7 making between them and us and how these feed into wider social
8 structures, including national stereotyping. In doing so, Beales study
9 also illustrates two central concerns of interactional sociolinguistics: how
40 ways of interacting index, or signal, ethnic identity and how this is done,
41111 dynamically, in and through everyday interactions by the ways in which
1111 speakers create contexts for each other. This contextualisation work, as
2 Gumperz (1982a) calls it, helps speakers to track each others meaning
3 and at the same time signals to the other that they share the same way
4 of doing things, that in this respect they are part of the same commu-
5 nity. Because the French and English speakers in the Australian
6 workplaces studied give different contextualisaton cues (Gumperz, 1982a,
7 1992a and b) they are unintentionally giving off two messages simulta-
8 neously: that they do not share the same way of making social contact
9 through talking about the weekend and because of this lack of shared-
1011 ness, they are conrming and perhaps reinforcing the differences between
1 them: that they are not part of the same community.
2 Gumperz and his associates in their studies of intercultural commu-
3111 nication linked to both ethnicity and gender (Gumperz, 1982; Tannen,
4 1990, 1993) have charted the misunderstandings which occur when
5 people bring different presuppositions and style of talking to the
6 encounter in other words when they create different contexts together
7 and draw different inferences from the interaction. The potential for
8 misunderstanding is at the heart of a conict model of intercultural
9 communication (Kramsch, 1993) in which diversity becomes problem-
20111 atic in face-to-face interaction. Not only do speakers come across to each
1 other as not conforming to their own norms of how to be and get things
2 done, but they do not have the shared means for repairing misunder-
3 standings. For example, a very indirect way of communicating may cause
4 a problem and when the speaker tries to repair it, they use the very
5 same indirect style which caused the problem in the rst place. So,
6 cultural differences in communicating are not simply about not under-
7 standing the meaning of an utterance but are to do with sharing (or not)
8 the conditions for negotiating meaning together. These are the seeds
9 from which negative ethnic stereotyping grows or from which conr-
30111 mation of old stereotypes is made. Language students, negotiating their
1 ethnographic projects in the target country, can, in contrast, be reec-
2 tive about the misunderstandings that they may well encounter and can
3 use these critical moments as part of the experience of cultural learning.
4 The important point here is that cultural learning cannot happen
5 in the abstract, in a classroom, with relatively decontextualised exam-
6 ples of communication breakdown from which learners tend to draw
7 generalised conclusions. But it can happen in the actual contexts of
8 communication in which all the features of the local environment affect
9 interpretation and where students are part of the context and can use it
40 for on the spot or later learning through discussion with participant or
41111 other locals. For example, Sophie studied the Carnaval and the carnava-
1111 liers in Nice. She found that women were excluded from becoming
2 carnavaliers. When she tried to talk to the older men about this
3 exclusion she met with little response and experienced a number of
4 uncomfortable encounters. Later, she made contact with some women
5 who were active in the carnival but were not allowed to be carnaval-
6 ires. From them she learnt about the gender contestations around the
7 carnival tradition and could link them to wider issues of gender and
8 inequality.
9 The connection between language and wider social systems, which
1011 has informed the studies of misunderstandings, has been the particular
1 concern of the ethnography of communication (Bauman & Sherzer, 1974).
2 Until Dell Hymes ground-breaking work in this area (Hymes, 1966a,
3111 1972, 1974) ethnography had used language as evidence of patterns of
4 behaviour but language had not been seen as creating activities in its
5 own right. These language created activities or speech events are, in a
6 sense, microcosms of the larger community. The detailed ways in which
7 people assemble an event a religious ceremony, a formal story-telling
8 or even asking for a drink (Frake, 1964) shows that speaking, like the
9 linguistic code, is patterned and functions as part of our cultural system:
20111 People who enact different cultures do to some extent experience dis-
1 tinct communicative systems, not merely the same natural commu-
2 nicative condition with different customs afxed. (Hymes, 1966b: 116)
3
4 Hymes inuence on communicative language teaching, and the rather
5 limited way in which CLT has interpreted his work, has been briey
6 discussed in Chapter 2. For the student who is resident abroad, partic-
7 ipation in and analysis of speech events such as formal celebrations,
8 ceremonies or even sporting xtures soon reveals that they are made up
9 of much more than socially appropriate language. The whole physical
30111 and social event as well as the bodily movements, pacing and rhythm
1 of speakers turns and so on have to be apprehended and then (tenta-
2 tive) links made to wider social knowledge and practices. It is this level
3 the speech event that Gumperz argues should be the unit of analysis
4 rather than the level of sentence or speech act, and the student abroad
5 is well positioned to analyse events at this level.
6 Saville-Troike (1982), in her introduction to the ethnography of commu-
nication suggests that to be communicatively competent speakers need:
7
8 knowledge of the social structure;
9 an understanding of the values and attitudes related to language;
40 a network of conceptual categories resulting from shared experience;
41111 an understanding of the way knowledge and skills are transmitted.
1111 These are, of course, broad areas and students can bring with them from
2 their home environment only some general frameworks to guide their
3 experiential learning. For example, knowledge of the social structure
4 includes some understanding of how social categories are ranked and
5 the ethnography course includes a unit looking at how language is a
6 marker of social categorisation in female/male encounters (Unit 6).
7 Language related values and attitudes include assumptions about what
8 counts as good or appropriate language and how language functions
9 in the formation of social identity (see below and Unit 14 of the course).
1011 Conceptual categories include the type of models and metaphors
1 discussed above in the section on cognitive anthropology and referred
2 to again in the section below on linguistic and cultural relativity. Students
3111 are encouraged to develop their understanding of these categories
4 through analysis of ethnographic interviews (Units 9, 10, 11 and 12).
5 Finally, an understanding of the way knowledge and skills are trans-
6 mitted is the theme of Unit 7 of the course on education and socialisation
7 in which students use classroom interaction data to examine educational
8 processes as cultural reproduction.
9 More recently, the ethnography of communication has moved away
20111 from an exclusive analysis of formal, ritual events in faraway settings
1 and towards the more informal routines of everyday life usually in
2 complex urban environments. Interactional sociolinguistics studies
3 these everyday encounters, combining ethnography of communication
4 with Conversation Analysis which looks at the ne-grained detail of
5 conversation.
6 Conversation Analysis (CA) is the study of the mechanisms of
7 everyday talk in order to account for how social organisation is accom-
8 plished through interaction. Just as many theories in anthropology
9 challenge the notion that culture is something separate from daily
30111 activity, including talk, so CA sets out to show that society is organised
1 not out there but in the details of routine conversations and talk more
2 generally (Atkinson & Heritage, 1984). In this respect, like much recent
3 anthropology, it owes a great deal to a social constructivist perspective.
4 Its concerns include how people take turns in talk (Sacks et al., 1974),
5 repair moments of trouble, start and nish conversations, especially on
6 the telephone, and manage their institutional identity through the
7 way they orientate to clients, customers, patients and so on (Drew &
8 Heritage, 1992). CA does not take categories such as counselling,
9 selling or doctorpatient consultations for granted. Instead, it asks
40 how does the talk and non-verbal features associated with it show that,
41111 counselling work, for example, is being done. This problematising of
1111 routine categories is a useful method for language learners as they

2 encounter otherness (Hallam & Street, 1999) and focuses them on the
3 detail of conversational mechanisms as a means to understanding wider
4 social formations. For example, Lacoste describes the work that patients
5 have to do in consultations with doctors. One of the pieces of data shows
6 how uncomfortable an interaction can become if the patients work chal-
7 lenges the doctors position as the authoritative one:
8
(The patient, an engineer who is a diabetic, has produced a table showing
9
his symptoms and treatment)
1011
1 M: (the doctor) Je ne sais pas comment vous fates pourtant vous
2 avez lhabitude des plans et tout
3111 I dont know how you are going about it, and yet you are used to making
4 plans and all that
5 (. . .)
6 Ah vous fates comme a, vous, ah cest vraiment lancienne
7 mthode
8 Aha youre doing it like that, are you? er its really the old fashioned way
9 of going about it
20111 Je suis dsol hein cest pas normal hein vous qui tes ingnieur
1 Im sorry but its a bit odd, Id have thought that as an engineer . . .
2 P: Mais cest parfaitment logique
3 But its perfectly logical
4 (. . .)
5 M: Mais je vous avais dj dit que ctait ridicule daugmenter dune
6 unit
7 But Id already told you that it was ridiculous to increase the dose by a unit
8 (. . .)
9 M: Asseyez vous Monsieur cest pas la peine // vous avez ni votre
30111 croissance
1 Sit down, Mr X, standing up wont make you feel any taller!
2 (Lacoste, 1993: 96 [our translation])
3
4 This is a very difcult consultation because the doctor treats the patient
5 as a child since he has overstepped the mark of what constitutes a proper
6 patient. The fact that the doctor responds to the patients initiative by
7 taking the oor and commenting on the patients action shows that he is
8 orientating to his role as the one with the medical knowledge who
9 can take charge. The tape recording of such interactions allows for the
40 detailed analysis of talk and indicates both how events are constructed in
41111 the interaction and how the mechanisms of talk maintain speakers in role.
1111 In addition to the type of institutional encounters that this patient

2 interview represents and the more informal contacts of day-to-day living,
3 language learners who undertake ethnographic projects are constantly
4 putting themselves into intercultural encounters. They are both partici-
5 pant observers of new cultural practices and are involved in negotiating
6 the complex business of transforming strangers into informants. Any of
7 these encounters may provide the data for their project but if they are
8 to study them as interactions they need the methodological frameworks
9 provided by interactional sociolinguistics. The methods used draw on
1011 the ethnography of communication and CA. Detailed ethnographic
1 observations and audio and video recordings are made and transcribed.
2 These transcriptions are then analysed both for content, attitude and
3111 the CA features of turn taking, etc. in order to build up a picture of
4 communicative style and to trace the phases of understanding and
5 possible misunderstanding which throw light on assumed cultural prac-
6 tices. In the ethnography course students are encouraged to tape record,
7 transcribe and do a preliminary analysis of naturally occurring interac-
8 tions although there is not time to give students more than the rudiments
9 of CA.
20111 The aim of the course, at this point, is for students to learn to combine
1 more general ethnographic methods with a sensitivity to actual language
2 use and the mechanisms of interaction. This combination of ethnographic
3 and CA methods is well illustrated in Michael Moermans suggestively
4 titled book Talking Culture. As Gumperz and Hymes have also shown,
5 these methods illuminate the ways in which social and cultural knowl-
6 edge enter into talk at all points:
7
In all conversation, people are living their lives, performing their
8
roles, enacting their culture. The motives and meanings of all talk
9
are thick with culture. (Moerman, 1988: 22)
30111
1 In a number of detailed transcripts based on ethnographic work in a
2 Thai-Lue village, Moerman shows how talk is interactionally managed
3 but also how it takes on special signicance because of local cultural
4 knowledge the participants bring to it. In one transcript, the villagers
5 are talking about Lue folksongs. The visiting District Ofcer (DO) asks
6 about a particular performer, the pipe player, who is known in the village
7 as the leper (Moerman, 1988: 202). However, S, the main speaker, is
8 anxious that the DO be kept ignorant of this information since if the
9 pipe player was suspected of having leprosy he would be taken away
40 to a leper colony. One of the villagers starts to name the pipe player
41111 as the leper but S immediately overlaps this speech with his own
1111 description of the pipe player as a sick person. In conversation analytic

2 terms this overlap is carefully designed to blot out the other speakers
3 talk although the DO has been asking for clarication about who the
4 pipe player is. The detailed analysis of talk shows how accurately, S
5 starts his turn to hide the leper information in other words, Ss overlap
6 shows his social knowledge in managing the interaction. But without
7 the ethnographic information about the different villagers and how
8 important it is for S to keep the DO ignorant of the name leper given
9 to the pipe player, the overlap does not have much cultural signicance.
1011 This example illustrates the way in which social and cultural knowl-
1 edge enter into talk and how talk enters into and helps to create and
2 sustain cultural knowledge and practice. So language students, as inter-
3111 cultural speakers, in contact with other linguistic and cultural groups
4 do not need to look for culture elsewhere outside or beyond the talk.
5 They can nd it in the talk itself in the assumptions that speakers make
6 about what is known, in their rhetorical strategies and in the way they
7 manage their conversations. Any simple categorising of the other as
8 polite, too direct or over excited needs to give way to an analysis
9 of difference in which, for instance, politeness strategies (Brown &
20111 Levinson, 1987) or conversational involvement within a particular
1 groups speaking practices are detailed. These in turn can be linked to
2 a developing understanding of broader cultural themes to do with face
3 needs and wants. For example, Marias ethnographic project was on the
4 compliment system in Majorca. She looked at how different types of
5 compliments indexed particular relationships. This project combined
6 analysis of conversations and ethnography in that Maria was not simply
7 collecting or eliciting lists of compliments but was observing how
8 they were used to manage the face needs of people in different social
9 relationships.
30111 This chapter has focused on talking culture on the inference-making
1 machine using interactional sociolinguistic theory and method. It has
2 looked at the detailed ways in which cultural and social knowledge feed
3 into interaction and how in turn interactions contribute to wider social
4 and cultural themes and forms. The next chapter shifts to a considera-
5 tion of language-and-cultural practice as representation, discourse and
6 practice.
7
8
9
40
41111
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 4
5
6 Representations, Discourses and
7
8 Practices
9
1011
1
2
Issues of Ethnicity and Nationality
3111
4 The relationship between language, ethnicity and nationality is a crit-
5 ical issue for language students during their period abroad. Most foreign
6 language learning is underpinned by the assumption that these three
7 are one: French speakers, say, are French and so have a French culture
8 and relate to France as a nation. This is a caricature but not such an
9 extreme one since this is how other linguistic groups are so frequently
20111 represented. Students preparation for their residence abroad can rein-
1 force this assumption when guidance is given about what to expect of,
2 for example, the German or Spanish way of doing things. When students
3 rst get to know local people, they tend to either see them as individ-
4 uals or think of them as representatives of a national group with that
5 culture. An ethnographic approach, by contrast, orientates students
6 towards understanding peoples identities their roles as students,
7 mothers, landlords and so on and their regional, ethnic and class iden-
8 tity. In other words, their identities as members of a particular group
9 or community rather than as individuals or nationals.
30111 Linguistic and cultural theories that are most relevant here are drawn
1 from the disciplines of sociolinguistics, anthropology, discourse analysis
2 within a social psychological tradition, and the multidisciplinary area of
3 cultural studies. Only some aspects of these theories can be touched on
4 in an ethnography course for language students, although some students
5 have taken their own studies further by attending courses in these disci-
6 plines in the foreign university. In their different ways, these theories
7 all conceive of language as a symbolic and political resource (Grillo,
8 1989) which constructs and reects difference, and this sense of differ-
9 ence is used to assert solidarity and power. The role of language in the
40 construction of nationality and ethnicity works in two inter-related ways:
41111 as a means of representation to represent the community to itself and
64
Representations, Discourses and Practices 65
1111 to talk about others outside it and in interaction as a way of claiming

2 membership of a particular social and ethnic group. In both senses
3 language is used to categorise difference and dene (and sometimes
4 defend) boundaries.
5 For language students to have the intellectual tools to challenge
6 national stereotyping when they go abroad they need to have some
7 understanding of ethnicity and its relationship to discourses of nation.
8 The sense of being different, of there being a group boundary that
9 encloses you and excludes others is a rough denition of ethnicity (Barth,
1011 1969; Edwards, 1985; Wallman, 1979):
1
Ethnic identity is allegiance to a group . . . with which one has ances-
2
tral links. There is no necessity for a continuation over generations,
3111
of the same socialisation or cultural patterns, but some sense of a
4
group boundary must persist. (Edwards, 1985: 10)
5
6 Traditionally, ethnicity has involved a sense of belonging, of shared
7 social networks, of being part of a group. More recently, ethnicity has
8 come to mean more than similarity or sharedness. It has become a much
9 more conscious notion used to assert political and social rights and access
20111 to resources. Markers of ethnic identity have been developed or revived
1 as ethnic weapons within the larger nation-state. Since boundary
2 marking is done through the symbolic order, language has a central role
3 in boundary maintenance. For example, Creole-based London Black
4 English or the language of working-class Paris suburbs function as
5 symbolic weapons to assert difference in the face of the dominant, central-
6 ising language practices of the nation-state. Joshua Fishman, in a recent
7 book on language maintenance among ethnic minorities, discusses the
8 signicance of boundary maintenance among groups forced to spend
9 almost all of ones cultural resources on damage control, that is, on
30111 merely staying alive within a cultural reality that is not of ones own
1 making. (Fishman, 1991: 411).
2 One of the major sources of stereotyping arises because it is widely
3 assumed that nation and ethnicity are one and the same thing.
4 Hobsbawm (1992) quotes Massimo dAzeglio who said, after Italy had
5 been politically unied: We have made Italy, now we have to make
6 Italians. In other words, we have made a political unit, now we have
7 to make a cultural one. (Just as today Europe is a political unit and there
8 is much discussion about becoming European.) The more recent forms
9 of ethnic awareness have asserted minority rights within the nation
40 represented by the majority but, paradoxically, the rise in new forms of
41111 nationalism based on ethnicity make it more difcult to unpick the
1111 national from the ethnic in certain geographical regions. Students who
2 go to such a region may be inevitably immersed in issues of ethnicity.
3 For other students, where these issues are not part of everyday
4 discourses, some background to these concepts will make them more
5 sensitive to what constitutes national and ethnic identity for their infor-
6 mants and will alert them to the hidden or more indirect ways in which
7 ethnicity and ideas of nationhood are asserted.
8 Just as language has a central role in indexing ethnicity, so it is a
9 powerful way in which the concept of national identity is maintained.
1011 The nation is represented through language (and other symbols, most
1 obviously the ag). Language is not just a way of talking about the
2 nation through its power to represent, it actively constructs the nation.
3111 It is, in Andersons (1983) terms, an imagined community. The process
4 of creating this community is a mythical, symbolic and ideological
5 process created through discourse and other representations a construc-
6 tion of commonality out of difference. In other words, although nations
7 may feel very real to us, there is nothing natural about them, as recent
8 history in the Balkans, for example, has shown.
9 Michael Billig (1995) in his study of what he calls banal nationalism
20111 examines how the homeland is agged on a daily basis in the media,
1 weather reports and so on. So, every time Britain or British is used a
2 statement is made about Britain as a united political, economic and
3 cultural entity. Thus:
4
. . . the reproduction of a nation does not occur magically. Banal
5
practices rather than conscious choice or collective acts of imagina-
6
tion are required. Just as language will die for want of regular users,
7
so a nation must be put to daily use. (Billig, 1995: 95)
8
9 When the political and cultural units are bonded together in this way,
30111 ethnic and national identities are conated and the process of simplifying
1 and stereotyping other groups, usually negatively, is in place. It is this
2 essentialising of groups which much critical theory in anthropology and
3 cultural studies has challenged, as we mentioned above. Paul Gilroy, who
4 has been a key gure in this ongoing critique, argues that the construc-
5 tion of race is endemic to the process of nationalism. In There Aint No
6 Black in the Union Jack (1987) he suggests that tradition, history and cul-
7 ture become, in effect, codes for race. So British culture is represented
8 implicitly as white culture. Those not identied as part of this white cul-
9 ture are at best marginal, at worst, outsiders, as much racist discourse
40 attests. Similar processes are, of course, at work in other countries
41111 where regional and ethnic differences are marginalised. In Unit 13 of the
1111 ethnography course, students are given a reading by Forsythe (1989) in

2 which the racist discourses about the Gastabeiter in Germany are
3 articulated in terms of cleanliness and pollution. The negative outsider
4 images of pollution are based on the assumption that there is one German
5 nation a people. But if Germany is represented and understood as
6 a political unit made up of many cultural groups, then the question of
7 being an insider or an outsider cannot be so easily resolved.
8 Notions of marginalisation, pollution, the swamping of us by them
9 and so on, paint a much more negative picture of ethnicity than the idea
1011 of allegiance and sharedness. Hobsbawm talks of ethnicity as a way of
1 defending our territories, against . . . the unknown, the darkness into
2 which we may fall when the landmarks which seem to provide an objec-
3111 tive, a permanent, a positive delimitation of our belonging together
4 disappear (1992: 4). To counteract the negative ethnic stereotyping which
5 such fear engenders, a group of researchers within cultural studies has
6 argued for a cultural politics of difference in which we talk of multiple
7 identities and not one identity (Hall, 1990, 1992). In this way, any indi-
8 vidual is not simply French or British or Cameroonian but has an ethnic
9 and regional and class and age identity as well, which is more real
20111 than their national identity because it is locally realised in day-to-day
1 living. The new times in which we live (see Chapter 1) provide the
2 social and historical conditions in which such multiple identities can be
3 lived out.
4 In his book on small rural communities on the periphery of Britain,
5 Belonging (1983), Anthony Cohen explores what identity means from an
6 insiders perspective as it is lived from day to day. These studies are
7 concerned with how people experience difference, how this difference
8 informs the social organisation of the community and how they repre-
9 sent this sense of difference. People perceive themselves as different
30111 when they come into contact with another group and the sense of differ-
1 ence reinforces their perception of belonging to a particular group (an
2 experience that students are bound to have in the early stages of being
3 abroad). Although the settings Cohen describes are very different from
4 the complex urban environments that most students will experience or
5 which are researched within a cultural studies tradition, he makes the
6 important point that the differences perceived by a group could be called
7 culture by outsiders. But if you are in the group you are not aware of
8 it as culture but as identity. You think of yourself as Sevillanos, a student,
9 a Catholic or a crofter as belonging to that group, rather than having
40 that culture. It is only when you come into contact with another group
41111 that your cultural and linguistic practices come into focus.
1111 As well as language representing ethnic and national differences,

2 the routine interactions of daily life serve to construct your sense of
3 identity. As we saw in the previous chapter, language establishes
4 and maintains identity. An individuals communicative style is a
5 resource which is used to claim membership of a particular group or
6 groups a particular speech community (Gumperz, 1968). It may index
7 ethnicity or as Heller (1994), Hewitt (1986) and Rampton (1995) have
8 shown, switching between styles and codes may be used to show either
9 that speakers want to assert their membership of an ethnically diverse
1011 community or, on the other hand, that issues around their particular
1 race/ethnicity are particularly salient at that moment. For example,
2 Hewitt showed that the black teenagers he studied used a non-
3111 ethnically marked London English most of the time but switched into
4 Creole for strategic purposes when issues of race and racism were
5 explicit. So language acts symbolically to give off messages about group
6 membership and the maintenance of multiple identities. One of the
7 students, Rebecca, explored some of these issues in her study of code-
8 switching between Castellano (the Spanish of the majority in Spain)
9 and Catalan spoken by the natives of Catalonia, the north-east region
20111 of Spain. She was interested in the ways in which code-switching
1 between the two symbolised the relationship between the Castellano-
2 speaking groups from southern Spain and the Catalan speakers (see also
3 Woolard, 1989).
4 Language as a symbolic and political resource, therefore, both repre-
5 sents and constructs what a nation is, what it is to be an ethnic minority
6 and also signals membership of particular groups, ties to certain iden-
7 tities. This knowledge circulates more widely in the media, in everyday
8 gossip and comments and in institutional behaviour. Language learners
9 as ethnographers have the dual task both of becoming aware of the
30111 discourses of nation and ethnicity and of reaching beyond them to an
1 understanding of their own informants sense of identity.
2 In attempting to do the latter, Cohen offers a helpful methodological
3 insight. There is always the danger, he argues, of hearing the voice that
4 a particular community uses to the wider world for example to explain
5 or dene itself as the voice used to its own members. A beginner
6 ethnographer could easily assume that what they read or are told, as an
7 outsider, is the way that community sees itself from within (see below
8 and Chapter 5 on Bourdieus notion of informants data as constructed).
9 It is all too beguiling to listen to a communitys self-stereotyping to those
40 outside. But the chances are these messages are greatly simplied and
41111 condensed. For example, as we discussed in Chapter 2, Antonia was told
1111 that, in Seville, religion and food were seen quite separately but, after
2 a lot of participant observation and ethnographic conversations, she
3 began to see how complex the relationship between these two was. Of
4 course, this is not to say that an informants self-stereotyping should be
5 dismissed. It is, in many ways, as interesting to learn how a commu-
6 nity presents itself to the outside world as it is to nd out how they
7 represent themselves to themselves. However, for students it is impor-
8 tant to enter the eld aware of their own and of the participants own
9 stereotyping of the inhabitants of this eld and aware of the complex
1011 processes that bind people together, on the one hand, but keep them
1 apart, on the other.
2 Students who go into the eld with some background on notions of
3111 identity and some awareness of how discourse is used to represent
4 national and ethnic identity will have some tools to help them become
5 intercultural speakers. They should be aware of the ideologies that are
6 used to construct national stereotypes and be critical of their own and
7 others identity formation as they interact together and relate to the
8 discourses on nation and ethnicity which circulate.
9
20111
Linguistic Relativity
1
2 So far, we have looked at language-and-cultural practices as commu-
3 nicative and symbolic resources in creating social and cultural identity,
4 their potential for creating misunderstanding and stereotyping and the
5 danger of essentialising ethnic groups, or what Hall (1992) calls ethnic
6 absolutism. This section, on relativity, draws on a more cognitive view
7 of language-and-cultural practice to pursue the same argument and
8 looks, specically, at how language, symbolically, represents the world
9 we experience.
30111 Even a short period abroad can produce feelings of anomie a sense
1 of disequilibrium but it is much more difcult for the foreign language
2 speaker to gauge to what extent people see the world differently in terms
3 of beliefs, values and interpretations. Does a family meal, a trip on the
4 metro or a seminar feel different to a local student from the way it feels
5 to a student from the UK when they are at home? And how is it possible
6 to nd out? Do we share universal ways of thinking and acting or do
7 our distinct communicative systems mean that we always see things
8 differently if we speak another language?
9 The notion of linguistic relativity has obvious connections with the
40 idea of socially constructed reality discussed above. It is most closely
41111 associated with Benjamin Lee Whorf and his work on the unconscious
1111 inuence of language on habitual thought. Whorf himself had been

2 inuenced by Edward Sapir and his ideas that if language constructs
3 reality, then different languages will construct reality differently:
4
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone
5
in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very
6
much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the
7
medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to
8
imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of
9
language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving
1011
specic problems of communication or reection. The fact of the
1
matter is that the real world is to a large extent unconsciously built
2
up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever
3111
sufciently similar to be considered as representing the same social
4
reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct
5
worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
6
. . . We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we
7
do because the language habits of our community predispose certain
8
choices of interpretation. (Sapir, 1949 [1929]: 162)
9
20111 Whorf, drawing in part on Sapir, argued that the way in which
1 language categorises the world for us affects our notions of time, of
2 whether we see something as a state or a process or how we attend to
3 a particular entity because of the name we give it (the infamous example
4 here is the different names for snow used by Inuits):
5
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.
6
The categories and types that we isolate from the world of
7
phenomena we do not nd there because they stare every observer
8
in the face: on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleido-
9
scopic ux of impressions which has to be organised by our minds
30111
and this means largely by the linguistic system of our minds.
1
(Whorf, 1956: 213)
2
3 Whorf was concerned with large-scale linguistic patterns in the
4 grammar and lexis of a language. These fashions of speaking, as Whorf
5 described them, inuence concepts which in turn are used to interpret
6 experience. Whorf stressed that he was concerned with the everyday
7 concepts of what he called habitual thought rather than with abstract
8 concepts. In turn, habitual thought inuences the cultural patterns of
9 belief and behaviour which form the social institutions of a particular
40 community. Contrary to the over-simplied interpretations of his
41111 work that stated that there were simple and general correlations between
1111 individual features of language and cultures, that in Sapirs terms we

2 are at the mercy of language, he asserted:
3
a looser, more indirect connection wherein language inuences
4
culture in some cases via its effect on the habitual thought world of
5
speakers. Specic congurations in the grammar inuence thought,
6
which then in turn inuences the development over time of partic-
7
ular cultural institutions. (Lucy, 1992: 63)
8
9 Whorf makes the connection between immediate subjective experience
1011 and linguistically conditioned habitual thought, using the principle of
1 linguistic analogy. Words and grammatical structures have a specic local
2 meaning but people also relate to them in a more abstract, habitual
3111 sense. He gives the example of the empty gasoline drums which were
4 dangerous if workers smoked near them because they still contained
5 explosive vapour. He suggested the word empty is being used in two
6 senses: rst, a direct physical one that the drums had no gas in them
7 and secondly, in a more abstract, general but habitual sense as a
8 synonym for null and void. Speakers apply the rst more physical sense
9 and then interpret it in the second more abstract sense. Since both senses
20111 are linked by the same word empty, speakers make an analogy between
1 the meaning of the word in its immediate physical context and the more
2 general meaning of the word and its wider associations. In this way, a
3 particular word in a given language has an immediate, local meaning
4 and also calls up wider social meanings which link speakers together
5 into a community. To put it another way, words typify experiences.
6 This principle of linguistic analogy was used by Whorf in his
7 contrastive studies of Hopi (an American Indian language) and English.
8 For example, he contrasted English and Hopi concepts of time. He
9 showed that in English, and other European languages, concepts of time
30111 are expressed through nouns which are treated in the same way as nouns
1 used to refer to physical objects. This aspect of grammar joins with other
2 patterns in English to construct a view of time as a linear presentation
3 of discrete units. This in turn, inuences the view that the past is a series
4 of discrete happenings, separated from the present and from the acts of
5 recording and remembering the past. In Hopi, by contrast, past events
6 are there still in the present and it is also possible for activities in the
7 immediate present to be happening with presumed future effect (Lucy,
8 1992: 61). So time is not a ribbon of activities with a clear past and future
9 but a cluster of past, present and future.
40 In this and many other examples, Whorf claimed connections between
41111 language and broad cultural patterns, but not in any obvious or simple
1111 causal way. Linguistic categories, by analogy, group experiences and

2 conceptual thinking together to form complex structures of meaning
3 which in turn lead to related patterns of behaviour. The individuals
4 habitual thinking, Whorf sees as the mediator between linguistic patterns
5 and cultural practice. The ways of thinking of individuals, collectively,
6 create dispositional tendencies towards general concepts, for example,
7 of time, which contribute to cultural activity and organisation. For
8 example, the home ethnography of one of the students, Chris, on
9 despatch riders, showed that most of his informants talked of freedom
1011 when asked about their work and why they did it. Collectively, the idea
1 of going to different places each day, riding fast and often dangerously
2 and being alone on a motorbike had led them to develop the concept
3111 of freedom. Yet in many respects they were not free but were controlled
4 by the companies who sent them on their numerous daily rides.
5 In the same way, Whorf does not argue that the absence of a lexical
6 item means that the speaker cannot think about or categorise this concept,
7 object and so on. For example, in French La belle mre is used for both
8 stepmother and mother-in-law. In English the roles and associated myths
9 around these two kinship terms require the distinction between them
20111 to be lexically marked. But of course this does not mean that French
1 speakers do not make a distinction between stepmother and mother-in-
2 law. It is just that in English it is easier to use the two different terms
3 out of context and build up mythologising stories around them such as
4 the wicked stepmother and the mother-in-law jokes so that the cate-
5 gorical differences between them are more attended to than in French.
6 More recent work on the imaginative aspects of language has looked
7 at the cultural and linguistic relativity of metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson,
8 1980; Fernandez, 1991). In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson
9 (1980) argue that our ordinary conceptual system is fundamentally
30111 metaphoric in nature. For example, to look at the concept of time again,
1 time as a valuable commodity structures our lives and is expressed in
2 many metaphors such as: save, waste, cost, invest, spare, running out
3 of Time. Similarly, as we mentioned above, the metaphors used to
4 produce an American cultural knowledge of marriage represent it as a
5 fragile thing. Of all types of metaphors the ones that play the most basic
6 role in structuring experience are what Lakoff and Johnson call the onto-
7 logical metaphors that is, metaphors about entities and substances. For
8 example, the mind is expressed as a machine in such metaphors as
9 running out of steam, breakdown , going to pieces. In relation to
40 language and cultural learning, no dictionaries can explain the metaphor-
41111 ical structuring of language and no dictionary takes account of the fact
1111 that most of our understanding is metaphorical rather than objective.

2 Similarly, both the capacity to use metaphor and its profoundly cultural
3 nature is central to a language-and-cultural learning approach. And this
4 is not only a cognitive learning but also an affective one since metaphor-
5 ical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport. Understanding
6 how a speaker is using a metaphor the webs of meaning entangled in
7 it is a way of sharing and perhaps empathising with that speaker.
8 For language students, Whoran notions of relativity present an
9 intriguing challenge. Not only, it could be argued, do they need to learn
1011 the lexico-grammatical system and pragmatic skills but also they need
1 to be aware of the ways in which language inuences habitual thought.
2 In other words, the dispositions and habits of thinking of the French
3111 for example can be understood by looking at the large-scale patterns of
4 the linguistic code and the ways they may inuence this habitual thought.
5 This sounds both a daunting task and, indeed, an essentialising one.
6 Luckily, recent rethinking of Whoran notions of relativity, while still
7 claiming its importance, have reconceptualised it to counteract its
8 apparent essentialising tendencies and to ground it in the local and
9 everyday uses of language where language learners as ethnographers
20111 can work with it to develop their intercultural competence.
1 In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, Gumperz and Levinson (1996b) argue
2 that relativity remains a signicant concept in our understanding of the
3 relationship between thinking, language and cultural practice. Despite
4 the many criticisms of Whoran theory and his analysis of Hopi, partic-
5 ularly from those working in the cognitive sciences, linguistic relativity,
6 according to Gumperz and Levinson, is a notion which, if extended,
7 helps us to see how people make sense to each other and how such
8 meaning making is linked to wider social processes. Researchers in cogni-
9 tion argue that there is a universal language of thought which underpins
30111 all language and any relative differences between languages is insignif-
1 icant compared with these universal constraints on cognition. The
2 re-examination of relativity in Gumperz and Levinsons volume eschews
3 the either/or position on universals versus relativity. Instead, they take
4 a middle way, acknowledging that there are universals but also arguing
5 that there are different meaning systems which reect cultural variety:
6 Universal constraints (act) as lters leaving open indenite possible
7 cultural variation within outer limits (Levinson, 1996, 196).
8 The shortcomings in Whoran notions of relativity are based on the
9 assumptions that Whorf was making a relationship between a whole
40 language and a particular world view: Hopi thinking is like this . . . etc.
41111 Although this is not tenable as a position, there is increasing evidence
1111 that lexical and grammatical systems, in certain respects, direct our atten-
2 tion to ways of constructing reality. As Slobin says: There is a special
3 kind of thinking that is intimately tied to language namely, the thinking
4 that is carried out, on-line, in the process of speaking (Slobin, 1996: 75).
5 In his cross-linguistic studies with young children, he found that English,
6 German, Hebrew, Spanish, Russian and Turkish differed in the ways in
7 which, for example deniteness, progressiveness, aspect, spatiality and
8 so on were encoded. Sometimes, for instance, English and Spanish were
9 similar, as in their use of aspect, but in other areas, for example, German
1011 and English were more similar in the attention given to trajectory rather
1 than location and so on. These differences affect the way in which partic-
2 ular language speakers experience the world because events and states
3111 are categorised differently in their use of grammar. But it is not possible
4 to say that a German speaker categorises the world differently from, say
5 a Turkish speaker, but rather that particular linguistic domains will be
6 similar or not to linguistic domains in other languages.
7 Similarly, since categorisation has an imaginative aspect, certain lexical
8 items and concepts will have associations in one language which they
9 will not have in another. Lakoff gives the example of the category of
20111 mother. In many Western societies this category includes women who
1 have given birth to children, women whose eggs have developed into
2 children, women who are given the legal right to raise children and
3 women married to a father. This category will be different in other soci-
4 eties and indeed groups within societies and will, as social constructivists
5 assert, construct reality along somewhat different lines:
6 Cultural categories are real and they are made real by human action.
7 Governments are real. They exist. But they exist only because human
8 beings conceived of them and have acted according to that concep-
9 tualisation. In short, the imaginative products of the human mind
30111 play an enormous role in the creation of reality. (Lakoff, 1987: 208)
1
2 Another limitation of Whoran relativity is that it is conned to lexis
3 and grammar and appears abstracted from actual local language use,
4 despite his assertions that it is not. Once relativity is extended to
5 discourse and context, then it connects to networks of people interacting
6 and not to abstractions, such as language and culture:
7 If meaning resides in interpretive practices, and these are located in
8 the social networks one is socialised in, then the culture and
9 language bearing units are not nations, ethnic groups or the like
40 they are not units at all, but rather networks of interacting individ-
41111 uals . . . (Gumperz & Levinson, 1996a: 11)
1111 If we look at what people actually do when they communicate, in the

2 way that interactional sociolinguistics suggests (discussed above) then
3 we can see that meaning is always tied to and is relative to particular
4 contexts. The holiday postcard which says Wish you were here only
5 has meaning if there is some shared agreement about where here is.
6 For the postcard writer, here is a sign or index, pointing to a partic-
7 ular place or set of experiences which the reader either has to imagine
8 or recall from memory. Similarly, one of the French bourgeois families,
9 studied by Le Wita (1988), in using and referring to the grandparents
1011 silver spoons, was creating meanings which were tied to a particular
1 cultural context. As part of a small elite community, talk about the family
2 silver reafrms or indexes their heritage as a bourgeois group, calling
3111 up memories of a way of life which are not so much French as Parisian
4 Bourgeois and from a family located in a particular position within this
5 community. Because language has this indexical function always linking
6 words to the particular context in which those words are spoken mean-
7 ings are local and situated. Indeed, language socialisation is the process
8 of assigning particular forms of language to indexical meanings (Ochs,
9 1997). Just as the child learns over time to interpret, for example, when
20111 no really means no, so the language student, resident in a new commu-
1 nity has to learn how meanings are relative to that particular community,
2 or network of interacting individuals.
3 The focus on local interactions and typical ways of communicating
4 within a network or community as a way of understanding linguistic
5 relativity does not mean that we should ignore the idea that language
6 and culture are treated as abstract, homogeneous entities. People will
7 go on talking about the Germans or how Polish is a very direct
8 language and so on; and language and culture will continue to be used
9 as symbolic and political resources to assert national identity. What is
30111 important is to recognise that these are ideological formations (Gumperz,
1 1996: 401) used in discourse to maintain group identity or to assert differ-
2 ence. This recognition is signicant for language students, generally, but
3 for language learners as ethnographers the task is to set aside these
4 stereotyping assumptions and learn about local practices and the intepre-
5 tive principles used by the community of which they have become a
6 part or which they are studying. They can then compare these situated
7 meanings with the ideologically formed generalisations commonly used
8 to talk about language and national groups. It is the situated, conven-
9 tionalised discourse habits of this group that they need to learn so that
40 they can move from understanding differences in some general way to
41111 an appreciation of the relative and specic meanings of language use.
1111 This engagement with otherness on the ground is part of the decen-
2 tring process which challenges negativity and anomie.
3 Participant observation is the most obvious means whereby students
4 will learn about and possibly acquire the discourse habits of a commu-
5 nity (see Chapter 5). Another ethnographic method is to use an approach
6 called ethnosemantics (introduced to students in Unit 10 of the course).
7 It is concerned with the cultural categories that people use to make sense
8 of their worlds and it is a somewhat more formal and explicit way of
9 drawing out these categories from the stream of speech in which they
1011 are embedded. The three elements of ethnosemantics are:
1 recording of natural interactions and eliciting stories and anecdotes
2 about key folk terms;
3111 the systematic eliciting of key folk terms for example, by asking
4 people to nish a sentence with the key word in it;
5 a description of an informants cultural knowledge based on this
6 data collection.
7
8 The study by Agar (1991) that we referred to in the previous chapter
9 is an example of an ethnosemantics study. He looked at the uses of the
20111 Viennese term Schmh a word with rather different meanings in
1 Germany. He dubbed this a rich word heavily puttied with associa-
2 tions which gives a particular insight into aspects of Viennese life.
3 Similarly, Sophie, in her study of the carnavaliers in Nice, found that for
4 the older men, a central concept was that of ert (pride) in their role.
5 What this notion of pride meant to them and how it affected the way
6 in which the carnavaliers work was gendered became an important
7 element in her ethnographic project.
8 So, current thinking about relativity takes an increasingly ethnographic
9 view. There are universals and, indeed, we would not be able to begin
30111 the process of understanding different languages and cultures if there
1 was not what Clark (1996) calls common ground in the ways we think
2 and the beliefs we have. But this common ground may not take us very
3 far as any attempt to translate will show. The problem for the language
4 learner is to nd out where the common ground ends and this can only
5 be done by learning, over time, from local contexts. Hymes comments
6 about ethnography in his own country, the USA, are equally relevant
7 for the language learner setting out to learn about a new group or set
8 of practices:
9 The validity of knowing about persons, families, neighbourhoods,
40 schools and communities in our country depends upon accurate and
41111 adequate knowledge of the meanings they nd and impute to terms,
1111 events, persons, and institutions. To an important extent, such mean-

2 ings cannot be taken for granted as uniform, even within a single
3 city or school district, nor as known in advance. The overt forms
4 may be familiar the words, the attire, the buildings but the inter-
5 pretation given to them is subject to shift, to deepening, to fresh
6 connecting up. (Hymes, 1996: 9)
7
8
Discourse, Text and Practice
9
1011 We have argued, from different perspectives studies of interaction,
1 notions of identity and the idea of relativity that generalised abstrac-
2 tions about language-and-cultural practices are ideological formations.
3111 These are certainly powerful abstractions in providing stereotypes of
4 national and linguistic groups but they are both unreliable and poten-
5 tially dangerous if their ideological basis is not acknowledged. As we
6 have said, in order to understand how people can interpret each other
7 and the texts they produce, we have to study what people actually do
8 under specic local conditions. In other words, we have to understand
9 their practices.
20111 So far, we have referred to both discourse and practice without
1 discussing how we are using these terms or their value in designing an
2 ethnographically based language learning project. This section looks at
3 recent theories on discourse and practice and connects them to texts
4 both those studied within the tradition of Cultural Studies (see Chapter
5 2) and ethnographic texts, whether those of professional ethnographer
6 or the projects written by language learners. The purpose of this discus-
7 sion is to see the links between some of the theory which is so inuential
8 in Cultural Studies and the idea of language learners as ethnographers
9 and, in discussing some of this theory, to take somewhat further the
30111 arguments initiated in Chapter 2. We suggested there some of the limi-
1 tations of a textually based Cultural Studies and we want to consider
2 here how the relationship between discourse and practice contributes to
3 our argument for an ethnographically based cultural learning project.
4 Discourse, as we use the word in this book, draws on two broad
5 traditions of the term. The rst, which can be characterised as the Anglo-
6 American tradition stemming from the functional linguistics of Firth and
7 Halliday, can be roughly dened as situated language use. Real-life inter-
8 actions are recorded and written texts analysed. The main concern here
9 is a linguistic one: How do texts hang together? How is information
40 structured through syntax and prosody? How do styles of speaking call
41111 up certain types of knowledge and assumptions about the world?
1111 The second tradition, the continental one can be dened more broadly
2 as the systematic organisation of meanings and values in language . The
3 study of discourse at this level focuses on how such meanings come
4 to be produced and circulated (Foucault, 1972) and, therefore, on the
5 ideological orders which determine language use. This tradition, with
6 its emphasis on ideological orders, forms part of the critical approach
7 mentioned above and tends not to immerse itself in actual language use
8 but to remain at the level of social theory. Nevertheless, this tradition
9 has been enormously inuential in contributing to an understanding
1011 of how institutions are held together by talk and how such institu-
1 tional discourse serves to determine the way in which people see the
2 world. The language of institutions denes a particular set of concepts
3111 such as madness or sexuality, a particular set of subject positions,
4 such as the mentally ill, and a set of assumptions about what can and
5 cannot be said. As Fairclough suggests: Discourse makes people as
6 much as people make discourse (Fairclough, 1989). Some recent studies
7 in discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, such as critical discourse
8 analysis, show the inuences of both types of discourse discourse as
9 immediate language use and discourse as the production and circula-
20111 tion of knowledge. The issues that many theorists study today
1 concern the relationship between the actual use of language in partic-
2 ular contexts and wider discourse formations (what Gee (1992) calls
3 discourse and Discourse).
4 Some of the language students used both discourse traditions in their
5 ethnographic projects. For example, Rachel, who carried out her project
6 with blind students at Marburg University in Germany, had to nd out
7 what discourses they used to talk about the fact that they could not see.
8 The discourses used in relation to a disadvantaged group by the state
9 or the media may be different from the discourses that the group uses
30111 about itself. The blind students discourse was of independence, of
1 cutting ties with their family, rather than reecting the ofcial, often
2 patronising, discourses of disability. The ethnography student, as part
3 of her study of what it means to be a blind student in Marburg, also
4 observed and took notes of their language use in everyday interactions
5 in the student canteen and residences. She was interested in under-
6 standing how they participated in conversations with their sighted peers
7 and how they negotiated their different identities: as students, as having
8 regional identities and as blind people. In this way, she drew on the
9 two discourse traditions which are frequently treated as incompatible.
40 Students usually assume that people are free agents and are unaware
41111 of the power of discourse. The idea of discourse as language use often
1111 implies, simply, that the language user has the right to choose what he
2 or she has to say, that in effect, language works autonomously. A more
3 critical or ideological view of discourse sees discourse processes them-
4 selves as largely determining what people say. As Fairclough suggests,
5 discourse is closely related to ideology. Within the Ealing ethnography
6 project, we aimed to help students understand these two perspective
7 people choosing what they say and people being determined by what
8 they say and to see them constantly in tension. So, Quino, the little
9 ve-year-old growing up in Seville who Antonia studied (see Chapter
1011 2), learns the discourses of Spanish catholicism which position him as a
1 believer, but he is also an individual and creative agent who chooses to
2 ask questions about the Christmas traditions and how the poor can
3111 manage to keep them up.
4 Although discourses are both oral and written, cultural studies
5 tends to analyse written or media texts to bring out the ideological reso-
6 nances of such topics as gender, popular culture, life-style and national
7 and community politics. The close analysis of such texts alerts readers
8 to the situated language use of media texts, political speeches and
9 so on. They also create an awareness of the wider discourses which
20111 circulate and which constitute knowledge and power. As such, they
1 bring a critical, analytical and ideological component into the language
2 curriculum. However, there are two main difculties in presenting
3 text-based discourses in the tradition of cultural studies as a model
4 for cultural learning. First, cultural learning cannot be limited to these
5 text-based discourses. The discourses of texts do not make a life. As
6 Tambiah (1968) says: Cultures and social systems are, after all, not only
7 thought but lived. Cultural learning needs to include the felt reality of
8 everyday life, its bodily experiences and the mundane discourses
9 of routine living. Secondly, cultural studies texts and approaches are
30111 not geared to the intercultural learner. As foreign language learners,
1 students may read off generalised values and beliefs from texts in an
2 unproblematic way since cultural experience is limited to these texts.
3 Discourses in texts from their own literacy world, draw readers into a
4 dialogue with their own experiences. We bring to bear on a text both
5 our memories of past events and thoughts and our immersion in the
6 current ow of life and so a knowledgeable, highly differentiated
7 and often critical and sceptical orientation to what we hear and read.
8 For foreign language learners these same texts may reinforce differ-
9 ence or at best contribute to a thin, cognitively based knowledge of
40 other conceptual systems. Text based discourses are an essential part
41111 of cultural learning but they need to be allied to the lived experiences
1111 the actual social practices which make individuals part of a group. To
2 put it another way:
3
You can use native speaker text in the classroom, but you cannot
4
replicate the conditions of native speaker discourse. (Widdowson,
5
1995: 170)
6
7 As well as text-based discourses, language learners need to be
8 immersed in the practices of a particular group. The practice of a group
9 or a society can be dened as both the behaviour and the social and
1011 cultural conceptualisations that give meaning to this behaviour in
1 different social contexts (Hymes, 1974). So practices include the everyday
2 events which characterise our social lives and the folk models and ideolo-
3111 gies which underpin them (Barton, 1994; Street, 1993). For example, the
4 paseo or regular evening walk down the main street of a Spanish town
5 is more than a leg-stretching exercise before dinner. Traditionally, it was
6 a way in which families could be seen together and young men and
7 women could manage the business of early courtship without honour
8 being lost (Gilmore, 1987). It is a social practice. Similarly, the bureau-
9 cratic negotiation of identity and acceptability in picking up a registered
20111 letter from the Post Ofce, the rituals of Sunday lunch or the formal
1 introductions and chairing of a business or academic meeting are all
2 practices combining functional behaviour and conceptualisations that
3 give meaning to that behaviour, rooted in specic cultural processes and
4 specic social contexts.
5 Of course all these activities include discourses. They are part of
6 everyday practices and they are also used to talk and write about these
7 practices. For example, a speech by a British politician about the need
8 to tighten up regulations regarding housing benet so that foreigners
9 from continental Europe cannot exploit the system, is an example of
30111 one kind of practice experienced differently by those who hear it,
1 depending on their political persuasions. The speech is made up of
2 different discourses which may include the discourses of nationalism,
3 the family, the economy and so on. But there will also be talk and writing
4 about this speech which may draw on similar (supporting) or different
5 (contesting) discourses. For some of the audience, the discourse of nation-
6 alism, keeping British resources for the British, calls up a system of
7 values and beliefs which includes patriotism, fair play, the village cricket
8 match and so on. For others, such discourses are representations of xeno-
9 phobia, inequality and stigmatisation of vulnerable groups.
40 However, such a speech might produce other practices of which
41111 discourse is only a part. For example, there might be demonstrations
1111 against an unfair housing system, a fringe theatre play about the expe-
2 rience of migration, a row in a pub and so on. All these are dif-
3 ferent social practices involving activity, the physical and material
4 world and so on, as well as discourses. Students need to be not so
5 much aware of discourses as social practice as of practices which
6 include discourse.
7 So culture is more than discourse-based text. It is the lived experi-
8 ences of groups and individuals as they act out their social roles and
9 make meanings out of the ebb and ow of everyday life. Practice
1011 includes the discourses of political speeches, gossip and so on but is not
1 limited to them. To experience the practices of others, students need
2 to interact with them and, in its most complete form, live in the new
3111 community, communicating in a second (or third or fourth) language
4 and simultaneously participating in the practices of that community and
5 studying its discourses. This may involve sitting in a university cafe-
6 teria, participating in a conversation about the kind of contact and
7 relationships their peers sustain with their families and at the same time
8 monitoring and mentally recording the way in which family is being
9 talked about and the different meanings and values attached to that
20111 concept by participants. It also means being aware of the physical setting
1 and bodily presence of the others since all this is part of the event called
2 chatting about families as the section below discusses.
3 The relationship between discourse and practice is also important for
4 language learners as they come to write their ethnographic projects. Here
5 a rather different relationship between the two terms is offered by
6 Bourdieu (1977). He uses the terms to distinguish between discourse
7 the process of analysis and practice the act of participation (similar
8 to the contrast made by Habermas between talk and discourse (Habermas,
9 1987). The problem, as Bourdieu suggests, is that we can only study
30111 practice by bringing it to the level of discourse. The point here is that
1 although an enormous amount of everyday life is carried out through
2 language, it is only when we analyse and reect on how it orders our
3 daily practices, in other words, when we abstract it from those practices,
4 as Bourdieu suggests, that we can see its power to organise our beliefs,
5 values and meanings. Language learners as ethnographers face quite a
6 daunting task in learning to make sense of the practices and discourses
7 that surround them while abroad. But they are also in the enviable
8 position of seeing those practices from the outside and so are able, as
9 they lurk and soak, to carry out a form of running discourse analysis.
40 They may do this, anyway, but, usually, only implicitly. The aim of
41111 the ethnography project is to make this process explicit. This is not to
1111 deny the importance of experiencing the practice the sense of being
2 there which is at the centre of the ethnographic experience. Students
3 are encouraged to value this experience in their ethnographic texts in
4 describing as vividly as they can the sights, sounds, smells and move-
5 ments that they have observed and been part of.
6 The ethnographic projects are made up of practices brought to the
7 level of discourse in other words to a level where they can be analysed.
8 They are also texts a written document subject to the same kind of
9 critical analysis and deconstruction as any other text. As students draw
1011 patterns and themes out of the data collected on a groups practices,
1 so they begin to nd concepts, metaphors, comparisons and so on
2 which begin to form a particular discourse for representing the other.
3111 These representations are then written up as an ethnographic text.
4 Cultural learning occurs through the ethnographic text constructed at
5 the boundary between ethnographers and their informants. This
6 learning depends crucially upon the ethnographers notion of reexivity
7 the capacity to critically reect upon your own practice as you carry
8 out the business of translating hard work in the eld into texts of
9 cultural representation and interpretation (Atkinson, 1990: 181). Sophie
20111 writing about the carnavaliers in Nice described some of this process
1 when talking about what she thought a good ethnographic project
2 should be like:
3
I suppose explaining about their life cultures a groups life as
4
clearly and as accurately as possible, really sort of explaining and
5
sort of nding interesting ties between people Ive interviewed
6
nding interesting concepts from them loads of data and verbatim
7
data- then analysing afterwards straight from the horses mouth
8
. . . and your own personal thoughts as well reexivity how
9
people accepted you as a researcher . . . trying to make comments
30111
of a reective nature myself about the nature of each informant,
1
and the source where I got the information from as to why it
2
may or may not be a meaningful piece of data either given or
3
received and interpreted and what have inuenced what I actually
4
put in the main part as data.
5
6 We mentioned above some of the limitations of cultural learning based
7 only on text, but where the text is produced by the students themselves
8 then it becomes a signicant element in the learning process, if it is treated
9 with sufcient reexivity. The act of writing (like the act of reading) is
40 itself a construction of social reality . It is not a virtual culture transmit-
41111 ted to the written page, but a rhetorical act of persuasion. As the writer
1111 selects a particular image and constructs an argument, they are using their
2 ethnographic imagination (Atkinson, 1990) to move from the observa-
3 tion of social practices to an intellectual representation of them. It is
4 indeed an act of translation and in this process the writers own discourses
5 and cultural knowledge are implicated. For example, a student who
6 chooses to write about bull ghting had to be reexive about the language
7 she used to describe this event. She had to be aware that her writing about
8 it was constructing a particular view of it not the view and she had to
9 consider her own feelings about and judgements of the experience and
1011 how she could include this in the project without merely substituting
1 evaluation for description. Chapters 5 and 9 take further the issues around
2 language learners as producers of ethnographic texts.
3111
4
Non-verbal Communication and Use of Social Space
5
6 In the previous section we discussed the need to think of cultural
7 and social practices and not just discourses. Included in the notion of
8 practice are behaviour and activities which move us away from an
9 overly linguistic view of language-and-culture. This may sound some-
20111 thing of a paradox since so much of this book is about the relationship
1 between language and cultural practices. However, an ethnographic
2 perspective is one which sees language and culture as inextricably inter-
3 connected because language is not viewed in a narrow sense and because
4 culture is not seen as some abstraction. Culture is a verb and implied
5 here is human action in all its materiality not just as a speech act or
6 abstract concept. Similarly, much of what makes up what Hymes calls
7 a speech event is not speech at all in any narrow denition of the term.
8 And although students may be studying such cultural themes as the
9 notion of passion in Sevillano dance, it is of course the dance move-
30111 ments and rituals around the dance which are the subjects of the
1 discourse. In a critique of the logocentric view of orality a narrow view
2 of communication as being only about words Ron and Suzie Scollon
3 suggest replacing orality with somatic, from the Greek for body,
4 making reference to the idea of the human body as the foundation of
5 communication (Scollon & Scollon, 1995: 25).They give as an example
6 the speech event of a casual conversation over coffee and suggest that
7 a transcript of the conversation leaves out or marginalises important
8 elements. These include the way people sit around the table; the way
9 these positions were negotiated, even the buying of the coffee itself.
40 Much traditional discourse analysis also overlooks all the bodily gestures
41111 involved with the interaction. In effect, except for language use, all the
1111 different ways in which people present themselves and use social space
2 (Goffman, 1972) have tended to be ignored in discourse studies.
3 Much recent criticism of discourse analysis has centred on this
4 logocentric view of communication. Short pieces of transcribed language
5 abstracted from their physical contexts, it is argued, cannot make claims
6 to represent face-to-face communication with all its complex modes.
7 Discourse analysis lacks ecological validity (Cicourel, 1992). In other
8 words, we need the wider context in which discourses are embedded
9 if we are to understand them from an insiders perspective. If we are
1011 to make sense, for example, of how nurses run a ward, how a ptanque
1 club functions or how transvestite prostitutes constitute themselves as a
2 group, ethnographic studies and discourse analysis go hand in hand.
3111 The whole person is involved in cultural and social practices and
4 it would be misleading to present wording as the equivalent of
5 meaning. So, the language student while resident abroad, needs
6 to combine an understanding and use of discourse with an ethnographic
7 eye as well as ear. In fact, Foucaults original denition of discourse
8 as the complex of signs and practices that regulate how we live
9 did include this bodily and physical element but this aspect has become
20111 suppressed in the linguists notion of discourse.
1 The original notion of discourse relates to Bourdieus (1991) notion of
2 habitus. This is a set of dispositions which incline us to behave
3 in a certain way. These dispositions to move, talk, think and feel are learnt
4 from our earliest years and operate below the level of consciousness. It is
5 what we are socialised into and give us a practical sense or feel for the
6 game (Thompson, 1991: 13). To the extent that we acquire a particular
7 habitus, we are ethnographers from the moment we are born:
8
9 Our ability to learn ethnographically is an extension of what every
30111 human being must do, that is, learn the meanings, norms, patterns
1 of a way of life. (Hymes, 1996: 13)
2 These dispositions to act, perceive and feel are regular without being
3 consciously governed by a rule:
4
5 Through a myriad of mundane processes of training and learning,
6 such as those involved in the inculcation of table manners (sit up
7 straight, dont talk with your mouth full, etc.) the individual
8 acquires a set of dispositions which literally mould the body and
9 become second nature. The dispositions produced thereby are also
40 structured in the sense that they unavoidably reect the social condi-
41111 tions within which they are acquired. (Thompson, 1991: 12)
1111 The idea of habitus clearly has links with the new approaches to
2 relativity discussed above and to the earlier section on interactional soci-
3 olinguistics. Provided that it is not used to make simple equations
4 between, for example, a certain way of talking and behaving and a partic-
5 ular ethnic group, it is a useful reminder to students that cultural learning
6 is about understanding otherness as a bodily as well as a linguistic expe-
7 rience. Becoming interculturally aware and competent assumes an
8 understanding of the habitus of others, including their bodily move-
9 ments and reactions and their routine and ritual use of space. For this
1011 reason, early in the ethnography course (Unit 3), students are introduced
1 to notions of non-verbal communication and social space, and methods
2 for collecting data to make sense of them. For example, students read a
3111 home ethnography by Anna, one of the rst students who participated
4 in the ethnography programme. She studied the use of non-verbal
5 communication and social space on the London Underground. Anna
6 observed the many different ways in which, paradoxically, train trav-
7 ellers used their awareness of others to avoid any physical or gaze contact
8 with them. Their ne-tuned adjustments shifting an arm or tweaking
9 a newspaper were in reaction to other passengers and thus were part
20111 of a social event despite the apparent lack of social contact between
1 them.
2
3
Travelling and the Intercultural Speaker
4
5 Annas study of London travellers links to the nal theme of this
6 chapter culture as travel. We have argued that there are a number of
7 linguistic and cultural theories which underpin the notion of language
8 learners as ethnographers. These are valuable both for staff designing a
9 relevant programme and for students if they are to understand the
30111 process of cultural learning from ethnography. The whole ethnographic
1 process from participation to writing, if carried out within a conceptual
2 framework based on the theories outlined here, provides conditions for
3 intercultural learning. This ethnographic journey from lurking and
4 soaking to wrestling with text both actively creates opportunities for
5 learning and requires at least a minimal level of intercultural compe-
6 tence. The rst enquiries that lead to nding informants are intense
7 moments of intercultural contact so starting an ethnographic project
8 draws students, early on, into negotiating with people from the new
9 community. Similarly, the act of writing an ethnographic text is an inter-
40 cultural journey because the writer is committed to translating cultural
41111 understandings from their own experience in the eld into a text for
1111 readers without this experience. The metaphor of the journey is an apt
2 one since intercultural learners and communicators, as we suggested in
3 Chapter 2 are always travelling, always in-between.
4 Kramsch (1993, 1995), borrowing ideas from Bakhtin and Bhabha,
5 conceptualises the intercultural learner as in a third space. Here no
6 participant in interaction is completely culturally or linguistically compe-
7 tent. Bhaktin has argued that even a native speaker can never completely
8 learn a language since it is made up of diverging, connecting and
9 dialoguing discourses. In intercultural communication, therefore, native
1011 and non-native speakers are still learning their own languages and are
1 meeting in a new space where both are non-native speakers. This is,
2 perhaps, a marginal space where the experience of difference becomes
3111 central and where what was thought to be central the nation, the
4 national language, a homogeneous ethnic group, with its long historical
5 additions and shared practices begins to be marginalised. This is also
6 the experience of the traveller more generally. So perhaps a useful
7 metaphor for culture is not just as an inference making machine or as
8 a verb, but as travel. Clifford argues that it is more apt to think of the
9 ethnographer not so much in the eld, dwelling in a place which is
20111 dened as separate and different from home, but as travelling and being
1 with a group who are also travelling (Clifford, 1992). By this he means
2 that the ethnographic experience abroad is not one in which the ethno-
3 grapher is cut off in some remote island (physical or metaphorical) but
4 is moving between the home world and the world abroad. This may be
5 either physical travel (for example, students returning home for the
6 Christmas break in the middle of their period overseas) or travelling
7 between home and away experiences via satellite television, the internet
8 or friends resident in the same place. Similarly the group the students
9 are writing about may themselves be travellers, even familiar with the
30111 home of the student ethnographer, and if not physical travellers then
1 part of the global village through international media.
2 Clifford argues that ethnographers and those they have contact with
3 are both dwellers and travellers. There are always elements of
4 continuity and discontinuity, of feeling at home and feeling displaced,
5 of feeling at the centre and feeling on the margins. Clifford (1992: 92)
6 says the question should be: Not so much where are you from?
7 but where are you between?. Those living on the borders, for
8 example between the USA and Mexico, are a good example of those
9 struggling between two countries. The metaphors of borders and
40 crossing (Rampton, 1995), and the larger metaphor of travel remind
41111 the language learners as ethnographers that the experience of doing
1111 ethnography is one of intellectual and emotional travel; that the infor-
2 mants they meet are also travelling and, like them, are hybrid creatures
3 full of their own difference and contradictions but not necessarily
4 inherently different in a pure sense; and that the process of becoming
5 interculturally competent is part of a journey which continues even
6 after they have returned home.
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
41111
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 5
5
6 Ethnography for Linguists
7
8
9
1011 We concluded the previous chapter with the metaphor of culture as
1 travel in order to emphasise both the in-betweenness of intercultural
2 experiences and to make explicit the journey that language learners as
3111 ethnographers need to undertake if they are to become intercultural
4 speakers. Ethnography is an obvious choice for linguists to turn to
5 because it combines extended communicative experience with the study
6 of cultures, as we have already suggested. In other previous chapters,
7 we have referred to some of the ways in which an anthropological and
8 ethnographic perspective might contribute to cultural learning; in this
9 chapter we step back a little to describe the ethnographic tradition and
20111 how its methods are relevant for linguists.
1
2
3
Ethnography in Anthropology
4 The concept of ethnography has a specic history in European intel-
5 lectual traditions and this section briey recounts some of the meanings
6 and the contests over meaning that have emerged in the past century
7 of use, on the premise that they continue to underpin current usage
8 though often in hidden ways. Different disciplines have their own
9 preferred histories and lay special claim to the concept. We attempted
30111 to be conscious of these struggles and claims as we drew up a course
1 based on ethnography.
2 Social anthropologists in Britain have a well-dened myth of ancestry
3 that gives a key role to ethnography in the emergence of the discipline.
4 The story is told of Bronislaw Malinowski, a Polish migr who went
5 to the Trobriand Islands as an anthropologist to do what was then tradi-
6 tional survey type social research (Kuper, 1983). At the outbreak of the
7 First World War he was treated as an alien subject and given the choice
8 of spending the war in an Australian prison or of living in the Islands
9 under the jurisdiction of a British Commissioner. He chose the latter and
40 proceeded to make a virtue of necessity by then learning the local
41111 language, living with local inhabitants and observing their customs and
practices from the inside.
88
Ethnography for Linguists 89
1111 On returning to the UK he presented this approach as a key to under-

2 standing native ways of thought and proceeded to write a number of
3 celebrated ethnographies about the Trobriand Islands, their sexual
4 customs, economic systems and beliefs (Malinowski, 1922). He obtained
5 a lecturing post at the London School of Economics and became a
6 founding father of modern anthropology. Nineteenth-century anthro-
7 pologists had worked mostly through surveys, either conducted
8 themselves or, in the case of Sir James Frazer, from accounts by
9 travellers, missionaries and district commissioners who corresponded
1011 with him. Malinowskis experience became the basis for a new tradition,
1 that of ethnographic eldwork; living with the natives became a neces-
2 sary rite of passage for entering the discipline of anthropology, and the
3111 core texts of the discipline became those ethnographies written by eld-
4 workers.
5 Students of anthropology in British universities today are still exposed
6 to these early texts, though now often framed by current theoretical and
7 ideological perspectives, while new eldworkers continue the tradition
8 and provide new ethnographies for anthropology courses. Anthropology
9 claims a special prerogative over this sense of ethnography, as the expe-
20111 rience of living with other peoples and learning their language, then
1 reporting on their ndings in large academic monographs. Students and
2 researchers using the concept in other disciplines are frequently made
3 to feel that they are not proper ethnographers, especially if their eld
4 experience is restricted to their own society or to brief studies.
5 Other disciplines have, nevertheless, made their own claims to the
6 term. In the USA the ethnography of communication tradition, that
7 emerged out of a combination of anthropology and linguistics, has estab-
8 lished its own credibility and its own literature. As we have briey
9 discussed in Chapter 3, the ethnography of communication can be carried
30111 out in our own society and on a specic event or set of events such as
1 the classroom, the courtroom, a religious service or a community meeting.
2 Students on the ethnography course can choose to write a project that
3 focuses on a particular speech event and one of their assignments is to
4 undertake a mini-classroom ethnography of one of their own classes.
5 Anthropology itself has recently become more self-conscious and
6 critical of its early heritage, in particular the colonial overtones of
7 Malinowski and other founding fathers and has now begun to explore
8 the nature of the ethnographic account itself (Fardon, 1990; Asad, 1980).
9 Asad and Dixon (1985), for instance, have critiqued the ways in which
40 the metaphors used by anthropologists both in their eldwork experi-
41111 ence and in writing it up, to represent apparently technical issues, such
as landholding arrangements or leadership, are actually located in
1111 Eurocentric politics and epistemology. They cite a description by

2 Frederick Barth, of Pathans in Swat, northern Pakistan, where tenants
3 loyalty is for sale to the highest bidder, and landlords may slough off
4 dependants at will, but also provide followers with the spoils, and
5 distribute the loot. Here, they argue, images from European culture are
6 being invoked which may not be appropriate to the time or cultural
7 group under consideration. Barth, they claim, represents Pathans as
8 though their social relations were entirely contractual between highly
9 competitive individuals always concerned to maximise their interests.
1011 Asad and Dixon argue that these metaphors are inappropriate for trans-
1 lating the concepts of exchange and power embedded in Pathan society,
2 in which class, hierarchy and constraint may be more appropriate ways
3111 of understanding social relations than the language of utilitarian indi-
4 vidualism derived from Barths own society. Such critiques may apply
5 to many accounts by anthropologists, and current training in the disci-
6 pline requires students to be sensitised to the biases and ethnocentrism
7 of the language they use to describe other cultures (cf. Fardon, 1990).
8 Clifford and Marcus (1986) in their highly inuential volume Writing
9 Culture have focused on the writing up of such accounts in equally crit-
20111 ical vein. They argue that anthropologists have paid too little attention
1 to the process of how they write their eld experiences: many treat
2 writing as a transparent vehicle for the experience itself, whereas close
3 analysis of their texts demonstrates how much their message was depen-
4 dent on the form of language and rhetoric they adopted. Indeed,
5 Thornton (1983) went so far as to say that what dened anthropology
6 as a discipline at the turn of the century, as it struggled to differentiate
7 itself from travellers tales, missionary accounts and commissioner
8 reports, was not the experience itself these people had often experi-
9 enced longer and deeper encounters with natives, and knew their
30111 languages better than the anthropologists but rather the way in which
1 it was represented in text. The academic discourse, including the tradi-
2 tion of the monograph, with its classic layout into chapters based on
3 economics, politics, religion, was itself constitutive of the discipline. In
4 this sense ethnography is only one component of the anthropological
5 tradition while conversely, other disciplines may use ethnography in
6 different ways without having to locate it in the discourse of anthro-
7 pology or its myth history.
8 For language students, data collection and analysis and the writing of
9 the ethnographic account are equally important. They are, of course,
40 familiar with the idea of translation but the challenge for them is not
41111 only to translate from one language to another but to present cultural
1111 practices observed in one society in terms of their own and be reexive
2 and critical about the process at the same time. This is a kind of cultural
3 translation as they compare the new practices with their own and nd
4 ways of writing about the other which acknowledge their own role in
5 the interpretive process. Since they are not training to be professional
6 ethnographers, they are not expected to take on a fully critical perspec-
7 tive nor to read the theories of ethnographic writing in any depth. But
8 they are expected to take on the habit of interrogating the way in which
9 they undertake the translation process and to use this interrogation as
1011 part of their cultural learning.
1
2
Fieldwork
3111
4 Reection upon the nature and experience of eldwork has also led
5 to some revision of the meaning of ethnography within anthropology.
6 Todorov (1988) has suggested that there is a fundamental contradiction
7 at the heart of the ethnographic enterprise although he believes that this
8 contradiction can be used in a productive and illuminating way. On the
9 one hand, the ethnographer claims validity because he or she has some
20111 distance from the ideas and beliefs of the people under scrutiny.
1 Members of a culture often do not realise what they are taking for
2 granted. The classic introductions to anthropology state that you do not
3 ask a sh to tell you about water; it is so immersed in the medium that
4 it does not realise it is water. Only by exposure to another medium
5 taking the sh out of water can we identify the nature of the medium
6 we take for granted: the outside ethnographer by dint of distance from
7 the culture can draw attention to its fundamental tenets and epistemo-
8 logical presuppositions the assumptions it makes about knowledge,
9 how it is dened and legitimated and who has rights over it.
30111 An example from the work of Evans-Pritchard (1937; cf. also Singer &
1 Street, 1972) brings this point home, through reference to a classic gure
2 from post-war British anthropology. Classic texts of this kind were used
3 on the Ealing Ethnography course as the best way of introducing teach-
4 ers and students to the tradition of ethnography, both as a rich source
5 of detail and as a necessary baseline before introducing recent critical
6 perspectives. Evans-Pritchard claimed that by coming from outside of
7 Zande society (a people in the Southern Sudan with whom he lived
8 during the 1950s) he was able to see what they took for granted and there-
9 fore did not articulate namely that witchcraft accusations are not so
40 much about individuals and their supposed wrongdoing, as about main-
41111 taining social cohesion and creating sanctions against those who would
1111 bring disorder and chaos to their neighbours by breaking the moral code.
2 Zande did not talk in this way about witchcraft but Evans-Pritchard
3 argued that his outsider view provided a perspective that enabled peo-
4 ple to understand witchcraft in a new and more meaningful way.
5 The same principle applied to members of his own society, whose
6 views of witchcraft tend to be based in exotic and dramatic accounts
7 of European medieval witchcraft as primitive and unscientic. By
8 describing the social processes involved rather than attending to the
9 truth or falsity of accusations or their scientic validity the perspec-
1011 tive many European observers brought to bear Evans-Pritchard was
1 able to make sense for his own society too of practices that otherwise
2 appeared meaningless and irrational. It was his distance from both
3111 Zande society in the rst instance, and then from his own society, that
4 enabled an alternative perspective to be brought to bear that went beyond
5 the representations of witchcraft dominant in either society.
6 There is, however, according to Todorov, a contradiction in the way
7 that anthropologists value such distancing. For the same anthropolo-
8 gists who celebrate distance in ethnographic accounts require their
9 colleagues to have familiarity with the local culture, derived from prox-
20111 imity and close, everyday interaction: in anthropological circles it is
1 important to know your people well and not simply to remain at a
2 distance. Evans-Pritchards credibility derives as much from his claim
3 to intimate knowledge of everyday Zande life as to his distance from
4 them as a European. This tension between distance and proximity is the
5 dening feature of ethnography according to Todorov.
6 When ethnographers go to the eld, they separate themselves from
7 their home culture and enter a strange and alien one. When they leave
8 that culture in turn, to return home, they go through a further separa-
9 tion and have to re-enter their home culture, and it is here that the
30111 travelling metaphor persists. At this threshold point, the returning ethno-
1 grapher can see their own culture with the eyes of a stranger: the familiar
2 becomes strange, a concept emphasised in Agars (1980) classic account
3 The Professional Stranger (cf. also Stocking, 1983). And it is at this point
4 that the language students write up their ethnographic projects. They
5 bring with them not only their piles of notes and transcriptions from
6 the experiences they have lived through but a sense of a feel for the
7 game from these experiences. At the same time, they are back home,
8 returning to a society which is a part of them and yet is distant. In this
9 way, the writing up of the project is a translation not only of language
40 but of the whole social person. (See Chapter 10 for the students account
41111 of writing up on their return.)
1111 Gradually, however, the sense of distance, too, lessens as the ethno-
2 grapher enters into closer proximity to their own everyday norms and
3 beliefs. The likelihood is that they will return at some point to the culture
4 they have studied and the process will happen again. Indeed, they will
5 most likely be always mentally moving between different cultures,
6 always shifting between proximity and distance in any cultural setting
7 always travelling, as Clifford suggests. This, then, is the essence of
8 the ethnographic experience; proximity and distance held in tension
9 simultaneously.
1011 The experience involves three fundamental concepts: epistemological
1 relativity, reexivity, and critical consciousness. Epistemological rela-
2 tivity (linked to the linguistic relativity introduced in Chapter 3) involves
3111 recognising ones own assumptions about knowledge, and how it is legit-
4 imised in ones own society, so as to be able to view the knowledge of
5 other societies with a more open mind. Since assumptions about knowl-
6 edge are frequently hidden and naturalised, it is easy to simply impose
7 them on other people as though they were universal. The discipline
8 of anthropology in particular has been concerned with this relativity of
9 knowledge and anthropologists would argue that doing ethnography
20111 involves attention to such epistemological levels and not just issues of
1 technique and method. For this reason, early on in the ethnography
2 course, students are introduced to the idea of cultural knowledge and
3 the extent to which sharing it denes a community. They are asked to
4 draw out the cultural knowledge required to make sense of one small
5 incident in a restaurant in which a diner leaves money, presumably as
6 a tip, on the table and one of their companions scoops up the money
7 into their pocket while the original diner is away from the table. Issues
8 of tipping, stealing and friendship are raised in this discussion all
9 of them culturally relative concepts.
30111 Reexivity, as we have already suggested, refers to the ability to reect
1 critically on the way in which ones own cultural background and stand-
2 point inuence ones view of other cultures. Lack of reection, for
3 instance, on the metaphors we use for describing other ways of life can,
4 as Asad and Dixon (1985) showed, serve to impose our own views on
5 them in subtle and hidden ways. So, for example, one student in Seville,
6 Toni, reecting on her view of bull-ghting after six months in Spain
7 was able to understand it within the context of Spanish cultural prac-
8 tices even though she did not like it.
9 Critical consciousness, introduced in Chapters 2 and 3, represents a
40 newer tradition in anthropology and views ethnography not simply as
41111 a convenient tool for studying and researching but as itself a product
1111 of particular dominant societies at a particular period. The ways in which

2 we observe and then write up those observations need to be considered
3 critically if they are to avoid the ethnocentrism of earlier periods of acad-
4 emic work. The study of foreign languages as part of liberal education
5 emphasises their role in combating ethnocentrism but a critical perspec-
6 tive goes one step further. It alerts all those whose studies involve
7 linguistic and cultural crossing, not only to recognise and relate to differ-
8 ence but to see that, in turn, these differences are themselves embedded
9 in political and ideological contexts, as are our own views and ways of
1011 knowing. For language learners as ethnographers, this means not only
1 questioning how the values and perceptions of the group they are
2 studying came to be produced but how their own views and writing
3111 come to be valued in particular ways. A good example of this from the
4 rst cohort of students was the critical way in which one student came
5 to understand the performance aspects of identity among the inhabi-
6 tants of Seville (see Chapter 10).
7
8
Ethnography for Linguists
9
20111 The original questions asked by those designing the ethnography
1 course at Ealing were whether aspects of these subtler notions of ethnog-
2 raphy could be developed among teachers and students working in
3 different disciplinary traditions and for whom ethnography was not in
4 itself a primary focus of their academic study. The objectives of the
5 project included: the development of new approaches and methods in
6 structuring the learning experience and the feasibility of these approaches
7 in language courses; in other words, using ethnography to develop
8 intercultural speakers. Bourdieu (1977), writing on the shifts between
9 the language of familiarity and outsider-oriented discourse, on the
30111 relationship between practice and discourse, provides a way of linking
1 the anthropological debates to those in language studies. For Bourdieu,
2 as for Todorov, there are problems of familiarity and distance: the native
3 speaks a language of familiarity in everyday life, but when questioned
4 by a stranger, such as an ethnographer, tends to shift to a more self-
5 conscious and constructed language. An important theme, therefore,
6 for the language student, is the close attention to the language of
7 everyday talk and how it compares with the more constructed language
8 used by informants in interviews and ethnographic conversations.
9 The ethnographer, at the same time, is constructing questions and
40 working within a universe of reference that is alien to the native. The
41111 ethnographic account runs the danger of forgetting this process: it is
1111 understandable, then, that the anthropologist should so often forget the
2 distance between learned reconstruction of the native world and the
3 native experience of that world (Bourdieu 1977: 95). This, however, does
4 not undermine the enterprise. What a training in ethnography does is
5 precisely to draw attention to such dilemmas, which implicitly lie beneath
6 all cultural encounters (including those of students on year abroad
7 schemes) so that students and ethnographers are sensitised to the differ-
8 ences between their own and their informants discourse.
9 Central to the ethnographers understanding, then, is sensitivity to the
1011 ways in which information is elicited, organised and circulated in
1 the community being studied and how this might be different from the
2 observers own speech community. In order to understand these
3111 processes, the ethnographer must attain communicative competence in
4 the culture under consideration. As we have discussed in Chapter 2, the
5 concept of communicative competence refers not only to language skills
6 but to understanding of the rich nuances of a culture and the appro-
7 priateness of when and how to use specic linguistic forms. This is
8 congruent with that reective sensitivity to proximity and distance to
9 which Bourdieu and Todorov refer. Dubin (1989) points out that this
20111 view of communicative competence has sometimes been highjacked by
1 technical language trainers in the foreign language teaching tradition to
2 imply simply acquiring a set of competencies: it is apparent that over
3 time there has been a shift away from an agenda for nding out what
4 is happening in a community regarding language used to a set of state-
5 ments about what an idealised curriculum for L2 learning/acquisition
6 should entail; a shift from how people in a particular culture use language
7 to what elements comprise communicative behaviour (Dubin, 1989: 174).
8 For Dubin, as for us in the Ealing project, competence has a much
9 broader and richer connotation. It is this meaning of competence that
30111 the ethnography course was concerned to facilitate for language students,
1 combining their sensitivity to language nuances and variations with
2 sensitivity to cultural nuances and variations. In the tradition of reexive
3 ethnography outlined above, this requires deep self-consciousness
4 regarding the inuence of their own background and their position as
5 cultural mediators in their interpretations of these processes.
6 In designing a course to facilitate this competence, we were working
7 always with a tension (that we hoped was a creative one) between theory
8 and practice. On the one hand, it was important to help students under-
9 stand what ethnographic perspectives could contribute by exposing them
40 to what other ethnographers had done and to what ethnography meant
41111 at different periods and in different disciplines. On the other hand, the
1111 students were themselves going to experience the ethnographic reality

2 of living in a different culture and speaking a foreign language for a
3 lengthy period. Some of the theoretical and methodological issues raised
4 in the course before their departure abroad would only make sense once
5 they engaged in that experience. However, a key assumption of the
6 whole programme was that the experience itself might remain relatively
7 supercial and unreective without that prior course work.
8 The linking point between these two aspects of the programme was
9 the project an ethnographic report on some aspect of the host culture
1011 which students would research and begin writing while abroad and
1 complete during their rst term back at Ealing at the beginning of their
2 fourth and nal year. The ethnographic project would also contribute
3111 towards their nal degree grades. This writing process was conceived
4 not just as a summative assessment exercise but as an integral part of
5 their making sense of the experience abroad. It depended, then, on their
6 ability to relate the conceptual and methodological content of the course
7 to their own lived experience and in this sense, also, they were learning
8 to become ethnographers since that process is at the heart of the ethno-
9 graphic enterprise, as Clifford and Marcus (1986) point out. The writing
20111 was more than simply a project report, of the kind required in Area
1 Studies modules or for library-based projects. It required developing at
2 least some of what Hammersley describes as the major rational for
3 ethnography developing theory through the study of critical cases
4 (Hammersley, 1992: 20). This sounds rather daunting for students who
5 are not specialising in anthropology, but what it amounts to is using a
6 concept such as boundary maintenance to nd signicance in an
7 observed activity and to write this up as a case. It is a way of seeing
8 more, and of relating small and apparently unimportant behaviour to
9 wider notions that help to structure social relations.
30111 Mitchells essay (1984) on case studies represents a particularly inu-
1 ential example of the use of ethnographic case studies. Rather than
2 applying enumerative induction, as in much scientic and statistical
3 research, as a means of generalising and establishing the representa-
4 tiveness of social data, Mitchell advocates analytical induction:
5
What the anthropologist using a case study to support an argument
6
does is to show how general principles deriving from some theo-
7
retical orientation manifest themselves in some given set of particular
8
circumstances. A good case study, therefore, enables the analyst
9
to establish theoretically valid connections between events and
40
phenomena which previously were ineluctable. From this point of
41111
1111 view, the search for a typical case for analytic exposition is likely
2 to be less fruitful than the search for a telling case in which the
3 particular circumstances surrounding a case, serve to make previ-
4 ously obscure theoretical relationships suddenly apparent . . . Case
5 studies used in this way are clearly more than apt illustrations
6 Instead, they are means whereby general theory may be developed.
7 (Mitchell, 1984: 239).
8
This view represents one of the basic tenets of the ethnography course
9
at Ealing and provided the rationale for the ethnographic project or
1011
1 case study that students were asked to undertake during their year
2 abroad. Their projects can be viewed as case studies in this sense of
3111 the term: as telling accounts of specic aspects of the culture they inhab-
4 ited that address the theoretical issues they raise in an analytic and
5 reective way. This rests on an assumption that there are patterns to
6 be found in social life that are often so taken for granted by participants
7 that they remain unnoticed. The stranger-ethnographer can elucidate
8 these because of their initial distance, with the help of appropriate
9 training and reexivity, and by bringing to bear questions derived from
20111 general theory. Assessment of the success of student accounts rests,
1 then, on the criteria set out by Mitchell rather than on the descriptive
2 detail alone, or on a mechanical list of competencies; the case studies/
3 projects are analytic expositions not inventories of exotica. So, the ethno-
4 graphic case study discourages students from generalising about a
5 culture and instead leads them to nd concepts and patterns which
6 account for the many, small and often banal aspects of social life
7 which they observe and hear about from day to day.
8 These concepts and patterns allow the student ethnographer to write
9 about a particular group or event at a more general level than just the
30111 highly detailed and locally grounded account which provides the texture
1 of the case study. So, Antonia could write about the varied and subtle
2 connections between religious and eating practices in such a way that
3 more general patterns could be identied. But these more general
4 patterns or principals must always be embedded in specic and local
5 circumstances. The ethnographic writer can then claim that these general
6 patterns exist, that there is some kind of theory or set of concepts, in
7 the particular contexts studied:
8
Case studies allow analysts to show how general regularities exist
9
precisely when specic contextual circumstances are taken account
40
of. (Mitchell, 1984: 239)
41111
1111 Generalisations are not about a culture or even a whole group but
2 are patterns or concepts which only stand up to scrutiny because all the
3 circumstances in which they are found, in any one study, have been
4 taken account of. We can say that the early socialisation of young Catholic
5 children in Seville makes profound links between religion and eating in
6 contexts where a young child, such as the ve-year-old Quino, talks
7 about bread in the Bible and equates it with the bread on the table at
8 breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is because of this incident and numerous
9 others that connect with it and resonate in various ways, that Antonia
1011 could begin to see the signicance of a wider pattern. By worrying away
1 at these interconnections, like a dog with an old slipper, some general
2 principals about Sevillano social practices began to emerge.
3111 This summary gives a picture of the academic framework within
4 which the course designers approached ethnography. How to mediate
5 these debates to students trained in different disciplinary traditions, and
6 more concerned with the practical application of ethnography than the
7 academic debates about it, was the central pedagogic issue. It was prob-
8 ably this aspect that was the most difcult to accomplish. Students in
9 the British educational system tend to be wary of theory and have prob-
20111 ably had little experience of explicit attention to it prior to university.
1 Moreover, those studying language courses (where there is little or no
2 accompanying literary or cultural studies) may also nd most of their
3 course work geared to technical skill acquisition and not be emotionally
4 or intellectually familiar with the theoretical and methodological
5 emphasis necessary in the kind of programme described here.
6 We document in the following chapters the ways in which the teachers
7 and students involved in the Ealing ethnography project engaged in this
8 process and the extent to which it was successful and replicable. We
9 consider how the application of ethnographic perspectives helped clarify
30111 if not resolve questions of pedagogy in language learning; of the rela-
1 tionship between language and culture; and of how to make sense of
2 the experience of living abroad that language courses perennially raise.
3 We begin, in the next chapter which forms the beginning of the case
4 study element of the book, by documenting the process by which the
5 tutors themselves became involved in learning about ethnography, in
6 learning how to design an ethnography course and in teaching that
7 course to language students. We argue that the process itself drew upon
8 the very principles proximity and distancing, reexivity and the appli-
9 cation of theory to specic cases that are described above as the bases
40 of our conception of ethnography.
41111
1111
2
3
4 Part II
5
6 The Ealing Ethnography Project:
7
8 A Case Study
9
1011
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3111
4
5
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20111
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6
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9
30111
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40
41111
1111
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3
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1011
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3111
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20111
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30111
1
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7
8
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40
41111
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 6
5
6 Teaching Ethnography
7
8
9
1011 We have argued in Part I that language-and-culture learning is an inte-
1 grated process and that, when learners have the opportunity to immerse
2 themselves in a community where the language they are learning is
3111 spoken, the traditions of ethnography in anthropology offer a perspec-
4 tive which can ensure that the experience is a rich and not
5 just a supercial one. The challenge we set ourselves, as indicated in
6 the preceding chapter, was to adapt those traditions and insights to the
7 needs and perspectives of students and their teachers who saw them-
8 selves above all as language people (Evans, 1988). Our purpose was,
9 however, not simply to stop at the experimental stage. We wanted to
20111 show that the approach was generalisable, and the argument about gener-
1 alisation from case study outlined in the previous chapter applies not
2 only to the work of the students their ethnographies but to the
3 language learners as ethnographers project as a whole. It was thus part
4 of the rationale of the project that a curriculum development of this kind
5 would be generalisable to other circumstances if it could be shown that
6 existing language specialists whatever their qualications and training
7 could adopt the principles and methods of the course. It was impor-
8 tant that, although as a funded project there was extra support from
9 colleagues with previous experience of ethnography, there should
30111 develop an approach which any linguist teaching advanced learners in
1 a comparable situation could adopt.
2
3
Ethnography as Staff Development
4
5 At the outset of the project, the teachers involved had no previous
6 knowledge or experience of anthropology and only rudimentary knowl-
7 edge of ethnographic methods. They had a relatively short period
8 of time in which to prepare to teach ethnography and several areas of
9 development to consider:
40 learning about relevant approaches in anthropology through
41111 guided reading and team discussions;
101
1111 learning about methodologies of ethnography;

2 considering ways of selecting, adapting and presenting these ideas
3 to students.
4
5 This was pre-course activity, but later the actual teaching and evaluating
6 of seminars and supervision of projects would prove to be no less essen-
7 tial as staff development.
8 Because the planning and teaching of the ethnography course ran
9 parallel with their own development as ethnography teachers, there was
1011 an organic relationship between the two, springing from the interaction
1 of all participants in the project, including the rst cohort of students.
2 It is not intended that the following should be the process adopted in
3111 other circumstances, not least because we hope that this book will help
4 others to prepare in a different way. It is not a prescription for learning
5 to teach ethnography, but rather a case study of the experience of two
6 members of the Ealing ethnography team, which will illustrate what
7 was involved and provide readers with a basis for comparison of their
8 own learning.
9 The rst issue to be faced was that of legitimacy, and the rationale
20111 for language teachers attempting to equip themselves to teach ethnog-
1 raphy. Would it not be more appropriate to draft in a professional
2 anthropologist to teach the course? However, the purpose was not to
3 take up another academic discipline, but to work across discipline bound-
4 aries, engaging with new perspectives on cultural understanding which
5 enhanced linguists existing knowledge on conceptual and epistemolog-
6 ical levels. Since language programmes typically draw on a variety of
7 discipline areas to explore the target culture, most language teachers in
8 higher education are in fact accustomed to this breadth of approach,
9 while also developing specic research interests in just one or two areas.
30111 Indeed, it is the norm to have to bridge disciplines to a greater or lesser
1 extent, and this breadth and exibility is an existing strength which
2 language teachers can bring to a project developing an expertise in
3 ethnography.
4 Furthermore, language teachers are ideally placed to select the topics
5 and areas of interest to which they can bring anthropological perspec-
6 tives since they know what is appropriate and necessary for students
7 during their period abroad. We were aware of the extent and type of
8 knowledge about cultural issues language students already possess, as
9 well as being conscious of the ways in which they have acquired this
40 knowledge. The course also builds on areas students have already exam-
41111 ined (e.g. notions of national identity; French or Spanish family life;
Teaching Ethnography 103
1111 political and educational systems) but to which they have usually been
2 introduced through factual, positivistic perspectives, either in the tradi-
3 tional Area Studies approach to culture or in the language classroom.
4 Often, cultural issues and cultural knowledge are an illuminating but ad
5 hoc part of the students learning, which they acquire by chance rather
6 than by design. In an Area Studies course, the focus is usually on history
7 and institutions, and the approach text-based rather than experiential.
8 In language classes the approach may be more experiential and inter-
9 active but it is generally unsystematic in exploring issues connecting
1011 language and cultural practice, and is based either on texts or on the
1 teachers own experience. The teacher is regarded as somebody with
2 prior knowledge of the target culture from an insider perspective, and
3111 cultural information is transmitted by her from that authoritative posi-
4 tion. In contrast, ethnography allows language teachers to take cultural
5 learning into a new realm by exploring cultural processes rather
6 than delivering information about culture. It provides an important
7 methodological and conceptual basis both for enhancing teachers own
8 understanding of cultural processes, and for providing students with
9 opportunities to take a more active role in their cultural learning.
20111 Finally, and most importantly in the Ealing project, the teachers lack
1 of experience of ethnography was an advantage. They were like their
2 students in the sense of being already familiar with issues of language
3 and culture, and needing to carry out eldwork with limited profes-
4 sional resources. This meant that their own learning experience helped
5 them to be realistic about what they could expect from students, and to
6 make decisions about what was feasible. They were to acquire rst-hand
7 knowledge of the challenges. The remainder of this chapter is written
8 from the two teachers insider view of trying their own hands at an
9 ethnographic project.
30111
1
Fieldwork at First Hand
2
3 Our previous experience of curriculum development projects had
4 generally been grounded in text-based research, but in this case there
5 was an experiential element too. There was a phase of reading intro-
6 ductory works on ethnographic methods (e.g. Agar, 1980; Hammersley
7 & Atkinson, 1983), parts of which were subsequently recommended to
8 students, but we then chose to do ethnography as well as read about it.
9 This gave us a similar experience to that of our students, and when
40 during the course, a student assignment in data collection, ethnographic
41111 conversation, or self-observation was devised, we rst carried it out
1111 ourselves before using it. This was not unlike a frequent exhortation to
2 language teachers to make temporary departures from their area of exper-
3 tise by learning a new language from time to time, with the intention
4 that they will again experience second language acquisition and the
5 issues involved. What we shall concentrate on here, then, is precisely
6 this experiential, exploratory aspect. In particular, we felt it desirable to
7 undertake ethnographic projects of our own, in order to gain rst-hand
8 knowledge of the problems waiting for the researcher in the eld rather
9 than simply referring students to existing accounts. The experiential
1011 nature of cultural learning is a fundamental dimension of the course,
1 and we felt we should develop and reect upon our own ethnographic
2 skills before attempting to teach students to deploy them effectively and
3111 reexively. Although this is not the only way to prepare for teaching
4 ethnography, if time and circumstances allow, it is the ideal. In order
5 to represent this, we shall describe two projects which were similar in
6 several respects and which gave rise to fairly typical problems.
7 As we shall see later, during the ethnography course students are
8 asked to carry out an ethnographic study of some aspect of their familiar
9 environment in order to make them realise that this too can be analysed
20111 from an ethnographic standpoint, that ethnography is not just a means
1 of understanding what is new but also of making the familiar strange.
2 This is called the home ethnography and done during a vacation period.
3 Those involved in teaching the course carried out a similar project with
4 the same practical considerations of time constraints. We had to do eld-
5 work in an accessible environment, and decided to focus on an aspect
6 of the workplace. Making contact with informants in the workplace was
7 the rst step of the learning process which engaged us at once with
8 some of the practical considerations and ethical issues of ethnographic
9 research. Framing the project sensitively so that informants understand
30111 why someone would like to learn about their lives is a challenge which
1 the most self-condent students can nd intimidating, and it was not
2 different for us.
3 Ana Barro began discussing her research with two caretakers working
4 in the same university building, while Shirley Jordan took a more formal
5 route, negotiating access to a larger group of female cleaning staff
6 through embarking on conversations with their supervisor. We were,
7 therefore, able to carry out participant observation in our own environ-
8 ment after or before working hours, hanging around with the caretakers
9 for an hour or two after work, or with the cleaners during their early
40 morning tea break, and learning from them about aspects of their
41111 working lives. The locale in itself instantly involved the process of
1111 making strange. We discovered the limitations of our perceptions of

2 what we had so far thought of as our own environment, and further-
3 more while working with these informants, we had the experience of
4 being caught between the position of insider and outsider in different
5 parts of the university community.
6 The participant observation, conversations, note-taking and analysis
7 lasted for about a term during which we had meetings with the profes-
8 sional anthropologist member of the research team to discuss work in
9 progress. By the end we had gained valuable experience in eldwork,
1011 data collection and analysis, and written ethnographic accounts which
1 could be used in teaching. One of these, Its Not My Job, explored how
2 two caretakers came to dene their own roles and responsibilities, going
3111 beyond their ofcial job description to become care-takers in the broader
4 sense (through their pastoral role as advice givers to students, their inter-
5 action with academic staff, and their management of social and symbolic
6 space within the university). The account drew on concepts of bound-
7 aries, exchange, reciprocity and hierarchies. The second study, Were
8 Just Nobody, We Arent, drew on a similar complex of concepts to
9 explore the cleaners perceptions of themselves in relation to students,
20111 supervisors and academic staff, and the strategies they had developed
1 for interacting with these groups. For our purposes here, however, it is
2 more useful to focus on the process of doing ethnography than to give
3 detailed accounts of the ndings.
4 The experiential learning in the process can be best represented in
5 extracts from a reection on doing ethnography written soon after:
6
7 Initially we had believed that researching a group in our own place
8 of work was an easy solution, but it also presented some difcul-
9 ties. Our informants were people we worked with and encountered
30111 on a daily basis. We already had a relationship with them outside
1 that of ethnographer and informant, and so negotiating a new role
2 for ourselves as ethnographers was not easy. Our relationship with
3 these groups was complicated by existing notions of hierarchy; we
4 were both conscious that we were representatives of academic staff,
5 and in the case of the project with the cleaners, informants were
6 acutely aware of ways in which staff might perceive them. They also
7 harboured their own strong perceptions of lecturers, and their knowl-
8 edge of the researchers role as one of them meant they never really
9 accepted her in her capacity as an ethnographer. Her procedure of
40 using the supervisor as gatekeeper to the group was to create misun-
41111 derstandings in the complex web of relations which eldwork entails;
1111 a member of academic staff apparently descending on them as

2 objects of study and imposed upon them by their immediate hier-
3 archical superior was a source of anxiety for all concerned. The
4 research situation was therefore politically delicate and involved the
5 researcher in discovering and dealing with fragile relationships,
6 sometimes in a poor state of repair. In this ethnography, it was
7 precisely these relationships which became the main focus of
8 research, whereas at rst the researcher just saw them as an unfor-
9 tunate barrier, getting in the way of what she really wanted to look
1011 at. This process of letting go was a valuable lesson in exibility and
1 in using informants as teachers (see Agar, 1986b) rather than grafting
2 on ones own preoccupations.
3111 Sharing experiences of eldwork was important and feelings of
4 insecurity were common to both of us. It took patience and perse-
5 verance to develop what we felt was, literally, a new way of seeing,
6 and our professional anthropologist colleague urged us to express
7 our doubts both in eld diaries and in our meetings. One of us
8 suggested it was like being in deep and fast-owing water and
9 having to build my own raft! The best analogy to describe part of
20111 our learning process came from a shared recent experience of
1 learning to drive. The learner is self-conscious and overwhelmed.
2 There are so many skills to acquire, so many aspects to be alert to,
3 so many things to do at once that it seems hard to prioritise.
4 Participant observation is similar in terms of its simultaneous
5 demands: how do you observe and participate and decide what to
6 take notes on at the same time? When can or should you take rough
7 notes, and if you dont, how can you be sure your memories of the
8 encounter will be sufciently detailed and accurate? In the end, all
9 your technical skills and heightened perception have to be combined
30111 into a synthesis which is instinctive and exible enough to respond
1 to different and constantly changing contexts. In addition, learning
2 how to monitor, handle and respond to eldwork situations are only
3 a part of research; such skills must be interwoven with and directed
4
by conceptual knowledge in the discovery process.
5
6 Training the ethnographic eye is, then, a little like acquiring road
7 sense, that combination of multiple skills and alertness to the environ-
8 ment which seem so elusive when one rst sits in the drivers seat. This
9 analogy is helpful to students who encounter the same uncertainties and
40 frustrations, and are sometimes doubtful about how their learning will
41111 all fall into place in the end. From the start of the course they are asked
1111 to spend a long time doing what seems mundane, or recording what
2 seems obvious, and it is only when they have sufcient data that some
3 of their apparently banal jottings will come to make sense, revealing
4 patterns and directions in their research. In the same way, our own expe-
5 rience of eldwork taught us the importance of patient observation. We
6 were perhaps even less willing than students to do these observations
7 because we wanted to produce a conceptually rich piece of work and
8 tended to go into the eld and immediately draw out the concepts, pre-
9 empting the data. This unfamiliar territory was also a threat to us as
1011 academics, although in retrospect this was one of the most useful aspects
1 of the eldwork. What was on the page seemed raw and unsophisti-
2 cated. Was the data valid? Was there enough going on or should we try
3111 to make something exciting happen? What exactly were we going to be
4 able to write about? What right did we have to invade other peoples
5 jobs, feelings and experiences? In addition, despite previous experience
6 of writing academic essays, lack of familiarity with anthropological
7 discourse meant that our writing was under constant scrutiny. Draft
8 accounts were not always reexive enough, not always conceptually
9 grounded enough, not always meeting the demands of the discipline; it
20111 felt as if we had to develop a completely new voice.
1 Much of this is common to all learning, although particularly height-
2 ened by the experience of eldwork and the constraints of time and
3 place. On the other hand, there was the exhilarating feeling of setting
4 out on new territory. We attempted to transmit this to students during
5 the ethnography course itself, and having undertaken eldwork meant
6 that we could do this honestly and realistically. Students expect of their
7 teachers not only enthusiasm, but also authority in the discipline. In this
8 case, authority and credibility was a function of being open about how
9 recent the learning experiences were. Students encountered a different
30111 notion of the teacher and her role in a new kind of learning environment
1 which was exciting and often unpredictable, requiring all participants
2 to deal with unexpected issues on the spot. The experiential nature of
3 the course has already been highlighted and it was important that
4 students saw this as a two-way process. It was not a case of handing
5 down the experiences for them to undergo, but of participating in them
6 oneself. There is a valuable point to be made here about the nature of
7 cultural learning as a perpetual process: it is not something one can
8 acquire and transmit, but something one continually learns by doing, by
9 developing a different way of looking at things.
40 In sum, it was this experience of carrying out an ethnographic project,
41111 more than an increasing familiarity with anthropology as an academic
1111 discipline, that provided a solid grounding for teaching. The projects
2 enriched the approach to teaching the methodological part of the
3 course, to integrating the methodological and conceptual aspects, and
4 to conducting individual tutorials with students engaged in research
5 and usually struggling with the relationship of data and theory. Thus
6 the writing up of our ethnographic projects was important. It demon-
7 strated that ethnography is not to be equated simply with experience in
8 the eld. There is a temptation to get a feel for eldwork and data collec-
9 tion, and to go no further. This is a mistake, since concerns about
1011 organising materials, thinking through issues of style, tone, the balance
1 between description and analysis, and particularly the ways in which
2 claims are made on the basis of data, can later be shared with students
3111 and compared with their own experiences.
4
5
Generating Teaching Materials
6
7 These projects also fed directly into the course in more tangible ways.
8 Extracts were incorporated into the units, either to focus on specic
9 issues, or for students to carry out more general critiques of them as
20111 examples of ethnographic writing. There was also material from eld
1 diaries, covering every stage: deciding on the project, gaining access,
2 locating good informants, the problems of participant observation, data
3 collection and analysis. A good example was Shirleys strong concern
4 that her informants felt she was spying on them. In this case what
5 started off as a vague sense of unease became a valuable asset in her
6 teaching. The whole problematic issue of nding gatekeepers people
7 likely to give access to informants and gaining entry to a group was
8 well illustrated by these experiences. She consequently felt equipped to
9 prepare students for this, or encourage them to avoid it by not picking
30111 a group which was too external to their lives. In many ways, then, what
1 started off as research problems became opportunities to enhance the
2 course for teachers and for students.
3 Three specic examples of how material from these projects was
4 integrated in the course units, which will be described in more detail
5 in Chapter 7, illustrate the relationship between staff development
6 and teaching. In a unit on ethnographic conversations, students carry
7 out an assignment which requires them to identify and approach suit-
8 able informants, striking up conversation and if appropriate, explaining
9 about the ethnographic project. Part of the follow-up to the assignment
40 involves students working in small groups and sharing their experiences
41111 to see if they can answer the question What makes a good informant?
1111 Their ndings are then compared with general criteria for good infor-
2 mants (Spradley, 1979) and also with ndings from the project on the
3 cleaners. As part of this project the teacher concerned analysed the ways
4 in which her various informants interpreted both the research project
5 and their own role within it. Her comments covered issues such as the
6 importance of exibility on the part of the researcher, since different
7 strategies of information gathering were required for different infor-
8 mants, and the need to abandon a priori assumptions about what would
9 be important in their lives. She also illustrated how some extremely
1011 willing informants may ultimately be less helpful than those who
1 appear more reticent. Her most helpful informant was in fact the least
2 self-consciously involved, the least ready to present herself to the
3111 ethnographer and relatively indifferent to the latters presence during
4 the tea breaks.
5 Some of the students ndings can be related to this extract, and this
6 also leads them to consider the different skills required, and data derived,
7 when researching within a group as opposed to conducting ethnographic
8 conversations with one informant. Finally, the exercise is an important
9 reminder that the ethnographer is not the only one to have an agenda.
20111 In this case, some informants turned to the researcher as a possible source
1 of information about academic staff, supervisory staff or other groups
2 of cleaners. Others responded to her as biographer since they had
3 decided that writing about them meant writing about their private
4 histories, not their working lives: . . . they would try to give me what
5 they thought I wanted, attempting to make themselves interesting as
6 individuals, whereas I was interested in the functioning of the group
7 as a whole.
8 The second example relates to the unit on local level politics and
9 reciprocity where students explore the symbolic aspects of exchange
30111 and look at the ways in which favours, gifts and other exchanges struc-
1 ture our everyday relations, and allow us to achieve and maintain an
2 equilibrium. These concepts formed an important part of the ethnog-
3 raphy on the cleaners who felt they were giving a valuable service to
4 members of academic staff often a personal service, since they were
5 prepared to undertake certain special favours not strictly within the remit
6 of their job, such as emptying and cleaning the coffee cups but getting
7 little in return, sometimes not even what, in one of the readings for the
8 course, Bailey (1971), is referred to as the gift of good manners. This
9 lack of reciprocity was one of the major factors which inuenced the
40 cleaners perception of themselves as a marginal group in the univer-
41111 sity community.
1111 The third extract from staff projects is used to illustrate ways in
2 which students may be helped to make sense of their raw data by
3 uncovering connections and patterns within it. Indexing and analysis
4 should ideally be constants throughout eldwork, and students are
5 encouraged to consolidate their notes, regularly and methodically trans-
6 ferring rough jottings into permanent notebooks in which data coding
7 and interpretation are bound up with one another. However, entering
8 into a meaningful dialogue with their data can give students as many
9 problems as data collection itself, and they are occasionally tempted
1011 to dismiss illuminating material simply because they feel unable to
1 account for its relation to the main categories and concepts guiding
2 their projects. The scatter sheet from Anas home ethnography which
3111 is reproduced below (see Figure 2) shows how a conceptual diagram or
4 visual map can be a valuable method of organising and understanding
5 data. This scatter diagram depicts an early stage of indexing notes in
6 categories for analysis once the initial eld notes had been carried out.
7 The numbers in the circles refer to the page numbers in the notes.
8 According to the clusters of references, the writer was able to organise
9 data into categories and check back with informants before the nal
20111 writing up of the project.
1 Here, headings and sub-headings form a cumulative contents page
2 some conceptual and some relating to purely descriptive phenomena
3 are jotted at random onto a single sheet. A mental map of connections
4 is then established which can often reveal previously unrecognised
5 patterns, point to gaps in the research, and enable the ethnographer to
6 give more coherent and persuasive accounts of the data.
7 Students also use longer extracts from staff projects for critique, just
8 as they do with the home ethnographies of previous students which
9 have been integrated with the course material. They are asked to concen-
30111 trate on key questions:
1
What anthropological concepts does the project draw on?
2
How is it structured?
3
Can examples be found of where the writer is reexive about her
4
data?
5
How does she combine generalisation and detailed examples?
6
How does the writer use the detailed language of her informants
7
to make general points about their sense of identity?
8
9 This is one important way of making students aware of the considera-
40 tions they will be expected to account for in their own ethnographic
41111 writing.
1111
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Figure 2
9
40
41111
1111 Evaluation and Generalisation

2
3 As pointed out earlier, it was one of the basic questions of the Ealing
4 project to determine to what extent teachers with no background in
5 anthropology or ethnography can acquire in a relatively short time
6 complex anthropological and ethnographic concepts and methodologies,
7 and employ them in teaching non-specialists. This was part of the
8 research umbrella to the project, an evaluation of its generalisability.
9 One way of answering this question was itself through use of ethno-
1011 graphic methods. Evidence was acquired through open-ended interviews
1 involving the linguists and our anthropologist colleague, through consid-
2 eration both of their teaching on the course and their participation in
3111 course team meetings, through analysis of the ethnography projects
4 described above, and through informal discussions throughout the
5 period of the project.
6 We have described above how the linguists learned about anthro-
7 pology through seminars and tutorials with our professional anthropol-
8 ogist colleague, by reading, and through doing ethnography projects. It
9 is also important to emphasise that we learned through supervising
20111 students on their projects, and through the actual practice of having to
1 teach sessions on anthropological topics.
2 Although the initial approach was to focus on teaching students how
3 to do ethnography, it was soon agreed that ethnography could not be
4 taught in a theoretical vacuum. Methods were meaningless without
5 something that the methods were trying to nd out. Students were
6 already rooted in issues of language and culture and were anticipating
7 some of the experiences they would encounter through living in a foreign
8 country. The topics chosen reected this context: for example, Local
9 Level Politics, National Identity and Local Boundaries and The Family.
30111 The curriculum also responded to the students as linguists, and units
1 and tasks were introduced, for example Language and Identity, doing
2 compliments, which required observation and analysis of micro-
3 linguistic data and the exercise of power through discourse.
4 This combination of factors required us to focus on epistemological
5 issues, questioning taken-for-granted assumptions about the ordinary
6 and the natural in daily life. First we, and then our students, were
7 learning to see that apparently trivial surface concerns are deeply rooted
8 in cultural assumptions about knowledge and experience. We were
9 also learning to move beyond stereotypical conceptions of a culture
40 towards recognition of cultural processes (Street, 1993) and meanings
41111 changing over time and context. Teachers and students were learning
1111 to be reexive about the observers position as both inside and outside,
2 as they move between their own cultural context and that of their infor-
3 mants. Indeed, the teachers felt that the main learning and adapting
4 process had less to do with content knowledge than with the process of
5 developing new perspectives; less to do with cultural knowledge than
6 with frameworks for understanding cultural processes.
7 We felt that curriculum objectives were not simply achieved by content
8 knowledge of the discipline of anthropology, but through the actual
9 interactive process of teaching. We took what we deemed appropriate
1011 in terms of anthropological knowledge and perspectives and adapted it
1 to teaching methods with which we were familiar: photocopying selec-
2 tions for students; nding short pieces that focused the issue; linking a
3111 theme to some activity; asking students to engage in some concrete task
4 on which to report in the classes. Our aim was to start from their obser-
5 vations, and help them to understand the way meaning is constructed.
6 What we developed, then, was a mix of the features of traditional anthro-
7 pology and sociolinguistics and traditional language teaching, mediated
8 through our own personal backgrounds, our own project experience and,
9 most strongly, the experience of teaching the course as a team.
20111 In the judgement of the professional anthropologist in the team, those
1 teaching the course achieved considerable success in internalising many
2 of the perspectives outlined in earlier chapters, and the evidence from
3 student ethnographies and interviews suggests this passed on to them
4 also, as we shall see later. With respect to generalisation, there is evidence
5 that other teachers in language departments come with backgrounds and
6 interests sympathetic to this kind of work and can adapt to teaching
7 ethnography in the ways that the original volunteers did. Shirley Jordan
8 joined the team later, wrote an ethnography project of her own, as we
9 have illustrated, and began to join in teaching course units. Similarly,
30111 colleagues at other universities and language departments have liaised
1 with the Ealing team and are introducing elements of the ethnography
2 project in their own institutions. The nding appears to be that it is not
3 simply a matter of individual personality but rather a combination of
4 background and teaching experience. All of the teachers stressed that
5 this is not a matter of making a clean break with previous approaches
6 but rather a change process at levels of epistemology as well as of
7 curriculum and pedagogy. Language specialists have international and
8 cross-cultural experience and intellectual interests in social and cultural
9 questions. In the Ealing project this was combined with an interactive,
40 student-centred, and exploratory style of teaching, which is likely to
41111 facilitate successful adaptation to an innovative course such as this.
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 7
5
6 Developing the Principles for an
7
8 Ethnography Course
9
1011
1
2
Some Fundamental Principles
3111
4 In Chapter 6 we described some of the ways in which language staff
5 can develop themselves as teachers of ethnography. In this chapter, we
6 describe how a course for introducing students to ethnography can
7 be designed. In order to do this, we have had certain fundamental
8 principles in mind. First, there need to be elements both of ethno-
9 graphic method and of anthropological, and, to a more limited degree,
20111 sociolinguistic concepts. The aim is not to try to train students as anthro-
1 pologists and therefore it is necessary to be highly selective in making
2 decisions about both content and approach. However, a narrow skills
3 based approach, teaching only ethnographic methods, is not appropriate.
4 As we have said, methods of data collection and analysis cannot be
5 taught in a vacuum separate from a conceptual framework which informs
6 these methods.
7 Secondly, as with issues of staff development, it is important to take
8 account of the fact that students background is in modern languages:
9 and we have outlined in the previous chapter some of the implications
30111 of this in terms of their factual knowledge of the country where they
1 are to reside and the somewhat ad hoc way in which cultural knowledge
2 is often taught. A third principle stems from these rst two. This involves
3 making the course as student-centred as possible, working from students
4 own experiences, building in weekly tasks of data collection and
5 analysis from which conceptual work can be drawn and ensuring a
6 strong cyclical element so that ways of thinking and looking are
7 frequently revisited from different angles. In this way, the conceptual
8 elements talk to the students through their own experiences.
9 The culmination of the course before the Year Abroad, and the major
40 means by which the course is assessed is the home ethnography. This
41111 gives students the opportunity to try out some of what they have learnt
114
Developing Principles for an Ethnography Course 115
1111 in a small-scale project based on a group activity or set of practices which

2 are part of or close to their own world. It is also part of the process of
3 learning about their own socially and culturally constructed worlds
4 before they undertake a study within a community quite different from
5 their own.
6 The rest of this chapter uses examples from the Ealing ethnography
7 course to draw out the general approach for an introduction to ethnog-
8 raphy for language learners. Chapter 8 then describes some of the
9 concrete detail of the programme over years two to four and a partic-
1011 ular session on the course. Before looking at the examples, we give an
1 overview of the whole course (see Figure 3, following).
2
3111
4
5 The units cover the following areas:
6 1. Preparing for eldwork
7 The period abroad is introduced as an opportunity to go out into the
8 eld, on the analogy of the anthropologists eldwork, and study
9 some aspect of a community in a systematic way.
20111
1 2. What is an ethnographic approach?
2 Some of the fundamental principles of ethnography are introduced:
3 ethnography as a holistic method; data as always interpreted in
4 context; the notion of reexivity.
5 3. Non-verbal communication and social space
6 These concepts are used to introduce students to methods of obser-
7 vation. Goffmans work is introduced along with some of the
8 anthropological studies of how people make meaning out of their use
9 of space.
30111
1 4. Shared cultural knowledge
2 The idea of ethnography as thick description is introduced. The
3 difference between description and interpretation is used to focus on
4 the idea that we draw on our social and cultural knowledge in order
5 to judge and label experiences.
6 5. Families and households
7 The idea of the family as a cultural construct is introduced and
8 the role of cultural knowledge is illustrated by looking at kinship
9 terms, and, more sociolinguistically, by the analysis of family conver-
40 sations.
41111
1111 6. Gender relations

2 The focus in this unit is on gender and language, both the discourses
3 around gender and female and male interaction.
4
7. Ethnography of education
5
The concept of education as a process of socialisation is introduced.
6
Culturally organised patterns of classroom behaviour are related to
7
wider issues of education as a means of social reproduction.
8
9 8. Participant observation
1011 This is the rst session to focus on specic methods and it introduces
1 the key method of participant observation. The tension between being
2 a participant and being an observer is explored and practical help is
3111 given in how to locate informants and take eld notes.
4
9. Ethnographic conversations
5
Alternative methods to observation are discussed. Some techniques
6
for informal ethnographic interviewing are tried out and problems
7
raised and discussed.
8
9 10. Ethnographic interviewing
20111 In addition to trying out some ethnographic conversations in a foreign
1 language, more formal interview methods based on cognitive and
2 linguistic anthropology are used to elicit key cultural words and their
3 semantic associations.
4
11. Data analysis 1: From data collection to analysis
5
The relationship between data collection and data analysis is explored.
6
Two ways of drawing out concepts from the data are introduced
7
and students are reminded of the importance of reexivity in data
8
analysis.
9
30111 12. Data analysis 2: Further interpretive analysis and organising data
1 in the eld
2 Further practice in interpretive data analysis is given. Ways of organ-
3 ising eld notes and other data are introduced. The importance of
4 writing a eld diary is stressed.
5
13. National identity and local boundaries
6
The period abroad is designed to immerse students in a different
7
cultural experience and so questions of identity, of what it means to
8
belong to a nation are particularly salient. In this unit, the concept
9
of boundary is used to explore ethnic and national groups.
40
41111
1111 14. Language and social identities

2 The relationship between language and social identity is introduced,
3 drawing on sociolinguistics and the ethnography of communication.
4 The use of different varieties of language, styles of talking and code-
5 switching illuminate the political economy of language.
6
15. Local level politics
7
The central role that small p politics plays in the formation and
8
maintenance of social relations is discussed. The notion of exchange
9
is related both to students own gift-giving habits and to wider social
1011
issues of honour and shame.
1
2 16. Belief and action 1: Symbolic classication
3111 The distinction between the symbolic and functional is explored by
4 looking at eating habits and the different ways in which what appears
5 as natural is classied symbolically.
6
17. Belief and action 2: Discourse and power
7
Aspects of the ethnography of communication, critical linguistics and
8
the analysis of ritual language and rhetoric are combined in looking
9
at some aspects of institutional discourses.
20111
1 18. Writing an ethnographic project
2 Recent work on writing ethnographic accounts is used to highlight
3 the constructed nature of ethnographic texts, challenging positivistic
4 assumptions of objectivity in writing. Students are also helped to
5 think about some of the tensions they will have to manage in writing
6 their ethnographic project in the foreign language but using many of
7 the Anglo-American concepts of the ethnography course.
8
19. Buttery unit
9
This unit contains guidance on assessment, the home ethnography
30111
and the ethnographic project while abroad. As a buttery rests on
1
different owers, so the elements of this unit may be used at different
2
times in the course, depending on how the overall programme is
3
structured.
4
5
6 Figure 3 Overview of the introduction to ethnography course
7
8
9
40
41111
1111 In the rest of this chapter, we look at three major aspects of the ethnog-
2 raphy course and illustrate them with detailed descriptions of course
3 content and approach. These three aspects are:
4
looking at everyday life culturally and ethnographically;
5
developing a conceptual framework, focusing on the symbolic
6
aspects of social practice;
7
developing an ethnographic method.
8
9
1011 Looking at Everyday Life Culturally and
1 Ethnographically
2
3111 Motorways and pubs
4
In Unit 2 of the ethnography course students read a short student
5
ethnography on motorway workers (Raeburn, 1978). The writers ques-
6
tion was: Why do men choose to work as itinerant motorway workers?
7
Although there are obvious incentives in terms of pay, there are also
8
strong social and cultural reasons for opting for this kind of life. These
9
include the notion of freedom shared and maintained by the group which
20111
contributes to a sense of group identity. This, in turn, is reinforced by
1
a set of rules of acceptable standards of behaviour and celebrated in
2
the act of taking such a job.
3
These themes t into an ideology a set of values and assumptions
4
which legitimise the groups social position and provide a means of
5
resistance to the prevailing values and norms in society. A similar theme
6
is pursued in Willis classic text on working-class schoolboys, Learning
7
to Labour (1977) and Agars study of independent truckers in the United
8
States (1986b), both of which the students are introduced to during
9
the course. This theme was reworked as a home ethnography by one
30111
of the students in his participant observation of motor-cycle despatch
1
riders.
2
These studies are all examples of one aspect of everyday life: work
3
and what it means to those who labour. Ethnography is the study of
4
the everydayness of things, such as fairly routine jobs, and requires
5
an ability to see and read everyday life as a cultural phenomenon. By
6
this we mean the ability to ask and attempt an answer to the following
7
questions:
8
9 What is going on?
40 What meanings does it have?
41111 How does it come to have these meanings?
1111 What is going on?

2 This question assumes the capacity to see and hear the ne-grained
3 detail of everyday practices. Drawing from anthropology the idea of
4 making the invisibility of everyday life visible and of making the taken
5 for granted strange, the language learner as ethnographer needs to
6 develop new ways of seeing and hearing. Culture is being acted out
7 in the most mundane interactions and habits and the challenge is, rst
8 of all, to notice it.
9 This is a perspective on ones own cultural world. The culture of ones
1011 own everyday life when contrasted with a different cultural group or
1 when abroad takes on a new signicance. Much of the everyday life of
2 other groups is not seen at all. It is literally invisible to outsiders if they
3111 are little more than tourists. However, what is seen may either be noted
4 as ordinary and likened to ones own experiences and so not attended
5 to, or seen as extraordinary and exotic and labelled as such. To chal-
6 lenge both of these tendencies, students need to learn to see and hear
7 the worlds they inhabit at home before, during and after participating
8 in others worlds while abroad. We take up below issues of ethnographic
9 methods for seeing and hearing.
20111
1 What meanings does it have?
2 This next question assumes a capacity to nd out the common-sense
3 knowledge which accounts for the routine and familiar. For the
4 motorway workers, this shared cultural knowledge included assump-
5 tions about the freedom such a job offered and the roving life-style that
6 accompanied it. Gradually, out of the accumulated layers of data, both
7 from observation and informants comments, patterns and regularities
8 begin to emerge. These take the ethnographer beyond individual
9 responses to a cultural interpretation.
30111 A particular routine or activity does not have an isolated meaning but
1 is itself embedded in other meanings which in turn are part of larger
2 structures of meaning extending out, like the circles of a whirlpool. So
3 the motorway workers dismissal of ofce life is part of a set of assump-
4 tions that celebrate their tough, unpleasant work as worthwhile. These
5 assumptions in turn, link to the ideology which sets them apart from
6 what they describe as dead middle-class life.
7 Yet an awareness of these embedded meanings still raises questions
8 about the nature of evidence and the basis on which cultural interpre-
9 tations are made. An ethnographer cannot assume that they have
40 captured the meanings, as if there was one xed or essential set of
41111 meanings which dene aspects of culture in some unproblematic way.
1111 Understanding cultural meanings is a process of recognising the inter-

2 action between ones own ways of meaning and ones understanding of
3 others. This reexive attitude towards understanding others is funda-
4 mental to ethnography and assumes being analytical about ones own
5 cultural knowledge and identity as well as those of others, as we have
6 suggested in Chapter 5.
7 These issues of evidence and interpretation as raised by ethnography
8 are immediately relevant to language and culture learning and to students
9 who identify themselves as linguists. They raise questions such as:
1011 On what basis is this interpretation made? What is the evidence for
1 categorising in this way? How does such a generalisation come to be in
2 place? It is this constant questioning of evidence and judgements that
3111 constructs resistance to stereotyping. Without this questioning habit,
4 cultural information can simply be used to reinforce existing assumptions
5 and stereotypes. Asking the question of any data or text, What meaning
6 does it have? involves the student in both affective and cognitive change.
7 Simple clichd stereotypes and attitudes sit uncomfortably alongside this
8 interrogative mode. However, trying to see the meaning in observed
9 behaviour also requires cognitive effort since it involves students in a
20111 constant process of conscious interpretation. As such, the student linguist
1 becomes an interpreter not in any narrow sense of transmitting messages
2 from one language to another but in the broadest sense of making mean-
3 ing out of the most mundane practices of everyday life.
4
5 How does it come to have meaning?
6 This nal question assumes a historical and critical perspective on
7 everyday life. For example, why do itinerant motorway workers come
8 to share the values they articulate? Are their representations of their
9 lives simply facts or do they need a deeper reading in which they are
30111 presented as facts but are, at another level, constructs, myths, imagined
1 strengths and pride fashioned out of a need to sustain a sense of group
2 identity and worthwhileness in gruelling jobs? In this reading of the
3 group, both the factory, the ofce and middle-class life are invested with
4 metaphors of boredom and death against which their roving life on the
5 motorway is pitted.
6 But where do these metaphors come from? The ethnographer needs
7 to bring some idea of social class and the ideologies that maintain class
8 positions to an understanding of the motorway workers lives. Why is
9 it that certain values and ways of living come to be dominant and how
40 far is their resistance to these dominant values itself a way of colluding
41111 with them?
1111 The example of the motorway workers illustrates some aspects of what
2 we are calling cultural learning. To begin the process of cultural learning
3 students need an ethnographic imagination (Atkinson, 1990) which
4 involves both a constant questioning process and the ability not just to
5 read off from behaviour or texts a particular interpretation but to read
6 into data and texts. The contrast between reading off and reading into
7 is a contrast between simple generalisations and stereotypes: motorway
8 workers are tough, motorway workers do the job because the money
9 is good, and a rich, complex interpretation of others lives which includes
1011 context, history and theoretical sensitivity. An ethnographic imagina-
1 tion is at the heart of cultural learning. It implies a continuous process
2 of observation, questioning, analysis, conceptual development and
3111 reexive writing, and the capacity to enter into at least the suburbs of
4 another groups world, and so move beyond the boundaries of our
5 own. In the early stages of the ethnography course, the discussion of
6 Motorway and other exercises helps raise many of these issues and
7 introduces students to the nature of ethnographic work and the processes
8 involved: its concentration on small-scale local events and knowledge,
9 the extended and systematic periods of data collection, and an increas-
20111 ingly focused set of questions. For example, in Motorway, Raeburn
1 narrowed down his study to why people chose the job rather than looking
2 more generally at life on the motorway.
3 Two sessions later, in Unit 4, students are introduced to the notion
4 of shared cultural knowledge and are given a number of incidents to
5 discuss (see Figure 4).
6 One theme that runs throughout the discussions is the relationship
7 between description and interpretation. At this early stage it can be
8 quite a challenge for students even to recognise that they regularly
9 conate description and interpretation. For example, students are
30111 quick to interpret what is going on in the money on the table incident
1 as an example of someone leaving a tip and one of their friends
2 stealing it. They have to be encouraged to question these assump-
3 tions, to consider on what basis they have come to this conclusion and
4 to slow down the interpretive process, learning to describe what they
5 see rst and then interpret it. The other four incidents are treated in
6 the same way. The point that is constantly emphasised is that it is
7 worth looking at the small, detailed and apparently trivial things of
8 life and that this means slowing down, taking time, not jumping to
9 conclusions. Smallness and slowness are worthwhile values to pursue
40 when trying to understand the unfamiliar or in making the apparently
41111 familiar strange.
1111
2 Discuss the following incidents:
3 1. Four people sitting together in a restaurant get up from the table,
4 having paid the bill and leave a few coins on the table. As three
5 of them leave the restaurant, the fourth goes to the Ladies. When
6 she returns, she scoops up the money left on the table. What is
7 going on? (adapted from Singer, n.d.)
8 2. You bump into someone you know in the street but have not
9 seen for months. What inferences do you draw from her leave-
1011 taking remark: You must come and see us sometime?
1 3. You are invited to a recently opened Chinese restaurant where
2 all the dishes are based on snake. What is your reaction? If you
3111 are less than ecstatic at the prospect, how do you account for
4 your reactions?
5 4. How would you explain what a honeymoon was to someone
6 newly arrived in Britain from a country where marriage practices
7 are very different?
8 5. You take along a friend from France to your little brothers school
9 fte. She sees a woman standing with her head in a cardboard
20111 frame while schoolchildren and adults throw wet sponges at her
1 face. On enquiring, she nds out that the woman is the schools
2 headmistress. How do you explain this behaviour? How far can
3 you generalise about this behaviour?
4
5
Figure 4 Extract from Unit 4
6
7
8 The data used to help students understand the difference be-
9 tween description and interpretation comes from their rst attempt
30111 at participant observation. They are given the assignment shown in
1 Figure 5.
2 In the next session, students, using the handout (Figure 6) to guide
3 their discussion, report back on their observations. A typical descrip-
4 tion would be: Two women were standing near the bar and a man
5 rudely interrupted them by leaning between them and asking for a
6 drink. But they fail to see that this is part description and part inter-
7 pretation. The latter depends on the womens reaction and any other
8 observed behaviour and history of relationships (or not) between the
9 women and the man. The interpretation includes an evaluative element
40 in which the behaviour is considered rude according to the norms of
41111 the observer.
1111
2 Assignment: Hanging around a local bar
3 The PURPOSE of this assignment is to get more practice in making
4 observations and taking notes in a setting with relatively easy access
5 but which is complex enough to have different things going at the
6 same time.
7
8 You will begin to learn:
9 to analyse the raw material you have collected in terms of culture
1011 and social organisation;
1 to collect and use adequate evidence for the inferences, hunches
2 and assertions you make from your observations.
3111
4 Location
5 You should go to a place:
6 where you can observe unobtrusively and where you will not
7 feel odd or awkward;
8 where you can observe different types of patron groups, inter-
9 actions between patrons and employees, division of labour
20111 among employees.
1
2 Ideally we would like everyone to go to a local pub, but if you do
3 not feel comfortable with that you could alternatively go to a coffee
4 bar, tea room, etc.
5 Procedure
6 1. Go to your chosen location. Spend about half an hour to an hour
7 there, depending on how much is happening. You could stop
8 when nothing new appears to be going on.
9 2. See what you can see, hear and learn by just hanging around as
30111 a patron. Do not formally interview anyone. In your notes, however,
1 try to indicate questions that occur to you which you feel cannot
2 be answered without interviewing people. What limitations did
3 this cause?
4 3. If you can take notes unobtrusively while you are there, ne. If
5 you think it is too difcult to do so, write down everything you can
6 remember as soon as possible. This means within a couple of hours:
7 if you leave it much later, or even until the next day, you will
8 inevitably nd that you have forgotten large chunks. The loo is
9 said to be a popular refuge amongst anthropologists. It is essen-
40 tial that you note the time, date, etc. of your visit.
41111
1111 4. Look through your notes a few times. Make a note of any further
2 thoughts you may have on your material.
3 5. Draw a quick map of your chosen location, clearly labelling the
4 major objects and areas of activity.
5
What to look for:
6
1. Social organization, including:
7
8 the different categories of patrons who frequent the place while
9 you are there;
1011 the division of labour among employees;
1 any patterns in the interactions between patrons, between
2 patrons and employees, between employees.
3111
Other things to think about:
4
1. Identifying typical routines of activity, (i.e. recurring sequences
5
of behaviour).
6
2. Anything which strikes you as unusual, how do you make sense
7
of it?
8
3. Do you see any inappropriate/unacceptable behaviour? How do
9
other participants deal with it?
20111
1 (With acknowledgment to D. Campbell of Michigan State University)
2
3
Figure 5 Unit 4 Shared cultural knowledge
4
5
6 Although, as Geertz (1973: 20) says, cultural analysis is guessing at
7 meanings, these guesses must at least be informed by the kind of
8 evidence required to give an interpretation of this small example. Geertz
9 borrowed from the philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, the notion of thick descrip-
30111 tion to illustrate the process from description to interpretation (see
1 Chapter 3). In our example, thin description would be one that details
2 what is observed. The thick description would have to account for the
3 context in which the interruption occurs (if that is what it was), an
4 understanding of relationships in public, in pubs, this pub in particular,
5 and of these people in particular, in order to come to an interpretation
6 of this incident as an example of boorish behaviour, an attempt at the
7 beginning of a chat-up, a ritual game played out before, etc. etc.
8 A thick description might include themes of belonging or exclusion
9 enacted and re-enacted in public and private places, such as pubs,
40 common rooms, at parties and so on, where social roles are negotiated
41111 and where stereotyped judgements are frequently formed and expressed.
1111
2 Assignment: Hanging around a local bar
3 Guidelines for discussion:
4 Compare notes: What was written down/what not.
5 Groups to look at/report back on one specic aspect/issue.
6
7 1.1 Characteristics for differentiating between different groups
8 1.2 Patterns of interaction, e.g.
9 gender relations
1011 joining a group
1 ordering a drink
2 1.3 Typical routines, e.g.
3111 method of entering/leaving
4 people at the bar
5 2. What was particularly interesting?
6 2.1 Did anything odd happen? What made it unusual?
7 2.2 Was there any inappropriate/unacceptable behaviour? Any
8 taboos involved?
9 What previous knowledge (i.e. interpretive resource) do you need to
20111 make sense of what you observed?
1 What is the evidence for your conclusions?
2 What constituted a pattern? How was it identied?
3 How did your hunches change during the visit?
4
5
6 Figure 6
7
8
9 Looking at everyday life culturally and ethnographically means looking
30111 at the group or the community and so, by implication, the boundaries
1 that constitute the group as such.
2
3
Groups and identities
4
5 Because of the dominant western construction of people as free-
6 wheeling individuals, it requires analytic effort and imagination for
7 students to view themselves as socially constructed as a part of a group.
8 In addition, the period abroad is designed to immerse students in a
9 different cultural experience and so raise questions about themselves
40 as individuals and as representatives of a group, a people, a nation.
41111 Questions of identity and of national and group allegiance are therefore
1111 important issues both in ethnography and for modern languages students
2 more generally and one of the aims of the course is to encourage
3 students to think ethnographically about identity.
4 For this reason, one of the key units in the course is the unit on national
5 identity and local boundaries (Unit 13). For many students the distinction
6 between national and ethnic identity is not clear. As Warner (1994) sug-
7 gests there has been a long tradition in Britain, as elsewhere, of seeing
8 home and native place as one and the same. Home, heritage, identity
9 and women, she argues, have been interconnected in a romantic nation-
1011 alism. This idea takes on particular resonance at times of loss or when a
1 nation is at war when keeping the home res burning is the ideological
2 work women must do to maintain the tradition and stability of the nation.
3111 The nation, it is argued, is only an imagined community(Anderson,
4 1983) since it is interconnected with many other nations and is itself
5 made up of different ethnic groups. The community is an imagined one
6 because it is a construction of commonality out of difference. This is a
7 mythical, symbolic and ideological process as much as a material one.
8 It is concerned with how a nation represents itself to itself. For example,
9 every time Britain or the British are mentioned or a map of Britain
20111 appears in the media, in textbooks or other discourses, a statement is
1 made about Britain as a united political, economic and cultural entity,
2 or to put it more directly There aint no black in the Union Jack
3 (Gilroy, 1987). In other words, the red, white and blue of the British ag,
4 although an apparent symbol of national unity and pride, is unrepre-
5 sentative of British people. Indeed, its co-option by fascist British groups
6 such as the British National Party makes the point all too strongly.
7 As the nation is represented as a unied whole, so there is pressure to
8 make the political unit the cultural unit. The government speaks for us as
9 a people. So the nation, the ethnicity of the majority and what is called
30111 our cultural heritage, are bonded together in a set of political and sym-
1 bolic representations. Many of these themes are introduced in Forsythes
2 German identity and the problem of history which is used as the focus
3 for discussion in this unit. She concludes her paper in this way:
4 When I rst set out to investigate German identity, I thought of it
5 as something solid, possibly even threatening, but unquestionably
6 there (. . .) But from within the image is rather different (. . .) My
7 thesis in this paper has been that there is a connection between the
8 elusiveness of Deutschland as a geographical and political entity,
9 the ambiguousness of Deutsche as a category of people, and the
40 seeming fragility of Germanness as a personal and collective iden-
41111 tity in the late twentieth century. (Forsythe 1989: 154)
1111 Central to her argument is the way in which German, Germanness

2 and foreigners are categorised. This focus on the language used to clas-
3 sify and on the negative stereotyping of Auslnder as symbolically
4 polluting, looks forward to the Units on Belief and Action later in the
5 course (see below).
6 The assignment for this unit on national identity and local boundaries
7 requires students to analyse the BBC programme The Essential History
8 of the UK. This is one of a series on the Essential History of Europe
9 transmitted in 1992. It is ambiguous both in its title and treatment, leaving
1011 the viewer to interpret essential as either meaning necessary and repre-
1 sentative or to treat it as ironic. The students are given a series of
2 questions which require them to read into and not just read off from
3111 the visual images, interviews and commentary. The programme can be
4 read on a number of levels: as factual presentation, as an outsiders view
5 of Britain (the narrator is French) or as a complex text in which commen-
6 tary and visuals are often contesting each other.
7
8
9 Video: The Essential History of Europe (1992: 28 mins)
20111
1 View the video both for its overt and subliminal messages.
2 1. The notion of the UK as isolated and protected is presented along
3 with the commentary that Britain is reassuringly well-regulated
4 and orderly. Why this connection? Or is no connection intended?
5 2. The narrator says we are conservative by necessity. Again, who
6 is she describing? Are these national values of nostalgia and
7 conservatism part of our experience or a myth?
8 3. Do you see any irony, and is any intended, in the visual images
9 of the white, male schoolboys and masters and the commentary
30111 on the spirit of unity and tolerance?
1 4. The programme is an outsiders views in two ways: it is framed
2 by the French narrator and it is a piece of journalism, drawing
3 on quotes and imagery to make an argument. Compare this with
4 what an ethnographer might do to try and get an insiders
5 perspective. Does the French narration justify the stereotyped
6 views, i.e. that to an outsider, a community has to represent itself
7 in clichs and stereotypes a representation that it would not
8 make to itself?
9
40
41111 Figure 7 Example from Unit 13 (extracts only)
1111 Applications
2
The conceptual themes and ways of looking at every day life discussed
3
in this section are designed, as we have suggested, to develop an ethno-
4
graphic imagination. Students are encouraged to focus on the idea of a
5
group at a local level and to connect data gathered as rigorously and
6
systematically as possible to analytic concepts and wider historical and
7 critical perspectives.
8 The cluster of ideas around group, identity and boundary proved
9 beguiling for many students in carrying out their home ethnographies.
1011 One student, Gary, made a study of his own group of friends living in
1 a village in Yorkshire. To his surprise, he found that the boundary that
2 marked out this group as a friendship group was considerably more
3111 blurred than he had supposed and that there were many shifting and
4 contested identities even within this small group. Another student, for
5 her ethnographic project abroad, worked on issues of Spanish /Catalan
6 identity (following studies of Catalan identity by OBrien, 1994 and the
7 work of Woolard, 1989) by looking at code-switching among a small
8 group of residents in Barcelona. She traced some of the ways in which
9 code-switching is used as a resource to maintain ethnic identity in a
20111 multilingual community.
1 As well as giving students a specic sense of direction in choosing
2 topics associated with identities, the three units referred to in this section,
3 2, 4 and 13, had an impact on the way in which students managed the
4 early stages of the period abroad and on the discourses of otherness.
5 For example, one group in Spain, when visited by one of the lecturers,
6 did not use any of the usual clichs about Spanish people. They were
7 more cautious in how they judged others and more tolerant of ambi-
8 guity. For instance, they talked a great deal about the performance
9 aspect of everyday lives in Seville but were able to be reexive about
30111 this and analyse its functional and symbolic signicance.
1
2
3
Developing a Conceptual Framework
4 Once students have started to think ethnographically and can begin
5 to relate detailed observation to cultural patterns, they need to develop
6 a conceptual understanding of the cultural patterns observed, and an
7 awareness of the culturally constructed nature of social practices. They
8 also need to address the questions of what evidence, collected through
9 ethnographic methods, can be considered to be valid knowledge of a
40 particular cultural scene and how it might be written up in a project.
41111 The notion that our social practices are symbolically structured and lived
1111 is reiterated throughout the course, and is built into the teaching units
2 in a rigorous but also holistic manner rather than being taught at a
3 particular stage or in a particular unit. This section uses examples from
4 the units Gender Relations and Belief and Action to elucidate students
5 experience of the process of cultural learning and ethnographic analysis.
6 In order to help unravel some of the epistemological issues that are
7 raised in the process of cultural learning, the incorporation and use of
8 students own data to complement the set texts proved even more valu-
9 able than we had initially anticipated. By seeing themselves and their
1011 informants reexively, as cultural beings who are as open to interpre-
1 tation as other cultural products, abstract concepts such as exchange
2 or socialisation are brought to life in a more immediate way, and
3111 students turn the ethnographic gaze on themselves and the cultural
4 scenes they are familiar with.
5
6
Gender relations
7
8 Quite early in the course, in Unit 6 we introduced the topic of Gender
9 Relations. At this stage, the main focus is on practising observation and
20111 elicitation skills; getting a feel, in other words, for what is involved in
1 an ethnographic approach. This unit highlights the cultural analysis of
2 identities through the dimension of gender. It draws on anthropological
3 investigations into the ways in which men and women are perceived
4 and symbolised, while the sociolinguistic input relates to the study of
5 how gender affects interactions, power relations and language use. The
6 aim of this session is to make the connection between an ethnographic
7 approach to gender and students own notions of how gender impinges
8 on their own lives, to see how they have been constructed as men and
9 women themselves.
30111 Gender provides an accessible and manageable context for capturing
1 the thick kind of data needed for cultural interpretation. The topic of
2 gender is featured in most GCE A-Level and university language text-
3 books and has been foregrounded as a topic of interdisciplinary critical
4 enquiry in many departments of Languages and Humanities. There is a
5 wealth of material available to students but, on the whole, they are less
6 likely to have encountered an ethnographic perspective. Our approach
7 complements these materials, in encouraging a reexive examination of
8 the notion that gender roles are not natural and unproblematic facts, but
9 a culturally constructed and contested dimension of social reality.
40 Aspects of gender studies are also a popular choice for project work
41111 abroad by students working on area studies courses. Project tutors are
1111 often asked to supervise students who want to study gender relations,
2 e.g. the changing roles of women in Spain, but who face the obstacles
3 of a lack of methodological training or a focus for their research. One
4 outcome of a training in cultural interpretation through ethnography is
5 reected in more focused project proposals. One example of a student
6 project will sufce here: the ritualised language and behaviour of
7 courtship among young couples in Sevilla. This project was narrowed
8 down in the end to a study of one street, looking at how relations between
9 young men and women are choreographed as a semi-ritualised chase,
1011 how age-sets delineate gender and family allegiances and how the tran-
1 sition is made from informal to formal courtship (noviazgo). Data were
2 collected mainly through participant observation (she shared a at with
3111 two Spanish students, both of whom proved to be invaluable informants)
4 and informal interviewing with older as well as younger members of
5 the community. The students own role as a catch by virtue of being
6 a foreigner who is irted with, but who, like many foreign women,
7 would almost never taken to be a serious girlfriend, was a useful method-
8 ological position to start from and used to advantage, highlighting the
9 differences in the young mens ritualised behaviour.
20111
1 Materials used for the session
2 The pre-session assignment (see Figure 8) is designed to encourage
3 this kind of focus and to practise making strange in a familiar envi-
4 ronment. This approach draws on sociolinguistic work on female/male
5 interactions (Tannen, 1990, 1993; Fishman, 1983; Coates, 1993, 1996).
6
7
8 Observe a mixed gender informal conversation (e.g. in the Common
9 Room) for about 10 minutes. Take detailed notes of interactions.
30111 You might nd the following aspects of particular interest.
1 1. Who initiates/changes the subject of conversation?
2 2. Who does most of the talking?
3 3. Who is doing the listening?
4 4. Who is maintaining the conversation?
5 5. Do men/women interrupt more?
6 6. Are there any differences in pitch/loudness?
7 7. Any other observations about how men/women participate in
8 the conversation in different ways?
9
40
41111 Figure 8 Assignment from Unit 6
1111 At the start of the session students pooled their data and discussed
2 some of the methodological and ethical issues involved in collecting this
3 data. They then worked on drawing out patterns of tacit rules needed
4 to understand this kind of interactional behaviour in a particular context.
5 Factors that were taken into account included age, occupation, etc., and
6 several groups argued, for example, that age and ethnic background
7 were important factors in interpreting their data. (The Languages
8 Common Room is a meeting place for many different nationalities, so
9 the discussion broadened out into the different communicative styles
1011 of French, Spanish students, etc.)
1 A number of related issues arose also in relation to the problem of gen-
2 eralising and making plausible inferences from their own anecdotal data.
3111 As one student commented on her data: How can we know that it is really
4 gender assumptions that made this guy interrupt all the time and not just
5 his forceful and jokey personality? In the ensuing class discussion the
6 main point that was made was that, in fact, we cannot know. All we can
7 do is to nd patterns that occur according to certain contextual clues and
8 try to provide a cultural interpretation rather than one nal truth. The
9 importance of context in framing interpretations is easy for students to
20111 understand in theory. In practice, however, it really needs to be seen oper-
1 ating in numerous and varied processes of moving from raw data to pat-
2 tern-nding and interpretation in order to become an intellectual habit.
3 The students question also reects one of the most difcult aspects of
4 cultural learning that emerges in class discussion: distinguishing between
5 an individuals psychological make-up and idiosyncracies and socially
6 generated patterns. Again, this is a complex question which has no
7 simple explanation; but the assignments, by encouraging the search for
8 patterns, can help students to relate individual data to broader concepts.
9 The next stage was to relate these rst-hand observations to Fishmans
30111 (1983) article Interaction: The Work Women Do, which they had been
1 asked to read and annotate before the session. Fishman presents a case
2 study of recorded interactions between 10 couples over an extended
3 period of time. Among her ndings is the claim that women do more
4 of the maintenance work in conversation, for example through the use
5 of questions to elicit a response from their partners. By relating two
6 sources of information, their own data and Fishmans case study,
7 students are practising triangulation of data (taking into account more
8 than one source of data on the same topic), while observing how gender
9 is interactionally accomplished.
40 Interestingly, the subjects of Fishmans study the couples who
41111 were asked to record all their interactions over a certain period also
1111 raised the issue of the value of their data. To them, the recorded
2 fragments of conversation seemed banal and certainly not worthy of
3 academic interest. The thought that nothings happening here is a
4 phrase echoed by many students while carrying out their observations
5 until they see that something of interest to an ethnographer is happening
6 all the time.
7
8 Observing detail
9 One of the ways in which ethnography may be a useful tool for
1011 understanding cultural patterns is through a heightened sensitivity
1 to the detail of interaction, even when it seems insignicant, in order to
2 tease out the deeper meanings that underlie social behaviour. The
3111 wide-ranging and abstract concepts seen in the unit on gender relations
4 can be observed in the practices surrounding us all the time, in everyday
5 contexts. This unit looks at only some sociolinguistic aspects of gender
6 relations, in a very focused way. The primary aim is for students to
7 engage in a reexive analysis of the impact of gender on communica-
8 tive styles, while taking into account their own cultural processes and
9 responses. One student reacted to the article by Fishman and subsequent
20111 class discussion with the following comment taken from her class diary:
1 The idea of womens work really hit home. I realised that I did it, my
2 mother did it, etc. I was actually able to point it out to the two males
3 in my family.
4 The use of case studies such as Fishmans is useful insofar as it allows
5 students to see how theory can be applied, and how issues arising from
6 a topic such as gender relations, when linked to theoretical propositions
7 in a case study, can help make sense of abstract notions.
8 Students often point out one of the dangers of doing assignments such
9 as the Common Room observation, and of generalising about gender
30111 on the basis of research such as Fishmans. They are naturally wary of
1 making reductionist and possibly inaccurate interpretations, particularly
2 when based upon their own experiences, when thinking about their
3 socialisation, in contexts that are all too familiar. Triangulation of data,
4 in which one type of data collection is used to help make judgements
5 about another, is one way of minimising this risk, as is a focus on detail
6 and context. Recognising a resistance to generalisations about our own
7 cultural processes can engender a greater degree of caution in general-
8 ising about others experiences also. The more detailed the raw data that
9 generates a theoretical interpretation, the more of an insider account it
40 is, the more elusive that analysis becomes. This is well illustrated in
41111 Cowans study (1991) in Greece. She examines the social organisation of
1111 everyday activities such as going out to a coffee house in central

2 Macedonia, to concentrate on how dominant ideas about female sexu-
3 ality, moral virtue and autonomy are embedded in the practices of
4 everyday sociability. Her research shows that it is through mundane
5 but recontextualised acts like drinking coffee that such ideas may be
6 contested (p. 180). On the surface, womens roles may seem unchanged,
7 but by examining the detail of interactions and getting to know her
8 informants over an extended period, Cowan nds many alternative
9 discourses to contest local gender ideologies as well as acknowledging
1011 the ambiguous and contradictory dimensions of their everyday realities.
1 By consistently practising detailed and reexive data analysis of this
2 kind, students become more adept at relativising and nuancing their
3111 interpretations.
4 One of the primary intellectual challenges, then, is generated by a
5 dynamic of familiarity and distance, accompanied by a greater aware-
6 ness of the context-dependency of data analysis. The rawness of
7 the data from the weekly assignment provides a useful contrast
8 to the published studies students read. By re-enacting on a micro
9 level the trajectory from data to theory to text, we see how we are
20111 socialised, how we can interpret ourselves, as well as members of
1 the target culture, as sources of cultural knowledge. It is naturally
2 much harder to see ourselves as having a culture than it is to talk
3 of other peoples cultures, because nobody likes to have their rich
4 and intricate world view reduced to a set of explanations. This raises
5 particular difculties when cultural meanings are represented in
6 a textual account which by necessity must leave out much essential
7 information.
8 The selected readings also provide a useful set of parameters (what
9 are the sorts of theories people might be applying to a particular
30111 area of research?) and familiarise students with a language in which to
1 discuss topics such as gender, an academic discourse which language
2 students may not have encountered before. This process helps students
3 to translate action and anecdotes into an account of cultural patterns
4 that may emerge within a group. Students may ask how to account for
5 differences in behaviour or attitudes while also trying to draw out
6 patterns. In trying to address this question, it is important to emphasise
7 a bifocal approach, in other words, keeping the ethnographic gaze on
8 both the particular and the general. This is one of the most challenging
9 aspects of the course for language students who are testing out ethno-
40 graphic methodologies and trying to apply abstract concepts about the
41111 cultural construction of reality to raw data.
1111 Applications
2 Let us consider some examples in detail. The student who carried out
3 a project in Spain on the Sevillana dance, explored gender as one of the
4 dimensions of shared cultural knowledge that operated on both a local
5 and a general level. She was also interested in exploring the ways in
6 which gender roles related to aspects of the broader sociopolitical context
7 of contemporary Andalusian society. On a local level, she examined some
8 of the stylised statements about gender as manifested in the ritualised
9 movements of the dance and the congurations of space and gesture.
1011 She then went on to look at the elements of competition between couples
1 and same sex groups which in turn revealed rivalries and alliances
2 between different neighbourhoods and regions. This students account
3111 explicitly acknowledged the uidity of symbolic meanings, through a
4 careful examination of the manifold ways in which the ineffable quality
5 of gracia, which determines whether a dancer performs well or not, is
6 expressed and used by the members of the groups she chose to study.
7 This critical distance was also reected in her comments on the
8 difculties of reaching a denitive interpretation of peoples cultural
9 practices.
20111 In the project report, she did not attempt to present a typical case of
1 what the dance and the rituals surrounding it meant to local individ-
2 uals, but focused rather on an attempt to capture the telling detail
3 (Ellen, 1984) which could then be linked to a symbolic interpretation.
4 This highlighted the interrelationship between different facets of these
5 practices, to include a recognition and discussion of the contested mean-
6 ings attributed by cultural insiders to particular sets of behaviours.
7 As a result, it was perhaps more tentative in its propositions and conclu-
8 sions than other types of projects, in raising questions about the instability
9 of cultural identity rather than offering a set of assertions about
30111 Andalusian identity based on the more usual outsider perspectives.
1 Another student focused on gender in a rather different setting to look
2 at issues of identity among a group of transvestite prostitutes, again in
3 Spain. His research led him to interrogate his data, derived mainly from
4 extended ethnographic conversations and a lot of hanging around to
5 nd out about how the prostitutes see themselves in relation to the
6 outside world, essentially mainstream society, and to their customers.
7 In the process he had to ask himself reexive questions about his own
8 identity, his attitudes to marginalised members of society and uncon-
9 ventional sexual identities, involving both affective and cognitive aspects
40 to the research, that eventually became an integral part of the written
41111
1111 project. The kind of questions he had to ask in relation to his informants
2 were the following: How can I deconstruct or present my data in such
3 a way as to show the normative value of their beliefs? And crucially,
4 how does my presence affect what they reveal about themselves or how
5 they present themselves to student ethnographers? What can I count as
6 evidence in understanding their lives, and how can I write about them
7 in a way that is faithful somehow to how they see themselves? All these
8 questions are typical of ethnographic thinking and research, relating to
9 the epistemological and methodological issues that are part of the broader
1011 debate initiated by writing culture (Clifford & Marcus, 1986).
1 As mentioned above, a reexive approach to course topics such as
2 gender relations, is an important feature of ethnographic methodology
3111 as illustrated by the student who chose to study the French ptanque
4 club referred to in Chapters 1 and 2. As the club was almost exclusively
5 male, her experience of trying to gain access to her informants and
6 negotiate with gatekeepers was clearly affected by the fact of being
7 a female student. This had to be taken into account when considering
8 how her informants treated her and what kind of information they
9 allowed her to obtain.
20111 The leap from a study of male/female interaction in a Common Room
1 in a London university, to, for example, a 7000 word project on a trans-
2 vestite scene in Spain is considerable, but in both situations there are
3 common features which signicantly link the two kinds of experience.
4 First, an openness towards and acceptance of conicting detail and the
5 different voices of informants. Second, an awareness of the need to
6 move outwards from isolated details in order to make connections
7 between data and concepts that will reveal the different levels at which
8 lived data translates into a fabric of culturally constructed patterns.
9
30111
Symbolic classication
1
2 At a later stage in the course, the units on Belief and Action 16 and
3 17 take a deeper plunge into the cultural interpretation of symbolic
4 classication. Anthropologists and others have shown how the mean-
5 ings which are normal and natural to ourselves are culturally determined
6 and patterned. The ways we classify the mass of experience of our worlds
7 serve not only functional purposes but intellectual and moral ones too,
8 that inform our cultural patterns, e.g. what we eat, how we dress, the
9 signals we communicate, and how we manage social relations generally.
40 In the classroom sessions dealing with these topics, we begin with an
41111 introduction to notions of symbolic order explored through the topic of
1111 food and the rituals and discourses around food and eating, to examine
2 some of the ways in which the why and how as well as the what
3 of cultural practices can be explored ethnographically. Everyone thinks
4 of food and eating when they think of culture, but this is often done in
5 a supercial way which does not extend to an examination of the
6 contested nature of food and the variations from one group to the next
7 in terms of rituals and the symbolic meanings around food. To start this
8 process students are given an assignment (see Figure 9).
9 Some interesting questions which arose out of the assignment feed-
1011 back were: Why does some food provoke collective expressions of
1 disgust? Why are some eating practices considered unnatural (e.g.
2 eating horse meat in the UK). Are there tacit rules concerning the combi-
3111 nation and sequence of certain foods?
4 Exploring what is structured and symbolic about food leads to an
5 emotive realm of feeling about what is good to eat and what is
6 disgusting, all of which is of course culturally constructed. Differences
7 in food habits are particularly prone to discourses of otherness, at its
8 most benign in foreign language textbooks. Students thus begin to ques-
9 tion their own assumptions about what they eat, about taste and about
20111 what is common sense or natural. They begin to look at the kinds of
1 food they would and would not eat, the existence and changing nature
2 of food communities, the cultural associations of food (e.g. as working
3 class, trendy, or connected to religious beliefs) and in particular their
4 role in dening and creating social boundaries or hierarchies. From this
5 analysis, they begin to appreciate that a meaning given to an item of
6 food as, for example, edible or not is arbitrary and is the result of social-
7 isation into a particular food community.
8 This assignment then leads into broader discussion of how we clas-
9 sify otherness (us/them; good/bad, clean/dirty, etc.) which, although
30111 open to criticism that the world does not come to us in simple oppo-
1 sites, does provide a useful grid for exploring the variability of symbolic
2 values and for exploring how language itself plays a vital role in
3 constructing our world view. The following extract from one class diary
4 illustrates how one student related to this assignment:
5 One example that was extremely helpful to me was the reason for
6 not eating dogs or human esh. I wouldnt eat them, but I have
7 never tasted them and I cannot say that they are harmful. If I dont
8 eat them it is because there are some rules that tell me not to do
9 it, but these rules have been created by Us. There is not one reality,
40 we create that reality, and there are almost as many realities as there
41111 are people.
1111
2 Assignment: Belief and action: Symbolic classication
3 Eating habits: Taste or symbol?
4 1. Over the week try to engage as many of your friends/contacts/
5 teachers/family/friends, etc. in an ethnographic conversation
6 about their eating habits.
7 2. Dont elicit information in an interview, but try to work the
8 conversation round to eating habits. Ideally, they should not feel
9 that they have been specically questioned. But if you prefer to
1011 make your interests explicit, then mention that this is a subject
1 you are looking at as part of your course. Talking about your own
2 eating habits is a good way to get people talking about theirs.
3111 3. Elicit as much as you can about:
4 what animals they consider edible
5 what part of the animal they are happy to eat/would never
6 eat (e.g. liver, tongue, lungs, etc.)
7 what meat they would consider eating, if their normal food
8 was not available (zebra, dog, sparrow, etc.)
9 what vegetables they would never eat
20111 their feelings if someone next to them was eating a food they
1 would never eat.
2 other interesting perceptions that emerge out of all these
3 questions, elicit as much as you can about their reasons for
4 eating/not eating certain foods.
5 4. Try to construct some value patterns or classications from the
6 data you have collected. You will be asked to draw up a chart
7 or diagram with others.
8
9 Concepts behind the task
30111 1. Society is constructed out of feelings of afnity and estrange-
1 ment (Lincoln, 1986).
2 2. It is culture which constitutes utility (Sahlins, 1976) and not the
3 other way round. In other words we dont do things for prac-
4 tical reasons and then nd a meaning for them. The symbolic
5 meaning is what underpins our practical endeavours.
6 3. The rituals and discourses around food help to construct the
7 borders, structures and hierarchic relations that constitute society
8 itself (Lincoln, 1986).
9
40 Figure 9
41111
1111 The rather abstract idea that cultural and social groupings can be
2 constructed and maintained in part by shared food cultures becomes
3 accessible to students when they look at their own data. The intellectual
4 excitement that comes from eliciting, organising and interpreting ones
5 own data brings the experience of seeing everyday culture as interesting
6 to study much closer than simply being presented with a set of polished
7 and expert studies. Much of the value of this assignment on the clas-
8 sication of eating habits lies in the fact that it takes students through
9 the whole ethnographic process in a condensed form from eliciting
1011 data through an analysis of that data to its translation into a verbal or
1 written account. Thus it provides a valuable experience in understanding
2 and dealing with any classicatory, or semiotic, system that they may
3111 encounter in different contexts of research.
4 The notion of symbolic classication has led to some interesting recent
5 projects. For example, a project on vegetarianism in Spain which exam-
6 ined some of the linguistic and behavioural markers of difference
7 between the normal meat-eating Spaniard, and the vegetarian, still very
8 much a minority. Another project, described in Chapter 9, also drew on
9 ideas introduced in this unit for a classicatory framework. In this case
20111 involving the classication of students in a German university according
1 to physical appearance.
2 At a more abstract level, the students can be encouraged to think about
3 relating their ndings to notions of symbolic cleanliness and pollution.
4 For this kind of analysis we draw also on Mary Douglas Purity and
5 Danger (1966) which discusses the moral and emotional commitment of
6 social groups to seemingly functional actions. This is summarised in the
7 observation that Dirt is matter out of place. In other words, something
8 that is seen as dirty or polluting in one context is quite acceptable in
9 another. This, in turn, relates to some of the discourses about food which
30111 can be linked to ideologies of inclusion or exclusion (e.g. racist discourses
1 about foreigners food ). One student applied this notion to a different
2 context in her project work abroad on racist discourses in a German Hall
3 of Residence. She showed how expressions of pollution and contami-
4 nation carry a powerful normative value and a moral commitment which
5 serve to position others negatively. Her informants were both foreign
6 and German students. In a suggestive example of how language and
7 discourse are primary vehicles for symbolic classication, she based her
8 research on the notion that terms such as Auslnder are heavily
9 connoted in a variety of ways that reect also on German concerns about
40 what it means to be German. For this she also drew on Diana Forsyths
41111 study German identity and the problem of history mentioned above.
1111 Developing an Ethnographic Method

2
In previous sections, there have been several references to ethnographic
3
ways of thinking or an ethnographic imagination. This requires the
4
capacity to observe and record some aspects of everyday life and to
5
read this data in interpretive ways which are themselves constantly
6
questioned. For example, something as commonplace as the layout of a
7
supermarket or a town or village market can be systematically docu-
8
mented and analysed in order to discover the underlying pattern behind
9
the classication of consumables. We may conclude that goods are
1011
displayed in a supermarket according to semiotic principles concerning
1
ritual pollution; but on what basis have we concluded this? Are the nd-
2
ings based on one data source or several? Did initial analysis inform
3111
subsequent data collection? How far is the interpretive analysis based
4 on more general conceptual categories? And do we present our conclu-
5 sions as general facts, a particular case, the writers own view or . . . ?
6 The last section of this chapter illustrates some of the ways in which
7 the conceptual frameworks introduced above are linked to ethnographic
8 methods so that students can begin to ask and answer some of these
9 questions for themselves. The course is structured so that the more
20111 conceptually based units and the methods units are integrated, reecting
1 the necessary relationship between conceptual thinking and data
2 collection, analysis and writing up which gives ethnography its special
3 character.
4
5
6 Participant observation
7 Participant observation (PO) is the rst of the methods units intro-
8 duced on the course, some weeks before the students embark on their
9 home ethnography. Participant observation is generally recognised as
30111 the essential method for doing ethnography. As the name suggests, it is
1 a method involving simultaneously both participation and observation.
2 Hymes, 1996, has suggested that we are born ethnographers but the
3 process of being an active participant observer wears off after a time, as
4 we start to take for granted the world around us. So, on one level the
5 method of participant observation (PO) is a common-sense one we
6 take part in and observe the world around us all the time, but at another
7 level it is fraught with difculties because we have lost the habit of
8 doing it actively and have to learn it again. And in doing so we are
9 faced with practical and ethical difculties (Spradley, 1980).
40 Some of these issues are raised through reecting on two short tasks
41111 students have already completed. One involves Hanging around in a
1111 local pub, mentioned above, and the other an observation of one of their
2 own seminars. Typical issues raised are:
3
difculties with observing in a disciplined way what is all too
4
familiar;
5
practical difculties of noise and note-taking;
6
theoretical issues of what to record or focus on;
7
ethical concerns to do with using people or deceiving friends or
8
eavesdropping;
9
and most important of all, issues around the validity of the data:
1011
How much is you being there affecting things?
1
2 This latter point is taken up by referring students back to the notion of
3111 reexivity. Being part of the social world we study and explicitly
4 acknowledging that our interpretations of others are that and no more
5 not a positive fact is central to any process of cultural learning. As
6 students report back on the PO study of some cultural practice with
7 which they are relatively familiar, such as ordering a pint of beer or
8 doing a piece of translation in class, they begin the process of inhabiting
9 some data and interrogating the relationship between themselves as data
20111 collectors and the data as they have recorded them. The notion of them-
1 selves as participant observers will give students both a role and a
2 purpose when they start their period of residence abroad.
3 As part of this session, different types of PO are introduced: from
4 the complete participant who makes no systematic observations, to the
5 complete observer where there is no interaction with informants. Between
6 these two ends of the spectrum come the participant as observer and
7 the observer as participant and it is in this middle ground that students
8 are encouraged to stay. Garys home ethnography was about his own
9 group of friends and he was therefore, as part of that group, a partici-
30111 pant who took on an observing role. As he wrote in the reexive section
1 of his project: Although rather reluctant at rst as I thought nothing
2 ever happens, after three weeks of making strange, close observation
3 and many a drunken night out running off to the toilet to scribble down
4 notes on beer mats, I eventually learnt that there was much more
5 happening than meets the eye, and that I did not know these people as
6 well as I thought.
7 Another student, Anna, chose to do her home ethnography on the
8 London Underground. In this situation she was primarily an observer
9 as participant since she was a passenger like those she observed but
40 the interaction with others was minimal. The avoidance of interaction
41111 among passengers became the focus of her study as she charted the
1111 work done by underground passengers to avoid their social space being
2 invaded.
3 Observing and participating in the everyday practices of a small
4 group prepares students for the process of being socialised into a
5 new community when abroad. Part of this socialisation is language
6 socialisation (see Chapter 2) whereby students learn how to manage
7 interactions, understand the functioning of politeness and issues of
8 face and, more generally, make sense of the different roles and values
9 ascribed to various language activities in the new community. However,
1011 the object of the cultural learner is not necessarily to become as if a
1 member of the new group. PO implies some distance as well as consid-
2 erable involvement, as we have discussed in Chapter 5. The capacity
3111 to distance, to reect as well as be reexive and to draw out the
4 perceptions and reections of informants may lead the student ethnog-
5 rapher beyond the lurking and soaking aspects of PO to more focused
6 ethnographic conversations or interviews. For this reason, there is
7 also an introduction to the principles and practice of ethnographic
8 interviewing.
9
20111
Ethnographic interviewing
1
2 Participant observation will provide much of the data for a thick
3 description of a particular group or event, but however carefully and
4 fully observations are documented, they only give partial access to the
5 meanings experienced by informants. Ethnographers can make inter-
6 pretations but they are only based on their own cultural frames. For
7 example, how can you be sure from your observation whether someone
8 is winking or blinking? (Geertz, 1973). At some stage it may be neces-
9 sary to engage with informants in an ethnographic conversation or more
30111 formal interview to nd out how they are describing and interpreting
1 their world.
2 One of the most difcult aspects of the methods element of the course
3 is to help students unlearn their preconceptions about the interview as
4 a research method. They have to replace their image of the white coat
5 and the clipboard with something that is much closer to a focused conver-
6 sation. This does not mean that ethnographic interviews are unstructured,
7 unprepared encounters. Quite the contrary, as students learn in Units 9
8 and 10. Ethnographic interviews are carefully structured in a number of
9 ways. First, they are carefully prepared for and a checklist of themes
40 which might be covered is used as a guide. Secondly, they are shaped
41111 by the informant in the sense that he or she will, in their responses be
1111 setting up topics for the interviewer to pick up later. Thirdly, they are
2 structured over time so that early interviews will range over many areas
3 and later interviews will be more focused. Fourthly, in more formal
4 interviews used in more cognitively orientated ethnography (Agar, 1985;
5 Spradley, 1979) informants may be asked a series of questions around
6 particular concepts which have emerged as salient. For example, the
7 notion of allegria is presented by Sevillanos to outsiders as something
8 important for them. Such a concept can be used as the basis for eliciting
9 narratives about how the people of Seville express allegria in their
1011 everyday lives and what meanings it has for them.
1 Students are given a step-by-step guide to interviewing based on
2 Spradleys (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. They then have an oppor-
3111 tunity to practise and observe others trying out this new approach
4 in their rst or dominant language. At this stage, students tend to
5 raise a number of questions about ethnographic conversations and inter-
6 viewing:
7
How do you reach a stage when you can ask people if you can
8
talk to them in a more focused way ?
9
How to capture the information? Should they take notes, tape-
20111
record or simply try to remember ?
1
How should they cope with such interviews in the foreign language,
2
given that they will be non-native speakers?
3
4 After a discussion on the relationship of PO and interviewing, on the
5 advantages and disadvantages of tape-recording, but leaving the fears
6 about their own language competence until they have attempted an
7 ethnographic interview in a foreign language, other more complex issues
8 have to be raised about the nature of the data they are collecting. These
9 are raised by Briggs in his study of interviews as a research method in
30111 anthropology. He argues that the way interviewing is used acts as a
1 hidden lter and blocks our ability to hear the data as a piece of socially
2 constructed material:
3
If I were to put my nger on the single most serious shortcoming
4
relating to the use of interviews in the social sciences, it would
5
certainly be the common sense unreexive way in which most
6
analyses of interview data are conducted. (. . .) Questions
7
and answers are presumed to have obvious signicance. (Briggs,
8
1986: 102)
9
40 Briggs is arguing here that the conclusions drawn from data collected
41111 in interviews are not unproblematic facts. The questions are asked in
1111 particular ways and construct and constrain the answers. A different
2 question would produce a different response and so different data. So
3 any interview data is jointly produced and is as much the product of
4 the interviewers social and cultural world as it is of the informants.
5 This idea of reality as socially constructed (Berger & Luckmann, 1966)
6 is a theme that runs throughout the course and is fundamental to the
7 process of cultural learning (see Chapter 3). Students have to learn that
8 data from informants are partly produced by them, the researchers,
9 because they ask certain questions, follow up on certain themes, fore-
1011 ground certain concerns in the way they ask questions and so on. They
1 also need to appreciate that any item of data is situated in a particular
2 context. By asking an informant, for example, about their life as a blind
3111 student in Marburg, the category of blind student is the one that the
4 informant is being asked to identify with and represent their views on.
5 At other times and in other contexts, that same category may be de-
6 emphasised and the informant might present quite a different aspect of
7 themselves. For example, they might be part of the student community
8 which is on strike because of government underfunding or they might
9 be single parents or jazz musicians. In any of these cases, they would
20111 present themselves in different ways depending upon the particular
1 group identity that was in focus.
2 Working within this reexive frame of mind, the ethnographer can
3 resist the easy generalisations and stereotyping which are a common-
4 place reaction when people are confronted with cultural differences.
5 It also helps them to think about their own cultural worlds. They ask
6 a particular question because it seems signicant to them is part of
7 their way of believing, acting and valuing and so on. So, every inter-
8 view can deepen the language learners understanding of themselves as
9 cultural beings as well as teaching them about others. This approach
30111 may also, paradoxically, help them not to stress the ethnic and cultural
1 differences in their informants not necessarily to see particular
2 behaviours or opinions as French or German. Instead, they need to
3 realise that ethnic and cultural differences (and identities) may be
4 unstressed and what they are observing is not so much French, for
5 example, with a capital F but to do with particular personalities, social
6 positions and biographies rather than Frenchness. Discussing these issues
7 at this data collection stage also raises another common theme in the
8 course, the interdependence of data collection and analysis which we
9 shall consider below.
40 Some of the most common difculties experienced by students when
41111 they rst attempt ethnographic interviewing are given in Figure 10.
1111
Difculty in getting started.
2
Using closed or leading or overly direct questions, e.g. Doesnt
3
it give you a bit of a buzz if your horoscope says you are going
4
to . . .? or e.g. Are you doing French commerce?
5
Using questions which are not obviously leading questions but
6
where assumptions are built into the question by the ethnogra-
7
pher, e.g. What did you achieve in doing your degree? Where
8
the commonplace assumption that there is achievement enters
9
into the way the question is asked.
1011
A tendency to start a new topic of conversation, once the infor-
1
mant has given one response, so the ethnographic conversation
2
becomes more like a formal interview.
3111
A tendency to ask direct questions rather then nd less inter-
4
ventionist ways of continuing the interview, such as nods, uh
5
huhs or even silence.
6
A tendency to feed back to the informant an interpretive
7
summary of what they said rather than working with the infor-
8
mants own words.
9
A difculty in picking up on the informants style for example
20111
her use of metaphors to describe a key event.
1
2
3 Figure 10 Common difculties
4
5 Throughout the process of learning to interview, thinking reexively
6 about the data collected and reecting on the cognitive and interper-
7 sonal demands of doing ethnographic conversations and interviews,
8 students are continually reminded of the attention to language which
9 such a technique involves. In some ways it is like the most demanding
30111 kind of listening comprehension that they might be familiar with or the
1 multiple skills required in simultaneous interpreting. Their informant
2 will, if all goes well, be relaxed and talking freely and informally in a
3 local vernacular which may still be relatively unfamiliar to the student.
4 The capacity to listen in a highly focused and intense way, attempting
5 to record, either mentally or on tape, the exact words of the informant;
6 to follow up wherever appropriate with questions; to keep open a
7 tracking channel so that, periodically, a quick scan can be made of the
8 check list to decide what areas this interview might still try to cover
9 and to do all this in a foreign language emphasises yet again the
40 inseparability of language and cultural learning in the eld and the skills
41111 and intellectual demands placed on students.
1111 Once they have worked on ethnographic interviews in their rst

2 language, they are given the task of doing one in the foreign language.
3 Interestingly, the fears about their own competence in interviewing in
4 the foreign language are quickly laid to rest. They nd that ethnographic
5 interviewing requires relatively little productive competence because the
6 whole point is to give the informant control of the interview and because
7 questions so often use the informants own language.
8 Students were asked to transcribe a part of their interview and
9 comment reexively both on the way in which they had framed the
1011 informants responses and on the themes that those responses suggested.
1 The opening few turns from an interview between a male Spanish student
2 learning German and a female German student in Britain for her period
3111 of residence abroad, shown in Figure 11, illustrate the very rst steps
4 in a reexive process in which data collection and analysis are combined:
5 The example in Figure 11 shows a student who is just beginning to
6 think about the way in which he could elicit data from an informant.
7 He noted from this rst attempt at an ethnographic interview that his
8 opening question produced only a short answer and he also commented
9 on the value of simply repeating back the others words to encourage
20111 expansion. However, although he is beginning to learn some of the
1 possible techniques, he still opens the interview as if it were a socio-
2 logical survey rather than an ethnographic encounter and comments on
3 her utterances from a psychological perspective (she was trying to justify
4 herself) rather than asking questions like: What does it mean to say you
5 cannot stand to be kissed by your family? Discussion of this kind of
6 self-reporting in the sessions begins the process of moving students
7 towards a cultural and social orientation and helps them to see how
8 data collection and analysis are inextricably linked together.
9
30111
Recording and analysing data
1
2 As we have suggested, the process of collecting data and analysing it
3 is an interconnected one. However, all the stages of an ethnographic
4 study from an initial foreshadowed problem (Malinowski, 1922 ) to the
5 writing up are all interdependent:
6
The process of theory construction, hypothesis formulation, cate-
7
gorisation, data production, coding and interpreting are inextricably
8
bound-up with one another. (Ellen, 1984: 285)
9
40 This is well illustrated in Shirley Jordans narrative account of her rst
41111 ethnographic venture, discussed in Chapter 6, on a group of cleaners at
1111
Original Comments about Comments about
2 German + English interviewer informant
3
4 Ich mchte herausnden, Perhaps I shouldnt
5 ob es viele krperliche have asked this Q. so
6 Kontakte innerhalb der early
deutschen Familie gibt
7
Zum Beispiel kt du
8 deine Mutter ?
9 I should like to nd out
1011 is there much physical
1 contact in the German family.
2 For example, do you kiss
3111 your mother?
4 Nee, gar nicht
5 No, not at all I was a bit troubled by
6 her reaction short
7 answer
Und warum ist das?
8
And why is that?
9 Weil ich es als Kind
20111 gehat habe
1 Because I hated it
2 as a child
3 Ja?
4 Yes?
5 Ja, also mein Vater wollte She was justifying
6 herself but she knew
7 my opinion was
8 completely different
mich immer kssen und das
9
habe ich gehat. Ich
30111 konnte das nicht leiden,
1 weil meine Oma mich immer
2 kssen wollte. Tatschlich!
3 Yes, my father always wanted
4 to kiss me and I hated that. I
5 couldnt stand it because my
6 granny always wanted
7 to kiss me. Really!
8 Tatschlich? short reaction
9 Really? to show interest
40
41111 Figure 11
1111 the university. At rst she planned to undertake a topic-based study

2 on cleanliness (Zaharlick & Green, 1991 discuss the difference between
3 a topic-based and a comprehensive ethnography) but once she had
4 started lurking and soaking she found she had to rethink her research
5 problem according to the informants concerns.
6 This discussion of student interviews (in Units 9 and 10) highlights a
7 number of the issues around recording data, specically note-taking.
8 After two sessions on ethnographic interviews and conversations,
9 students are introduced to the discipline of note-taking. In addition to
1011 developing a systematic approach to note-taking, for example acquiring
1 the habit of labelling each note with date, time and place so that it can
2 be easily indexed and referred to, students are introduced to the different
3111 kinds of notes which they may accumulate from head notes which
4 are those memories, impressions and perceptions which never get written
5 down but inuence the analysis, through scratch notes which are the
6 rough, often seemingly chaotic eld notes that are a rst attempt at docu-
7 menting observations, to more analytic notes, as the raw data is
8 continuously reread and interpreted (Sanjek, 1992).
9 As the notes are gradually processed and themes begin to emerge, so
20111 the ethnographer moves from initial recording to consolidation and
1 analysis. As further data are collected, the preliminary analysis is then
2 reviewed and adjustments made so that the ethnographer constantly
3 toggles between recording and interpreting. This process of consolida-
4 tion facilitates a constant cumulative dialogue with your material (Ellen,
5 1984: 283). Ellen suggests writing up a cumulative contents page in
6 which key descriptive themes are brought together. In the process of
7 doing this, connections and patterns can also begin to emerge and cross-
8 referencing may be helpful. For example, in a home ethnography on
9 despatch riders by Chris, leather clothing was an important element in
30111 the way in which the riders designed their image for the public and
1 managed the tension between their very controlled working practices
2 and the free wheeling Easy Rider image which they conveyed to the
3 world outside. As part of his eld notes, he started to bring together a
4 list of events and themes (see Figure 12).
5 Undoubtedly, for most students the most difcult aspect of data
6 analysis is moving from initial themes to more conceptual categories and
7 relating these categories to some of the concepts introduced during the
8 course. At this stage, students are shown the scatter sheet from Ana
9 Barros ethnographic study of the porters at the university, Its not my
40 job (see Chapter 6). Students are also given an example from Agars
41111 (1986b) study of self-employed long-distance truck-drivers in America,
1111
Events:
2
Radio trafc, road trafc problems (constant), breaks, pick-ups, deliv-
3
eries, problems, petrol, lunch, meetings, work, maps, the le.
4
5 Themes:
6 Rush, hassle, stress, boredom, frustration, excitement, exhilaration,
7 self-containedness, capable, durable, knowledge of streets, amount of
8 money, amount of work around, sense of sharing problems, distrib-
9 ution of work, watching people, remarking on different customers
1011 and staff.
1
2
3111 Figure 12
4
5
6 Independents Declared. He was interested in nding out the extent to
7 which the trucker lived up to the image of the free-wheeling indepen-
8 dent cowboy mythologised in American narratives. There are obvious
9 links here with the student ethnography on despatch riders. The study
20111 was carried out over nine months and the data collected during 40 days
1 on the road, attending meetings, hundreds of conversations and 17
2 extended career history interviews. The interviews came to be the core
3 data and it was to this data that Agar made himself accountable, drawing
4 on the rest of the data to illuminate and enrich the interview data.
5 His conclusions centre around the tension that the truckers live with:
6 the tension between imagined freedom and the very real dependency
7 which is their lived experience. They are dependent on the carriers who
8 give them work, the mechanics who keep them on the road and the
9 regulatory ofcials who keep them on a bureaucratic treadmill. Given
30111 the cowboy image that they project publicly, Agar asks why their
1 accounts of trucking life are, in the main, so negative. He concludes that
2 they represent worst case scenarios. In other words, these events happen
3 but the frequency and awfulness of their experiences are overstated.
4 This is, Agar argues, a rhetorical device in which the informant over-
5 dramatises the consequences of the situation in order to make it a good
6 story for the ethnographer.
7 In coming to his conclusions, Agar discusses his methods and the
8 ways in which the concepts he is working with are grounded in the
9 data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The descriptive themes at the early stages
40 of analysis are interpreted in terms of concepts which are then grouped
41111 together in categories. Through a continuous process of comparing
1111 different descriptions and different concepts, broad categories are

2 decided on. For example, in his study, Agar has a chapter called Getting
3 Underway which consists of a number of categories: Load and Unload,
4 Lumping, Manoeuvring and The Drivers Log.
5 The terms Agar uses for categorising the data are a combination of
6 terms drawn from the literature, for example dependence; terms used
7 by the informants themselves, for example lumping; and his own terms,
8 for example road life. Yet none of these concepts are brought in from
9 outside and imposed on the data, nor does Agar simply present the
1011 voices of the truckers or describe their lives as if the events they described
1 could be presented in an unproblematic way.
2 Agars study can be used to sum up some of the key concerns of this
3111 part of the course:
4
collect data in an intensive and extensive way and collect lots of
5
it;
6
organise the data systematically and do this as part of a daily
7
routine;
8
be reexive about the data, questioning how it came to be produced
9
(as Agar questions why the accounts from truckers are so nega-
20111
tive) and your own initial assumptions about it;
1
be steeped in the data, reading and rereading, constantly searching
2
for further illumination;
3
be accountable to the data, so that concepts are grounded in the
4
data and the data is not simply used to illustrate a point. (The
5
difference between a telling and a typical case, Ellen, 1984);
6
use questions and comparison to move from description to concep-
7
tualisation;
8
look for patterns but also take account of contradictory evidence;
9
go for a story line or central phenomenon which draws your ethnog-
30111
raphy together.
1
2 At the end of the 1993/94 course, one student wrote: Thanks again
3 for helping me to develop skills by which to open my eyes and mind,
4 and experience many weird and wonderful aspects of life I might other-
5 wise have overlooked. This brief quotation illustrates many of the
6 principles upon which the Introduction to Ethnography course is based:
7 an intellectual openness, specic skills of data collection and analysis,
8 the making strange (and wonderful) what had seemed ordinary and
9 uneventful, and a sense of process, of things not being nite but in a
40 constant state of development. To sum up, therefore, the course aims to
41111 give students experience of:
1111 looking at aspects of their lives from a constructivist perspective

2 seeing practice and discourse as socially constructed and not as a
3 transparent piece of reality;
4 collecting data, lots of data, organising them and grounding their
5 interpretations in the data;
6 applying case study principles to make sense of apparently
7 disparate and seemingly trivial data by making conceptual connec-
8 tions more apparent;
9 developing a reexive habit so that data are constantly questioned
1011 in relation to the conditions under which they came to be produced
1 and in relation to the students own practices; developing a resis-
2 tance to easy generalisations and stereotypes;
3111 engaging with the everydayness of their own and others lives and
4 identifying the patterns and symbolic systems within them;
5 tolerating ambiguity and complexity both intellectually and
6 emotionally;
7 presenting information to others as an integral part of the process
8 of learning to translate meanings from lived experience to a textual
9 account.
20111
Underlying much of these experiences, was the pedagogy of the course,
1
the assumptions about learning and teaching and the roles of student
2
and teacher. For many students, the course did not follow an accus-
3
tomed pattern and indeed the experience of taking the course was
4
something of a culture shock. In the following chapter, we describe some
5
aspects of the ethnography classroom.
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
41111
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 8
5
6 The Ethnography Class
7
8
9
1011 In this chapter we describe what took place in one fairly typical ethnog-
1 raphy class. The class we have selected is based on concepts of local
2 level politics and reciprocity (Unit 15), and is designed to help students
3111 conceptualise politics as a part of everyday life. In particular, we explore
4 the notion that the role of gifts and exchanges in social interaction
5 provides a useful entry point for understanding the cultural patterning
6 of local level politics in different communities. Students as newcomers
7 to the country will nd themselves having to negotiate quite a number
8 of routine and bureaucratic exchanges, so the notion of exchange is a
9 useful one to have covered in the course. These early intercultural
20111 encounters can be crucial both in creating or conrming stereotypes
1 or, more usefully, as opportunities for cultural learning. It is in
2 contributing towards the latter that concepts of exchange and reciprocity
3 are helpful.
4 As this is one of the later sessions in the course, it is intended not
5 only to introduce new concepts, but also to have a synthetic function
6 encouraging students to relate the overarching theme of exchange to
7 other areas already explored (e.g. shared cultural knowledge, gender
8 relations, the family) and to demonstrate how it may be functional in
9 the interpretation of any interaction. Finally, although this course unit
30111 does not have language as its main focus, the basic concepts of exchange
1 and reciprocity are given a specically linguistic dimension at the end
2 of the session through a short exercise, related to a pre-session reading,
3 on the pragmatics of compliment giving and receiving. In this way,
4 students are again reminded of the linguistic basis of the more general
5 cultural concepts introduced to them.
6
7
8
Introduction: Local Level Politics
9 The term local level politics is useful in drawing a distinction between
40 the high-prole politics of statesmen, and politics on the micro-level,
41111 involving the small taken-for-granted details of behaviour which form
151
1111 part of the fabric of our everyday lives and govern the way we manage
2 our relationships and interactions with others. The class is intended to
3 encourage students to analyse how patterns of favours and obligations
4 constitute the social glue which holds a community together, and how,
5 if we look beyond the purely functional, this reciprocal behaviour is
6 used to create and maintain social links and boundaries on a deeper
7 structural level. Whatever the form of exchange, be it material (money
8 or gifts) or non-material (greetings, pieces of information, politeness or
9 compliments), exchanges carry potent messages, and detailed observa-
1011 tion of interactions from this perspective is one of the ways in which
1 students explore how reciprocity, obligation, reputation maintenance,
2 power and negotiation of status are routinely worked out.
3111 As in all the sessions, students are expected to relativise their own
4 practices. It is therefore important to introduce them to the workings of
5 exchange in different contexts and in different types of society, which
6 in turn helps to uncover fundamental similarities in the symbolic notion
7 of exchange. By shifting our focus between the familiar and the strange,
8 and by making strange, connections may be seen between the appar-
9 ently exotic practices of the Potlatch or the Moka (see below) much
20111 studied by anthropologists, and what students may dene as the more
1 mundane customs of returning a dinner invitation or doing favours for
2 ones neighbour down the road.
3 Mausss distinction (1954) between gift societies and commodity soci-
4 eties is useful here. These have been linked by anthropologists to states
5 of inalienability (gift societies) and alienation (commodity societies), and
6 the materials selected for this unit lead students towards a considera-
7 tion of how the commodication of society depersonalises transactions,
8 converting social relationships into economic ones, and how bureau-
9 cratisation impinges upon social structures. As individuals become less
30111 involved with others in face-to-face relations of mutual interest and inter-
1 dependency, their relationships with institutions play an increasingly
2 vital role in the organisation of their lives. Studies on what could be
3 referred to as alienation-avoidance strategies include, for example,
4 research on the strategies adopted by tenants on a London council estate.
5 They nd many original ways of adapting and adding to the identical
6 rooms and facilities made available by the state to stamp their own iden-
7 tities on their ats (Miller, 1989).
8 A good point of comparison with the students own world is provided
9 by the many anthropological studies of patronclient systems in rural
40 areas of southern Europe (e.g. Davis, 1992; Delamont, 1995). Such systems
41111 rely more heavily on establishing personal links as a means to get things
The Ethnography Class 153
1111 done, and are in some respects closer to gift societies. Anthropologists
2 have examined how clients typically bypass direct dealings with state
3 bureaucracy by inviting patrons or xers to intercede on their behalf,
4 rewarding them with gifts, favours or support at elections, and in turn
5 reinforcing their respective statuses and the prevalent power relations.
6 Of course, patronclient relationships are also present in less explicit
7 forms in the bureaucratic encounters of complex urban environments
8 where there is an overlap between different systems of exchange and
9 varieties of reciprocity. For example, just as patrons and clients may
1011 call themselves friends, the hospitality motif also functions within
1 the state bureaucracy. This is most obvious in the German represen-
2 tation of migrant workers as guestworkers. So although clear-cut
3111 distinctions have been made between exchange systems in traditional
4 and modern urban societies, such distinctions may not be so obvious
5 (Herzfeld, 1992).
6 Students are asked to consider the different types of exchange within
7 their own lives. These may range from the brief, impersonal ones they
8 routinely enter into when purchasing or selling, or when dealing with
9 bureaucracy rather than with known individuals (e.g. when they pay
20111 the council tax in return for certain local services), to those on a more
1 intimate scale with friends, neighbours, family and colleagues at work,
2 where issues of status, power relations or reputation may be obscured
3 by sheer familiarity.
4 The primary focus of this session, however, is less the institutional
5 (although students may well need to be aware of how exchange oper-
6 ates rather differently in institutions abroad) than the local and
7 interpersonal, and we concentrate on what may broadly be dened as
8 gift exchange as an element of the politics of daily life. Gift giving may
9 seem like a very small manifestation of social and economic life, but a
30111 gift, like a pebble dropped in a pond, creates many ripples or reper-
1 cussions. As Davis suggests in his discussion of the important political
2 and emotional consequences of exchange, A simple gift has meanings
3 which can involve class, social mobility, matrimony, patronage, employ-
4 ment, manufacturing processes, issues of style and of changing rituals
5 or conventions of gift giving. (Davis, 1992). And, as we have suggested
6 above, gift-giving is no more peripheral in advanced capitalist economies
7 than in, for example, the Trobriand Islands. Cheater, in drawing this
8 comparison, concludes that An industry [the gift industry] with a
9 turnover of over one billion pounds annually is not an ephemeral spec-
40 ulation in a passing fashion. It is securely founded on structural
41111 relationships in society. (Cheater 1986).
1111 Before this class, students were given three short texts and, as usual,
2 an assignment, so they arrived in the classroom prepared to contribute
3 with examples from their experience which they had been able to develop
4 to some degree using the concepts encountered in the readings. Each
5 aspect of the session is discussed in detail below, but rstly we need to
6 account for what really happens in the classroom. What gives the ethnog-
7 raphy sessions their specic avour?
8
9
Ethnography in the Classroom
1011
1 As teachers we certainly feel that teaching and learning in the ethnog-
2 raphy classroom is special; but special in what sense? Trying to provide
3111 a thick description of what we actually do in classes revealed only a
4 few concrete modications in our routine teaching practice, such as the
5 presence, on many occasions, of two members of staff, or the reliance
6 on informal dialogue and small group work. On the face of it, however,
7 the type of activity (the use of texts, videos, assignments and various
8 exercises to generate discussion) is nothing radically different from what
9 is taking place in many modern languages classrooms. The special
20111 factor, then, is generated not by any lesson plan or activity type, but by
1 the unpredictable and explicitly heuristic avour of classroom interac-
2 tion. For the success of a session, teachers are heavily reliant on students
3 contributing raw data for analysis. Students, in turn, are asked to under-
4 take open-ended tasks of an experiential kind, for which there is no
5 right or wrong answer. As one of them put it, Sometimes this class
6 seems quite unusual to me. I think its because its so different from all
7 my other subjects [. . .] there doesnt seem to be a clear right or wrong.
8 Other student comments pinpoint issues such as increased involvement
9 (I think that [. . .] I am still waiting to be lectured and taught, when
30111 really it is for me to think on), growing condence (. . . this is one of
1 the things that I feel I am learning from the classes to use my initia-
2 tive more and have a go at things), and the advantages of an informal
3 atmosphere (I enjoy the way the class is organised, its very informal
4 and you can pretty much air your own views).
5 A further contributing factor lies in the cultural mix of students which
6 the ethnography programme typically attracts. A high proportion of
7 exchange students come together with home students in a rich melting
8 pot of native and target languages and cultures. Linguistic issues and
9 examples of differing cultural practices and values therefore emerge natu-
40 rally from almost every class activity and this extends to students
41111 responses to classroom practice itself.
1111 Our conclusion, then, is that it is both the substance of our discus-
2 sions and the nature and level of student contribution which makes this
3 classroom different. In other classes, the students opinions may be
4 elicited, but their personal experiences are usually illicit diversions from
5 the subject in hand, and although personalisation is routine in language
6 classes, the offering of such details is somewhat staged since the primary
7 objective here is the honing of language skills. Part of the excitement of
8 the ethnography sessions lies in the way the personal (in this case, starting
9 with the gifts students gave or received) is shown to have some validity
1011 as part of a wider study of cultural practices. Hence the comments, We
1 all learn from each other, or I think this is encouraging to the students,
2 they like to know there might be some validity in their interpretations.
3111 The real key to the difference of a session is in this notion of the students
4 taking their lived experiences as sources, using their own beliefs, atti-
5 tudes and actions as data for discussion, and learning to be reexive
6 enough to bring their own cultural practices to the level of discourse.
7 Gradually students acquire the tools to transform the anecdote about
8 personal experience into an illuminating example of cultural practice.
9 There is consequently a real feeling that the sessions belong to the
20111 students: I think that an ethnography course is made by the contribu-
1 tion of the class, by everybodys ideas and thoughts. As we shall see
2 below, this was extended in later years to the question of assessment
3 for the course.
4 The notion of student experience as source has a further repercussion
5 for the atmosphere of a session, since classes become a forum for learning
6 how to deal with other peoples personal experiences: Its good that we
7 can discuss these things objectively in such a way that no one feels
8 offended or worried about speaking out. Students are expected to show
9 diplomacy and empathy as they direct group discussions or listen and
30111 respond to their peers, skills which they will certainly need when elic-
1 iting data from informants in the eld. As one student commented
2 apropos of class discussion, I feel this [. . .] has been very helpful for
3 me in developing my skills concerning interaction within a team (or
4 group) and as a result it has developed a critical awareness within myself
5 that I feel I didnt have before. So this is an important, if intangible,
6 part of each session, and one in fact which ts in particularly well with
7 the theme of reciprocity we will be discussing here.
8
9
A Typical Session: Local Level Politics
40
41111 The session outline is given in Figure 13.
1111
2 Session outline
3 1. Introduction of local level politics. A brief lecture and informal
4 discussion based on two pre-session readings developing the
5 concepts of reputation and moral community.
6 2. Group work based on the data collection assignment. Students
7 compare their charts and write up two examples on overhead
8 transparencies to present to the class. The discussion is further
9 developed through the British Repertoire of Exchange.
1011 3. Discussion of culturally variable conventions, rituals and taboos
1 surrounding practices of exchange.
2 4. Viewing and guided discussion of video excerpt, Ongkas Big
3111 Moka.
4 5. Brief, informal lecture on the relationship between face and social
5 relationships leading into discussion on compliments.
6 6. Group work on an article on compliments using questions on a
7 handout. Followed by feedback to the whole class, focusing on
8 cross-cultural aspects and the usefulness of looking at compli-
9 ments as part of an ethnographic project.
20111 7. Brief information on how past students have used exchange as
1 an organising theme in their ethnography projects.
2
3
4 Figure 13 Session outline
5
6
Making strange: Introduction and discussion of readings
7
8 As we have mentioned, students had been asked to read two texts
9 about exchange before the session: Tis the Season to be Jolly Why?
30111 (Beattie, 1962) and the rst chapter from Baileys Gifts and Poisons: The
1 Politics of Reputation (1971). They had also undertaken an assignment
2 drawing on examples of their own practices of exchange. Before
3 discussing these key introductory texts, the session was framed by
4 making a link between exchange and politics, two terms with which
5 students are familiar in isolation, but not accustomed to connecting or
6 viewing from an anthropological perspective.
7 The students own familiar experience of learning about politics in
8 area studies classes (e.g. focusing on election campaigns, political insti-
9 tutions or current affairs in their target country) was taken as the starting
40 point in order to make a distinction between this macro-level and the
41111 micro-politics we were to explore in ethnography. Students were rst
1111 asked what they understood by the term local level politics and several
2 of them came up with familiar examples such as ofce politics or sexual
3 politics. We rapidly arrived at an understanding that this was politics
4 with a small p, politics at work in the everyday life of smaller, more
5 private units which could usefully be looked at from an anthropolog-
6 ical or sociological perspective.
7 Following this preamble, our exploration of exchanges and the cultural
8 and symbolic meanings they embody was embarked upon by throwing
9 out Baileys pithy statement which serves as a leitmotif for the session
1011 that gifts are the channels along which social relations run (1971). This
1 complex notion was claried as the session progressed, and the initial
2 puzzlement it generated was clearly due to the students rather literal
3111 interpretation of the term gift. This interpretation would also turn out
4 to be one of the sessions richest and most heated areas of debate since
5 it was clear from the start that gifts and giving had immediately posi-
6 tive connotations for students. Emotionally and morally they were to
7 cling to a rather straightforward approach to this facet of their social
8 lives, maintaining that gifts were often freely given with no real notion
9 of reciprocity (or anything else) behind them; they were simply synony-
20111 mous with getting and giving pleasure. The examples they initially
1 raised tended to revolve around established rituals such as birthdays,
2 Christmas, or the symbolic giving of Valentines Day, where the messages
3 of the exchange were relatively clear within that particular cultural
4 context. But the notion of gifts also needed to be broadened to incor-
5 porate other exchanges (Bailey speaks, for example, of the gift of good
6 manners), so one of our aims was to encourage students throughout
7 the session to add to the most obvious exchange of material resources,
8 other less tangible ones such as favours, greetings, pieces of informa-
9 tion, politeness, compliments, or even an often unrecognised element
30111 such as time, which is routinely referred to as a commodity in English
1 and other Western languages (see Chapter 4 on language and metaphor).
2 The fact that exchange is all-pervasive meant that there was a wealth
3 of fresh, recent data from the students own experience to unpack.
4 However, much of this tumbled out without real consideration of how
5 such exchanges are negotiated and achieved in interaction (i.e. not as
6 thick description). Getting to the symbolic, making strange and
7 unearthing latent messages about reciprocity or status maintenance
8 proved to be especially difcult because of the sheer familiarity of this
9 aspect of their behaviour. The two readings provided some help here.
40 Both were discussed by the class as a whole before small groups were
41111 formed for the discussion of the assignment.
1111 The rst reading, Tis the Season to be Jolly Why? (Beattie, 1962) is
2 a short article which offered a useful starting point since it begins with
3 the culturally familiar (Christmas), and its initial examples are easy to
4 relate to: why do we feel this annoying sense of obligation to put great-
5 aunt Mary on our Christmas card list? Why do we accept invitations
6 to dismal parties from people we dont really like? This is in turn related
7 to unfamiliar cultural practices among, for example, the Maoris or
8 Trobriand Islanders, drawing out some of the universal principles at
9 work. A distinction is drawn between gifts (which create social rela-
1011 tionships) and purchases (which create only economic ones), and the
1 articles conclusion is that gift-giving takes place because people want
2 to be indebted to one another. Not only the content, but the way in
3111 which the article develops, clearly helped the students to move from
4 assumptions of morality and personal judgements to seeing things as
5 social practice, although at this stage of the session the teachers were
6 predominantly responsible for advancing the discussion, and many of
7 the students were in note-taking mode.
8 The notion of voluntarily becoming indebted allowed us to raise at
9 an early stage ideas of exchange as a guarantor of belonging in a
20111 community, and helped to explain the widespread preference for
1 personal services, accompanied by the abiding suspicion that ones inter-
2 ests will be less well served by large organisations and faceless
3 bureaucrats than by family and friends (in her study of French bour-
4 geois culture, for example, Beatrix Le Wita (1994) has shown how services
5 are provided as far as possible by those in, or close to, the family
6 network). It also allowed us to account for the persistent attempts of
7 politicians, or even high street stores, to represent themselves and their
8 services as warm, familiar, caring and personal. The promise of greater
9 intimacy re-introduces the moral element into the wider economic and
30111 political systems. By the same token, to clean the slate and pay back
1 everything one owes to a person is one way of signalling that any
2 relationship with them is over, as with divorcing couples engaged in
3 dividing the spoils.
4 The second reading, from Baileys Gifts and Poisons, further broadened
5 the scope of debate. As it is more complex, students had been given
6 some prepared questions we had designed to guide them through it.
7 The reading investigates what Bailey describes as small politics, polit-
8 ical processes seen at work in the everyday and the interpersonal for
9 example, when we indulge in gossip, engage in one-upmanship, or gener-
40 ally go about our business of making friends and inuencing people.
41111 The manipulation of public opinion in small communities is illustrated
1111 as one end perhaps the most intimate one of the political spectrum,
2 with the same principles of competition and alliance running like a thread
3 throughout. This provides students with an excellent example of the
4 kinds of things at stake in our exchanges, through exploring their rela-
5 tion to issues of identity, power, role and status (status being described
6 as a bundle of roles a person possesses, and the self as a set of reputa-
7 tions which spring from belonging to a community). The initial vignette
8 sketched by Bailey of housewives in Valloire was a useful concrete
9 example which captured the students imagination. Bailey describes an
1011 important mechanism these women have developed to preserve their
1 reputation when they are on their way to the shops. They are effectively
2 caught between two stools in this situation: if they stop to chat with
3111 neighbours they will be branded as gossips; if they pass by without
4 chatting they may be branded as haughty. The solution lies in going
5 to the shops with their apron on, the apron becoming a powerful signi-
6 er or laconic sign indicating that they are busy and politically offstage,
7 not available for exchanges. This example was linked to notions of
8 frame and metacommunication encountered earlier in the course, two
9 connected concepts which help students perceive the contextual as a
20111 crucial factor in cultural interpretation. Seemingly small exchanges can
1 have important political and emotional consequences and can lead to
2 large judgements about people, as the example of the housewives shows.
3 What is at stake in these incidents, Bailey suggests, is the crucial manage-
4 ment of social life, how to manage social space so that one is neither
5 lonely nor overcrowded; how to preserve ones individuality and iden-
6 tity and self-respect while at the same time serving the interests of the
7 community to which one belongs (1971: 3).
8 The link between exchange and reputation is an important one and
9 students were keen to relate this to many of the seemingly insignicant
30111 interactions they are engaged in on a daily basis, all of which trigger
1 off signals about them. All members of a community are constantly
2 manipulating, negotiating their reputation and status, and responsible
3 for safeguarding or damaging the reputations of others. A key reason
4 for much of the care taken in our interaction is, then, that any reputa-
5 tion is fragile, and that in a sense our reputation is a gift from others
6 (one student remarked that a solitary castaway on a desert island would
7 not have, or need a reputation). Another raised the example of a
8 normally very friendly teacher he had seen walking briskly along the
9 corridor with a pile of books and deliberately not making eye contact
40 with students. He suggested she may have been signalling her tempo-
41111 rary unavailability, giving off the message Im busy and on my way to
1111 teach. It would be inappropriate to draw from this a conclusion that

2 the teacher is generally unapproachable, yet the threat of such an inter-
3 pretation is there. In terms of their role as participant observers, it is
4 important for students to recognise that such small but signicant
5 contextualisation cues (Gumperz, 1982a) are entirely dependent on
6 shared cultural knowledge for their correct interpretation.
7 The point was made that membership of a community does not depend
8 on having a good reputation, just on having a reputation (even if it is
9 a negative one) and therefore tting in to the existing system of social
1011 relations. Here the class was also encouraged to relativise what consti-
1 tutes a good reputation, and teachers pointed out that this debate can
2 usefully be linked to the wealth of anthropological literature on honour
3111 and shame in the Mediterranean where factors such as chastity, or
4 the fullment of family obligations may weigh far more heavily in the
5 balance than material wealth or the nature of ones employment
6 (Gilmore, 1987).
7 The discussion of types of role relationships was further focused by
8 briey drawing on Milroys (1980) sociolinguistic studies using categories
9 of high and low density personal network structures. Students were
20111 asked how reputations in small rural communities may be negotiated
1 and managed differently from reputations in urban communities (the
2 former being both more crucial and more difcult to maintain given the
3 tighter web of social connections involved). Milroy isolates two network
4 types, according to degrees of contact between individuals. A high
5 density network structure would be typied by a small community where
6 the man who plays the church organ may also be your next door neigh-
7 bour, the teacher of your children at a local school, and a member of
8 the same rambling club. By contrast, in urban contexts it is more common
9 to have dealings with an individual in only one capacity, and to have
30111 single roles vis--vis ones acquaintances, who in turn may be strangers
1 to each other. As Frankenberg (1968 ) points out, at the rural end, status
2 will determine how people behave when they meet; at the urban end,
3 it will dictate whether they meet at all.
4 One student illustrated the specicity of high density network struc-
5 tures through the example of popular TV soap operas in Britain which,
6 whether in rural settings (Emmerdale Farm; the Archers) or urban ones
7 (Coronation Street; East Enders) rely entirely on the peripeteia of such
8 small-scale community relations. Here, systems of exchange reect the
9 greater degree of interconnectedness among protagonists, and gossip
40 and the making and breaking of reputations constitute the backbone of
41111 such familiar dramas. Anthropologists have referred to groups of people
1111 who, like those from the soap operas, share a distinctive set of values
2 and beliefs for what constitutes appropriate behaviour within their
3 community, and who are prepared to make moral judgements about
4 each other, as moral communities. There was some discussion of
5 this term and interestingly, it was the handful of students who came
6 from a small village or rural community who had particularly useful
7 contributions to make on the role of gossip and reputation as they
8 perceived them and were able to isolate the differences between how
9 they know people in, for example, a college environment, a big city, or
1011 a small village.
1 Baileys thesis is particularly useful in its stress not just on reputation,
2 but on the nely tuned, dynamic work of reputation maintenance. For
3111 example, he afrms that all exchanges carry the seeds of co-operation
4 and competition, that claiming to have acted in the public interest is
5 usually a hypocritical claim, or that people run hard in order to stand
6 still, since it requires much skill and energy simply to maintain the
7 status quo, to preserve the balance of reputations, and to keep people
8 in the places they have always occupied. This latter concept was usefully
9 unpacked with the help of some contrasting examples of all female and
20111 male/female interaction described by Tannen (1990) as symmetrical
1 and asymmetrical connections, both of which are instrumental in
2 achieving and maintaining a kind of status quo between participants.
3 Here women she had observed on a videotape discussing their respec-
4 tive college grades are said to be involved in a kind of one-
5 downmanship, the goal of which, according to Tannen, is to reinforce
6 symmetry, to keep the scales even by lowering ones own side. This
7 is contrasted with a second game of one-downmanship (this time
8 said to be reinforcing asymmetry) which Beeman (1986) encountered in
9 studying patterns of interaction in Iran. This game is described as
30111 intensely hierarchical in nature. By portraying himself as lower in status,
1 an Iranian puts himself at the mercy of someone more powerful, who
2 is thereby obligated to do things for him: It invokes a protector schema.
3 Tannen suggests that women may also adopt such a position so that
4 men will take care of them. This allowed students to make connections
5 with the kind of mixed gender interactions they had explored earlier in
6 the course, and reect again on complex issues of social hierarchies and
7 identities established and maintained, in part, through the constant
8 compromises and adjustments enacted in practices of exchange.
9 The main stumbling block for students in this session was what several
40 of them referred to as the cynical nature of the reading from Gifts and
41111 Poisons. In particular the class resisted the notion that gift giving can be
1111 something more than arbitrary or altruistic, or that it may be regarded,

2 symbolically, as a kind of poison in as much as it invokes a heavy burden
3 of obligation. Students emotional resistance to this more sophisticated
4 interpretation of gift giving was erce, and this is not an untypical
5 episode of ethnography sessions where they are required to distance
6 themselves and conceptualise aspects of their own behaviour. They
7 share a tendency to make sweeping value judgements based on very
8 personal feelings about cultural issues, and resist seeing themselves as
9 cogs in a community whose beliefs, attitudes and actions are culturally
1011 constructed. To contest such a view, they are particularly keen to point
1 out their own differences from, rather than similarities to, other indi-
2 viduals and practices. It can be difcult for students to abandon such
3111 moral individualism, to step back and see how their feelings might t
4 into a pattern, or examine why such feelings are there in the rst place.
5 This session, then, highlighted some of the difculties they encounter in
6 relating lived experiences, particularly their own, to anthropological
7 concepts.
8
9
Pooling data: Presenting assignment ndings to the class
20111
1 Collecting and interpreting raw data can be a considerable challenge
2 for students accustomed to the more traditional approach of drawing
3 on text-based material as a starting point for their work. Most of the
4 ethnography sessions therefore provide opportunities for analysing such
5 data, for comparing them with data obtained by other students, and
6 relating them to anthropological literature. Testing interpretations or
7 claims through combining several data sources (triangulation) is an
8 important aspect of the student projects, serving to guard against hasty
9 value judgements or one-dimensional versions, and often throwing up
30111 useful disconrming evidence.
1 For their pre-session assignment, students had been given a table to
2 complete. This entailed looking back over the previous week to think of
3 several examples of gifts, favours or other exchanges in which they had
4 been involved. They were then asked to try to think about the wider
5 implications of these interactions, to interpret any messages involving
6 rights and obligations and to look beyond the immediate gift or favour
7 by considering the moral and symbolic aspects. As usual, students were
8 asked to bring their data to the session for discussion. On the pre-session
9 assignment sheet (Figure 14), we have included some examples of
40 students initial ndings which show them beginning to scratch the
41111 surface of their own practices.
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
9
8
7
6
5
4
2
1
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
40
3111
1011
1111
41111
30111
20111
Gift / favour / exchange Relationship symbolised Obligations Wider implications
Information regarding Teacher Student Thanks for information. Teachers assessment of
possibilities for work Guide Looking Thanks for offer of help. compatibility of student
in Teaching English as Experienced Learning Reply/decision whether (i.e. me) and language
a Foreign Language Insider Outsider to take up/explore offer school: must be suitable.
(TEFL), and offer of (vis--vis TEFL). Follow-up by teacher I must believe this +
Recommendation to a (either positive or trust judgement.
contact who controls negative). No immediate exchange
such posts. Owing a favour back/ is evident.
The Ethnography Class
wanting to give a favour What gain for teacher?

back. Favour in return stored
for future collection?
Satisfaction in arranging a
benecial exchange
(Benecial for school +me).
Lending 1.00 to Friendship. To try to help (me). Shared conception of value

another student who Trust. To say thank you for (symbolic) of money
needs change to pay Fellow sufferer from that help (him). despite nominal amount.
someone else 1.00 change related To say (sometimes) Conrmation/realignment
that he owes them. problems (at times) when it will be returned. regarding degree of
(sympathy). To say back (sometimes) friendship/trust/sympathy.
that it doesnt matter Do you need to say it will
either today or be paid back by a certain
tomorrow will do. time? Depends on
Prompt reimbursement relationship.
and thanks. How much dare one
Accept thanks. borrow?
What explanation need be
given?
When is it okay to remind
somebody about an
outstanding debt?
163
Figure 14 Pre-session assignment sheet

1111 The next step was to discuss ndings in small groups, where students
2 pooled their data and attempted to look beyond the anecdotal for patterns
3 and structures which they could relate to broader concepts of exchange.
4 Each group selected two examples which they wrote on a transparency
5 and one student from each group presented this to the class. The ensuing
6 discussion was an attempt to modify and rene ideas about reciprocity
7 and obligation, to expand the notion of exchange and to reect on more
8 and more varied examples, either hypothetical or real. Some of the most
9 telling examples included the student who had felt suspicious and embar-
1011 rassed about a gift she had received; the student who had subverted the
1 obligation to receive (by rejecting the offer of food from a host), and
2 the student who had returned a gift. Analysing such scenarios allowed
3111 us to draw out concepts of moral expectations, and make the point about
4 the hidden messages contained in gifts quite successfully. Staff also
5 offered examples from their own experience to be analysed by the
6 students. One member of the teaching team drew on the interaction
7 between herself and a student who came into her ofce for a French
8 oral examination. After being invited to sit down in the chair designated
9 for candidates, he proceeded to produce two glasses and a bottle of
20111 champagne from his bag. What might the intended messages have been?
1 What was at stake for the participants? The scenario is laden with
2 messages which were perhaps easier to discuss objectively since the
3 students themselves were not involved.
4 Further impetus was given to the discussion by handing out the
5 British Repertoire of Exchange (Davis, 1992) (see Figure 15) This
6 allowed students to consider how the apparently altruistic and moral
7 (e.g. donations or alms-giving) may belong to the same repertoire as
8 the self-interested and immoral (e.g. bribery, burglary, mugging or
9 shoplifting) as two poles on a continuum of exchange relationships.
30111 Confronting students with the idea that mugging and charity are two
1 ends of the same continuum is, of course, deliberately provocative and
2 is designed to disturb students out of their complacency about the way
3 the world is.
4 Daviss repertoire serves as a useful aide-mmoire for varieties of
5 exchange relationships over and above the most obvious, with terms
6 including institutionalised practices such as banking, mortgaging and
7 commodity dealing, and examples of transactions like pawning, prosti-
8 tution or swapping which may not immediately spring to mind. The
9 exercise reveals how broad and pervasive exchange is and provides an
40 opportunity to reect on cultural differences. Several class members
41111 raised the problem of the presence of mugging and theft on the repertoire,
1111
2 Part of the British Repertoire
3 alms-giving expropriation reciprocity
4 altruism extortion renting
5 arbitrage futures trading retailing
6 banking giving robbery
7 barter huckstering scrounging
8 bribery insider dealing shoplifting
9 burglary insurance shopping
1011 buying / selling marketing simony
1 charity money-lending social wage
2 commodity-dealing mortgaging swapping
3111 corruption mugging theft
4 donation pawning tipping
5 employment proteering trading
6 exploitation prostitution wholesaling
7
8
9 Figure 15 British repertoire of exchange
20111
1 and the notion that they constituted a form of exchange at all was
2 contested. These terms were retrieved by the suggestion that a con-man,
3 for example, who engages in a negative (because unreciprocal) form of
4 exchange, is only able to con at all because there exists a shared concept
5 of exchange. This makes it easier for him to convince people they will
6 be getting something in return. Students were particularly ready to
7 contribute on this point, and soon arrived at their own conclusions about
8 theft as non-reciprocal and de-personalised, a form of taking but with
9 no relationship between participants, thus denying the social dimension
30111 of all exchanges as well as the fact that they are usually consensual. This
1 in turn led to a brief discussion concerning the widespread discourse
2 about a crumbling society, and a loss of community spirit which is
3 commonplace in all areas from media reporting to corner shop gossip,
4 and which is a response to increasing levels of petty theft, joy riding,
5 etc. Interestingly, students pointed out that such activities are frequently
6 referred to not just as criminal, but as anti-social, and that the idea of
7 young offenders engaging in community service or doing some work
8 for their victims as recompense is increasingly popular. Through
9 exploring the implications of theft, students again highlighted in their
40 own way the essential fairness and equilibrium that are normally nego-
41111 tiated through exchange.
1111 One particularly problematic area was the notion of altruism consti-
2 tuting an exchange, and much of the debate revolved around this. What
3 about giving to charity?; What about anonymous donors?; What about
4 Ghandi and Mother Theresa? Is there indeed such a thing as a free
5 lunch? (Or if someone pays for your lunch, is there automatically some
6 obligation on you to reciprocate in some way?) We asked students to
7 consider at this point whether that virtuous feeling they get when they
8 give money to charity could be the pay-off in the exchange. They were
9 encouraged to give us their thoughts on, for example, being a blood
1011 donor and whether blood donors should be paid as they are in the
1 United States (the overwhelming consensus was that they should not).
2 A good tactic is to draw on an example which is either contemporary
3111 or related to something local. At the time of writing, the latest Comic
4 Relief operation (a massive media promoted effort to encourage dona-
5 tions to aid for the Third World) was about to take place. This mediatised
6 example of giving to good causes as a form of exchange relationship
7 was particularly useful to us since it drew out all the normally hidden
8 mechanisms at work and made them explicit. Anonymous donors
9 pledged money to the appeal and in return there were regular progress
20111 accounts broadcast. Viewers were also rewarded with a clear and tangible
1 dnouement to the narrative of their own generosity as they watched
2 footage of the recipients with celebrities and saw how their needs would
3 be met. In addition, the private, personal pleasure of giving was made
4 consensual by the appeal, so that giving had become a nation-wide
5 activity, thus uniting the nation further and reinforcing a shared
6 identity as a generous nation. Storing and exploiting examples of contem-
7 porary or local practice is an important aspect of the sessions; it keeps
8 the teaching fresh for us and for the students, and reinforces the message
9 that the eld is all around us, ready for observation by the ethno-
30111 graphic eye.
1 Another example of how we attempted to achieve this feeling of imme-
2 diacy was by asking students to interrogate classroom practice and
3 consider what exchange relationships were at work there and then, in
4 the context of the session. Having been asked earlier in the course to
5 undertake a classroom observation, they were now less reticent and were
6 more prepared to make statements about this aspect of their university
7 lives. So we learned that when the students come into the classroom
8 they had certain expectations of what we should be giving them. We in
9 turn had our expectations. There was a discussion of a much larger chain
40 of exchange, starting at government level (which determines, for
41111 example, how many people there are in a class and what can be taught
1111 there), and with the tax payer who pays for the students to come and
2 study. Lecturers are employed in order to give students something and
3 they in turn will give back to society. When do they feel they havent
4 had their moneys worth? How do they feel on these occasions? The
5 recent surge of educational new-speak describing students as clients has
6 more than just metaphorical value, since through the student loan system
7 they are increasingly likely to have to pay ever larger amounts for the
8 educational services they receive.
9
1011
Conventions, rituals and taboos
1
2 During the break students were asked to read a very brief extract from
3111 Barleys Native Land (1990) which touches on two aspects: notions of
4 appropriacy in gift giving, and our habit of deliberately detaching gifts
5 from the monetary sphere. Certain scenarios were used to get the discus-
6 sion going again. For example, most people would be surprised to be
7 given a gift as inappropriate as a dishcloth or a bin-liner for their
8 birthday. Why are such things not culturally acceptable tokens of affec-
9 tion? What might be your reactions if you were the recipient and how
20111 could you account for them? Would you expect your partner to need to
1 ask you what you wanted for your birthday? Why is there the poten-
2 tial for such embarrassment when the message behind a gift is
3 misinterpreted? This led to discussion of how we know when to start
4 giving and what it is appropriate to offer on a given occasion. The list
5 of considerations students drew up highlighted the complexity of giving:
6 what should be the type or price of the gift, and how should it be made
7 to look? Should we accompany the giving of the gift with any kind of
8 ritual? How would you feel if you found a price tag still on a gift?
9 Would you tell the giver? If the gift was expensive, how can you be
30111 sure the giver did not leave the tag there deliberately? How would you
1 feel if you had inadvertently left a (cheap) price sticker on a gift? Why
2 can it be so disappointing to receive a gift of money or a cheque, and
3 why is it that we often convert money to gifts by offering gift tokens,
4 which are often considered more acceptable? The point made in the
5 extract from Native Land, which echoes Mausss earlier work, is that
6 giving a gift is like passing on a bit of the self, and that the real gift is
7 the feeling which urged us to give in the rst place so the material gift
8 is merely a token. Hence the popular aphorism its the thought that
9 counts. The discussion also touched on the stringent rules we apply for
40 keeping sex or love separate from money, which was usefully contrasted
41111 with African practices involving dowries or bride prices. In a small way,
1111 students were able to relate this to their own experience, from the discom-
2 fort experienced when a would-be suitor attempts to pay for a dinner
3 (the practice of going Dutch has gradually become an accepted avoid-
4 ance tactic for the sense of obligation this may create) to the taboos
5 around prostitution. Finally, in terms of eldwork, a further exchange
6 relationship mentioned was that which is struck up between ethnogra-
7 pher and informant: what might the ethnographer give the informant
8 in return?
9 The debates outlined so far, generated by texts and by the students
1011 own data, allowed them to make connections between their own social
1 practices and those prevalent elsewhere. They developed or abandoned
2 some of their initial assumptions according to the additional material they
3111 encountered, although on the notion of whether pure altruism really
4 belongs to the dance of indebtedness or stands outside it, the class had to
5 agree to disagree. In fact, the exchange of views about this became rather
6 intense, with several students presenting examples of their own seless
7 practices of giving, and another group attempting to theorise these
8 practices to t them into a paradigm of exchange. This episode had to be
9 curtailed in order for the class to move on to the video analysis, but it
20111 was a useful reminder that making strange of ones own practices
1 can be an uncomfortable exercise. The ethnography classes often draw
2 on personal experiences and deeply ingrained beliefs, and students were
3 reminded that the diplomacy, tact and empathy they are expected to draw
4 upon in the classroom should be carried with them into eldwork.
5
6
Video excerpt: Ongkas Big Moka
7
8 The next part of the session was a short video excerpt taken from a
9 documentary called Ongkas Big Moka from the BBCs Disappearing
30111 World series. It concerns practices in a non-capitalist economy among
1 the Kawelka in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, practices
2 through which power and inuence is asserted by one community over
3 another, not by warfare but by the obligatory exchange of gifts. This
4 small community of around 1000 people is largely structured by
5 a complex system which involves investing, collecting, giving and
6 receiving pigs. A great deal is at stake for everyone involved, and partic-
7 ularly for Ongka who is the most prominent leader of his community
8 and has the honoric title of Big Man. As such, he is responsible for
9 the Moka, a huge and highly ritualised gift-giving ceremony which has
40 involved him in years of preparation, persuasion, negotiation and xing
41111 in order to accumulate a sufciently large gift. Ongka gains a lot for his
1111 group from the Moka: prestige, honour, as well as reconrmation of his
2 own honoric status as Big Man. The recipient is the leader of a neigh-
3 bouring group, and also a local government ofcial. He suspects the
4 Moka is coming but does not know when or how big it will be. Ongkas
5 idea is to provide such an enormous Moka that the neighbouring commu-
6 nity will be overpowered and, in accepting the gift, will admit their
7 lower status. Their Big Man will also be under obligation to pay Ongka
8 back and do him favours; an overwhelmingly big Moka will be extremely
9 worrying for him. It will take him years to reciprocate by making his
1011 own Moka and meanwhile he will remain in debt to Ongka. The notion
1 of exchange as a way of winning a victory over a local community may
2 be regarded as a metaphor for the rituals of exchange and gift giving
3111 in modern urban society.
4 A brief introduction was given to contextualise the excerpt and relate
5 it to the concepts we were examining. Students were asked to consider
6 the following questions: what differences and parallels were there
7 between the exchange system and reputation presented in the video and
8 the exchange practices in their cultural world? What were the difculties
9 involved in interpreting unfamiliar practices such as these? This is one of
20111 the most exotic examples used in the course materials. Some students
1 found it difcult at rst to draw out any similarities, and were simply
2 struck by difference. This was also translated by a degree of amusement
3 at, for example, the idea of pigs as an essential commodity and conferers
4 of status (If you dont have pigs you are rubbish claims Ongka). Some
5 students were struck by the apparent incongruity of other elements of the
6 gift: 600 pigs, rare birds, face paint, but also a truck and a motor bike.
7 Other aspects of the value system of Ongka and his group were com-
8 mented upon as odd, such as the fact that this Big Man spends days
9 walking around and cajoling people to feed pigs into the Moka system,
30111 but he could well afford transport as he has a large bank account and is
1 very wealthy in terms of dollars. Watching Ongka preparing for the rit-
2 ual of the mini-Moka and stufng his woolly hat with straw to give height
3 to his head-dress also caused amusement. Finally, the sheer scale of the
4 gift was hard to relate to. It had taken Ongka ve years to assemble the
5 gift and arrange the Moka, and it was the most important thing in his life.
6 After the viewing there were ve minutes for group discussion, then
7 comments were shared with the class. A central issue was the idea of
8 ritual humiliation which was usefully related to the commonplace
9 description of a recipient as overwhelmed with gratitude, and since the
40 video neatly encapsulated the ambivalent nature of gifts this was a ne
41111 occasion to re-introduce Baileys idea of gifts and poisons. The difculty
1111 of establishing the intention behind gifts came up again, and notions of
2 using them to challenge, to humiliate or to assert ones superiority
3 seemed more acceptable to students. The excerpt and discussion of it
4 were an important way of relativising their own practices, including
5 those which are used to frame gift giving with ritual and ceremony.
6 Students are well used to seeing documentaries on television about
7 apparently exotic practices, and it helps to seek out any universal prin-
8 ciples which may be at work. A further reading, provided as follow-up
9 work for students who wish to pursue exchange in their project, includes
1011 a discussion of the Indian potlatch practice in British Columbia and bears
1 much similarity to the video (Leinhardt, 1964). In particular, both illus-
2 trate how the whole social system is organised around intricate systems
3111 of exchange relationships. To abolish the potlatch, as Leinhardt points
4 out, would be to destroy the system of ranking in the society, the rela-
5 tions between tribes and their chiefs, even the relations between friends
6 and kinsmen (Leinhardt, 1964: 81). Similarly, without the Moka, the
7 relations within Ongkas community and between it and neighbouring
8 communities, would simply collapse.
9
20111
Face and social relationships
1
2 The last part of the session shifts to looking at how social relation-
3 ships are managed through day-to-day interaction. The concepts of face
4 and politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987) are used to alert students to
5 the detailed, ne-grained way in which we acknowledge the others face
6 or reputation, accord them certain status and mark our relationship to
7 them. Brown and Levinsons notions of positive and negative face needs
8 and wants determine what kind of politeness strategies we use in, for
9 example, greetings, making requests, offering invitations, commenting
30111 on others appearance and so on. Strategies that attend to positive face
1 needs stress solidarity and familiarity (as do the Tu, Du, T pronoun
2 forms) while those that mark negative face needs stress deference and
3 relative distance and formality (as do the Vous, Sie and Usted forms).
4 Reputation and the gift of good manners are inextricably linked to face
5 and politeness issues and one of the most obvious ways in which face
6 is managed is through the giving and receiving of compliments.
7
8
Group work on compliments
9
40 Students are asked to read the paper by Joan Manes on Compliments:
41111 A mirror of cultural values (1983) and to relate the ndings to their own
1111 experience of giving and receiving compliments. They work in groups,

2 comparing their own experiences both with each other and with Manes
3 conclusions. Their ndings are then related to the wider issues of face
4 and politeness and, outwards, to the concepts of exchange and gift.
5 Manes looks at compliments as a way of establishing solidarity (although
6 they can also be used to show deference). And although she does not
7 explicitly discuss how compliments function as part of an exchange
8 system, this is implied in her discussion of when compliments are given
9 (for example when someone has a new acquisition) and how they are
1011 routinely responded to (by down-playing them). From an anthropolog-
1 ical perspective, compliment giving and receiving are part of the give
2 and take of gifts which help to develop and dene social relations and
3111 to reinforce certain ideologies (as in Manes examples of American
4 English compliments which feed into assumptions about the value of
5 physical appearance and newness).
6 Comparisons are made between the methods which linguists use to
7 study compliments cross-culturally and how compliment giving can be
8 studied more ethnographically. While linguists tend to use question-
9 naires to elicit how people think they give and receive compliments or
20111 collect data through notes or tape-recording focusing only on the act of
1 complimenting, an ethnographic approach would be to collect compli-
2 menting data as part of a wider focus on social relationships within a
3 group. In this way, complimenting is described more thickly, taking
4 account of the context of relationships and situations in which compli-
5 ments circulate.
6
7
Exchange in ethnography projects
8
9 The session ended with students being encouraged to consider how
30111 the concepts we had been looking at might feed into a future project.
1 The project looms large at the back of their minds right from the start
2 and they frequently express concern at the leap into the void they will
3 face with eldwork. We therefore attempt to foreground quite explicitly
4 in each session the ways in which concepts or approaches under discus-
5 sion may be put to good use by students in making sense of cultural
6 interactions encountered during their period abroad. To use exchange
7 as an avenue into investigating politics is to open up new possibilities
8 for language students who often want to base their project on the polit-
9 ical or economic matters introduced in area studies. An ethnographic
40 approach to politics on a micro-level provides a much broader range
41111 of options and implies a more rigorous set of methodological and
1111 conceptual considerations. We looked briey with the students at how

2 a simple task like the assignment described here could form part of their
3 eldwork, perhaps giving a starting point for looking at what exchanges
4 or gifts mean within another cultural group. What gifts or favours have
5 your informants received or given recently? What favours are they
6 waiting to have returned? What are the expectations or degrees of reci-
7 procity there? How can exchange be shown to be part of the social glue
8 of that group, related to concepts of identity, boundaries or community?
9
1011
Links to Ethnography Projects
1
2 The work covered in this session was indeed followed up more system-
3111 atically in some of the ethnography projects, which ranged from more
4 sociolinguistically focused pragmatic work on compliments, to studies
5 which were more anthropologically orientated. Several examples are
6 outlined below to indicate the often innovative ways in which students
7 were able to marry the concepts encountered in the class to their own
8 naturally occurring data collected in the eld.
9 One home ethnography, carried out in the students home environ-
20111 ment during a vacation, explored the ways in which employees of a
1 major high street store accomplished the complex range of exchanges
2 taking place at the customer service desk of a local branch. These ranged
3 from purely economic exchanges (purchases, refunds and exchanges of
4 goods of the same value) to the more interpersonal dimension, the care-
5 fully balanced verbal exchanges with the customer, at this sensitive part
6 of the store, where factors such as trust, politeness and face became
7 important. Here issues of staff hierarchy, control, customer relations and
8 the stores reputation were seen to underpin interactions in specic ways.
9 The student (an employee of the store) and her colleagues found them-
30111 selves operating in situations where they were caught between personal
1 decisions and judgements, and statutory company policy. The publics
2 perception of this well-known store and the employees duty as ambas-
3 sadors for the store provided a very specic set of tensions between
4 commodity exchange and social exchange, and an interesting frame for
5 a localised study of exchange at work.
6 A rather different focus was provided by a Spanish student, based in
7 Ealing, who undertook his home ethnography in Spain, examining the
8 ritual and discourses surrounding a major gift-giving ceremony, Twelfth
9 Night (Reyes). The term home ethnography was taken to its literal
40 conclusion as the student concentrated predominantly on roles and rela-
41111 tionships within his own family. Drawing on concepts from the session
1111 on exchange and from an earlier session on families and households,

2 the student was able to make strange and gain new insights into this
3 familiar aspect of his life. Far from Twelfth Night being a simple exchange
4 of gifts, his research led him to the persuasive conclusion that it was
5 one of the very powerful ritual ways in which his family re-conrmed
6 its identity as family and, through notions of duty, expectations, and
7 degrees of reciprocity, re-conrmed hierarchical relationships within it.
8 The Other Side of the Stream, a third home ethnography, explored
9 the minutiae of everyday exchanges (favours, greetings, gossip, hospi-
1011 tality and neighbourliness) in an isolated hamlet. The student
1 discovered that the hamlet was divided into two factions: her infor-
2 mants, who lived on one side of the stream, and them up there who
3111 lived on the other. Through her observations and ethnographic conver-
4 sations she was able to develop a sensitive account of small-community
5 relations by drawing, predominantly, on concepts of boundaries and by
6 charting the many exchanges which not only served to ensure the cohe-
7 sion of these distinct groups, but which occasionally resulted in the
8 symbolic boundaries between them being negotiated and crossed.
9 The projects described above are rst attempts, carried out in the
20111 students own familiar cultural environment. These home ethnographies
1 are pilot studies intended, in part, to increase the students condence for
2 eldwork abroad, which often results in more adventurous ights of the
3 ethnographic imagination. For example, Chris, on a six-month placement
4 in Cadiz, eventually chose to focus on an aspect of exchange which was
5 treated only eetingly in the session, that of prostitution, and his eld-
6 work was carried out among transsexual prostitutes in the city bars, as
7 we have mentioned in previous chapters. He found that exchange was an
8 important element in the conversations he had with his informants, and
9 a crucial part of their value system. The prostitutes dened themselves as
30111 different from mainstream culture largely through their more honest and
1 up-front management of sexual exchange, and through the way they
2 transferred the values of the marketplace to transform sex into an eco-
3 nomic activity in a very explicit way. Putting a price on their services
4 and making themselves into commodities was seen by them as being less
5 hypocritical about social exchange. The student gained many insights
6 not just into the cultural patterns of this group, but also into those they
7 were reacting against and subverting. In addition, he was forced to be
8 particularly reexive about his own values, attitudes and preconceptions
9 and the ways in which these may have affected the data obtained.
40 Sophies project on Les Artisans, a group of Carnavaliers in Nice, is
41111 again a good illustration. The main theme was the notion of boundaries,
1111 exclusion and membership rules, but she also explored notions of repu-
2 tation and reciprocity as a secondary issue. Here the student attempted
3 to tease-out the foundation for a carnavaliers good reputation (e.g. pride
4 in detail of work, excellent craftsmanship, devotion to the art, the ability
5 to obtain prizes, the readiness to help out rival groups in times of need).
6 She also discovered the attempts on the part of the younger generation
7 of carnavaliers to circumvent this exchange relationship by paying estab-
8 lished craftsmen to create a grosse tte on their behalf. This nancial
9 transaction allowed them to enjoy the title of carnavalier without both-
1011 ering to acquire the necessary skills themselves. For the older generation,
1 this prostitution of the craft was seen as a slight on family honour (the
2 title of carnavalier is handed down from father to son), and coupled with
3111 the stringent rules for the exclusion of females and outsiders from the
4 various associations, it was seen to constitute a threat to the perpetua-
5 tion of the art and tradition of the carnival.
6 Finally, Marias project researched in Las Palmas took a more soci-
7 olinguistic direction. The focus on this occasion was on compliments,
8 and arose out of a series of cultural misunderstandings in which the
9 student was involved shortly after she arrived in Spain. In Spanish there
20111 are two terms for compliments, with different functions and notions of
1 appropriacy: the rst, piropo, is almost exclusively sexual and non-
2 reciprocal the kind which is regularly offered to women by complete
3 strangers in the street; the second, cumplido, is a broader category of
4 compliment and almost always requires a response. The fact that many
5 of her informants saw the term cumplido as essentially insincere or hypo-
6 critical captured her ethnographic imagination and she embarked on
7 the process of categorising the different types of compliment and the
8 way these were carefully managed in terms of appropriacy. Analysing
9 a large amount of verbatim data allowed her to isolate, for example,
30111 gender differences in the use of compliments; compliments within rela-
1 tions of unequal power; compliments used to conrm belonging to a
2 group; compliments as highly valued courtship or hunting skills, etc.
3 These examples of ethnographic projects give some indication of how
4 students typically build on concepts encountered in the course. They
5 also hint at the richness of experience provided by working within an
6 ethnographic framework during the period abroad.
7
8
Class Diaries
9
40 At the end of the session, as usual, two volunteers were asked to
41111 complete a class diary. These diaries had a dual purpose: they fostered
1111 the habits of reection and reexivity which would be needed for
2 keeping a eld diary, and most importantly, they provided an opportu-
3 nity for students to give their own account of what happened in the ses-
4 sion along with any comments and reections on what they had learned,
5 what worked and what did not, how the class was organised, etc. These
6 comments were extremely valuable contributions to the sessions, provid-
7 ing a barometer and allowing us to make considered modications or
8 additions as we went along. Making the diaries a regular part of the
9 sessions accustoms students to reect on their learning and also to be
1011 frank in their reactions to aspects of the course: Sometimes the vastness
1 of ethnography daunts me, and I feel like I will never be any good at it;
2 I am still worried about the project we have to do at Christmas. It seems
3111 rather far away and impossible at the moment; Quite relieved not to
4 have an assignment today, as ethnography has been taking over my life
5 somewhat, even though its all very interesting. Where possible, we
6 attempted to take account of the difculties students experienced;
7 we noted what worked well and why, and this fed into preparation for
8 the following sessions. One example of this was a suggestion about organ-
9 ising group work which came from a class diary in the second week of
20111 the course: I enjoy the group discussions as I feel that in smaller groups
1 everybody gets the chance to contribute. I did feel, however, that it may
2 be an idea if the groups were mixed around so that we get to know all
3 the other students in the class. For myself, I would feel less shy about
4 voicing my opinions to the whole class if I knew them slightly better. This
5 resulted in our shufing student groups for each session, which we
6 felt to be a real improvement. The diaries, then, were another way in
7 which the sessions could be said to belong to the students.
8 An important aspect of diary writing while on the course was that it
9 helped students tackle expectations and their violation. Just as students
30111 will go abroad with many expectations, so students on the ethnography
1 course had to deal with expectations about the course and how it differed
2 from their usual experiences of language modules. Diary writing gave
3 students the opportunity to learn to be reexive about expectations and
4 to develop curiosity rather than preconceived assumptions which can
5 lead to negativity. The ethnography course aimed to develop skills in
6 diary writing so that eld diaries written abroad were not simply
7 outpourings of frustrations or banal generalisations but were interesting,
8 reexive accounts. These could then be used as part of the data for the
9 students ethnographic projects.
40 Diaries about the session on local level politics and exchange appeared
41111 to conrm that we were on the right track, both in terms of what the
1111 students gained from the session, and the balance of activities provided.
2 We will let the students provide their own conclusion to this descrip-
3 tion of a session:
4
The video helped me understand what occurs in other cultures and
5
their own rituals. The offering of pigs is very similar if not the same
6
as what happens in our own culture when we give gifts. Most people
7
feel an obligation to return a favour or a gift, and when we give we
8
usually, if not always, expect to receive as well.
9
1011 Going over what we had written in our assignment about gifts and
1 favours and all the obligations that go with them made it all clearer.
2 Before the actual session it was hard to know exactly what to write
3111 and after talking in groups I found there was a lot more I could
4 have added. It is amazing to realise all the rituals that go with what
5 we would normally think of as a simple gesture. The session was
6 useful in the sense that every day we ask a favour of someone or
7 vice versa and we dont usually think of all the interactions that are
8 involved.
9
20111
Assessment
1
2 Since the Introduction to Ethnography course became a module inte-
3 grated into the undergraduate degree, after the initial experimental
4 period, it was necessary to include formal assessment. Part of this is
5 based on the home ethnography, described in the next chapter, but since
6 1993 there has been an element of assessment of work during the course
7 itself. The home ethnography counts as 60% and the remainder is allo-
8 cated to self- and peer-assessment.
9 It will be evident from this and earlier chapters that the success of the
30111 course depends on a high level of commitment from students. They need
1 to participate actively in class sessions and in particular be able to work
2 in groups discussing readings and assignments and preparing plenary
3 presentations. We felt that it was crucial that students remain actively
4 analytical about their classroom contribution, about how and what they
5 were learning, and that the best way of ensuring this was to assess their
6 contribution in some way. It was also important to help them recognise
7 and have acknowledged the difference between their language classes
8 and the ethnography sessions. In the latter, they were negotiating cultural
9 interpretations and there were no right or wrong answers, nor any
40 single correct way to carry out eldwork assignments. Everyone came
41111 to the class with different data, which were not taken in and marked
1111 by tutors. Although there was comparison of data, it was not to estab-
2 lish which were better, and being an effective member of the class did
3 not necessarily mean demonstrating understanding. It could mean asking
4 useful questions, being frank about not having understood something
5 or discussing problems about why eldwork did not run smoothly.
6 Students were often reluctant to engage with such issues in class since
7 they identied them as manifestations of weakness.
8 Furthermore, the ethnographic skills we hoped students would acquire
9 during the course were not just those of note-taking and indexing, but
1011 also those of being a good observer and listener, being receptive and
1 helping others to clarify their ideas, being exible, showing initiative,
2 demonstrating empathy, reserving judgement about cultural difference
3111 and analysing reexively where ones cultural interpretations may be
4 coming from. The acquisition of such skills and characteristics was clearly
5 a gradual process, not something which could be done in a short burst
6 of activity before an examination. It was therefore important that the
7 assessment should, at least in part, be orientated towards the process,
8 the commitment involved and the ability to take responsibility for ones
9 own learning. We felt that self-assessment would encourage students to
20111 assess the extent of their effort and the quality of their learning, their
1 involvement in group work, their contribution to classroom debate. We
2 wanted them to turn the ethnographic eye on themselves, examining
3 critically and reexively their own behaviour and that of others in their
4 interdependent group.
5 How did we convince students of the value of this approach? The rst
6 step was to negotiate with the class an appropriate set of criteria and
7 an acceptable procedure, rather than attempting to impose these
8 ourselves. In this way students were led to consider what it would take
9 from each of them to make the weekly sessions useful and we could
30111 clearly demonstrate that they were to judge each other on criteria they
1 themselves had negotiated. The self-assessment form therefore functions
2 a little like a learner contract.
3 Criteria chosen by students ranged from the basic quantitative
4 elements which are easy to assess (such as frequency of attendance or
5 completion of assignments and readings), to the qualitative (such as
6 effective group work). In the rst class a 10-minute slot was given over
7 to initiating group work. Students discussed in small groups what contri-
8 butions might be required from each individual to make group work
9 effective, breaking down the component skills, abilities, and contribu-
40 tions which might make for a successful session. Their ideas were
41111 then fed back to the class and a decision was made as to which of
1111 these should be included as criteria. In terms of the procedure

2 adopted, students also had their say, and perhaps unsurprisingly
3 chose to have staff involved as a control to validate marks in assess-
4 ment tutorials.
5 The results of this process of negotiation could be seen in the self-
6 and peer-assessment form with which students declared themselves satis-
7 ed. The form was divided into sections covering attendance and
8 preparation, assignments, readings, group work and class discussion,
9 and nally requiring an overall assessment of student contribution. Given
1011 the inevitable teething problems which arose when students were rst
1 called upon to assess themselves or their peers, we conducted two assess-
2 ment exercises, each worth 20% of the module marks so that any
3111 problems might be ironed out by the second round. The rst took place
4 half way into the course (in week 6) and the second at the end. They
5 involved a three-part process:
6
Each group member assesses her/his performance against a set of
7
criteria and completes a self-assessment form, giving her/himself
8
an overall mark. This is done individually.
9
The peer assessment group (of four students) then meets with the
20111
following aims: to compare marks and discuss how they were
1
arrived at, to modify or endorse overall marks. Forms are then
2
handed in to the tutors.
3
Finally there is an assessment tutorial with the tutors and peer
4
group present. Tutors further discuss and ratify marks, or
5
encourage moderation of any grossly misjudged marks. Students
6
(and of course tutors) must be prepared to justify their suggested
7
marks at this meeting.
8
9 The latter two stages involved the move from private to public assess-
30111 ment. They were by far the most interesting stages and also the stages
1 in which conict was most likely to arise. The most obvious source of
2 conict was due to students unrealistic perception of the value of their
3 own contribution. We were faced with students inability to judge them-
4 selves objectively and with their inability, or refusal, to judge their peers
5 objectively, or even to judge them at all! Also common was an inability
6 to distinguish between effort and quality of output. Some students felt
7 that the effort needed to do all the readings and overcome shyness to
8 carry out the eldwork assignments should be enough to obtain a high
9 Two/one or First.
40 In the self-assessment guidelines (Figure 16) space is left in the form
41111 between questions for students comments and notes.
1111
2 Ethnography self-assessment guidelines
3
4 Name:................................................................................................................
5 Please complete this form and comment in detail in all the spaces
6 provided.
7
8 CONTRIBUTION TO THE COURSE: WHY SELF-ASSESSMENT?
9 The Ethnography Course relies on the commitment and active partic-
1011 ipation of every member of the class for its success. We value all your
1 ideas and perceptions, they are at the heart of the course. The self-
2 assessment exercise described below reects the nature of the course,
3111 which encourages you to examine critically some familiar aspects
4 of everyday life including, in this case, your own behaviour as an
5 ethnography student, a member of and contributor to an interde-
6 pendent group.
7
8
9 You will be asked to complete two self-assessment forms during the
20111 course, and will be expected to discuss your own assessment with
1 three other members of the class and have it validated by them.
2
3
4 40% of the total course mark is an assessment of your own prepara-
5 tion and contribution to the effectiveness of the course. Consider how
6 you have contributed to the course sessions. For each of the criteria
7 listed below, comment on how you think you have performed. Note
8 that what we are looking for is self-critical awareness, so do not
9 exaggerate your strengths or your limitations.
30111
1
2 When you have written-up your report, arrange to meet with the
3 other three members of your assessment group and discuss in detail
4 your own assessment of your contribution. Then, if necessary, modify
5 your own assessment in the light of the discussion and get it endorsed
6 by the other members of the group.
7
8
9
40
41111
1111 1 Attendance and preparation

2 1.1 Attendance record
3 It is difcult to contribute if you are not actually there. So you need
4 to think about your attendance record. Did you attend always /
5 usually / rarely?
6
7
8
9 1.2 Assignments: eldwork
1011 Did you (always / usually / rarely) do the assignments? Assess the
1 quality of your work on the assignments. Did you take notes as
2 suggested? Did you analyse your observations sufciently and write
3111 them up coherently before the class? How much effort did you put
4 into them?
5
6
7
8 1.3 Assignments: readings
9 Did you always read the texts in advance of the class? Did you prepare
20111 them in such a way that you could comment on them and react to
1 questions in class quickly and meaningfully?
2
3
4
5 2 Group work and discussions in class
6 What contribution did you make to the discussions in groups/pairs?
7
8
9
30111 2.1 Contribution to group discussion
1 Consider the quality of your contribution to the groups and class. To
2 what extent did you contribute information and ideas?
3
4
5
6 2.2 Receptiveness to others
7 How receptive were you to the ideas of others? To what extent did
8 you allow others to contribute and listen to what they had to say?
9
40
1111 2.3 Effort and initiative

2 How much effort did you make? Were you just sitting there letting
3 yourself be entertained by the others, or worse, encouraging others
4 to go off at a tangent?
5 Did you take the initiative when you felt the discussion was going
6 off course?
7 Did you volunteer to report back from groups in the plenary sessions?
8
9
1011 3 Class diaries
1 How often did you volunteer to do a class diary? How much effort
2 did you make to provide us with useful feedback to improve the
3111 course?
4
5
6 4 Overall assessment of your contribution
7 How much effort have you put into it? How often did you ask
8 questions if something wasnt clear to you? How much did you
9 contribute to effective use of class time by responding quickly rather
20111 than waiting for someone else to do / say something? To what extent
1 did you encourage others to contribute? Do you think the course was
2 a better one for the contribution you made?
3 We are aware that many students invest a great deal of time on the
4 readings and carry out assignments which they nd personally chal-
5 lenging. Remember, however, that your overall mark does not only
6 reect the efforts you have made, but also the quality of your output.
7
8
9 5 Any other comments you would like to add
30111
1
2 6 Now give yourself an overall mark according to the following
3 classication:
4 7080% excellent in every way (effort made and quality of output)
5 6069% very good, well above average
6 5059% reasonably good, average
7 4049% poor, but a pass
8 3039% not good enough, a fail
9
40
41111
1111 7 Assessment group meeting

2 Allow about one hour for your meeting. Start with everybody reading
3 everybody elses form. You might nd it helpful initially to consider
4 which class (e.g. 60s / 50s) is appropriate for each individual. You
5 can then rene this in your subsequent discussion. Both your own
6 and the groups agreed mark should be on the form. Remember, we
7 are not asking you to be personally critical, but to give careful and
8 objective assessments of each others contribution. Consider this an
9 ethnographic exercise in personal and group reexivity.
1011
1
2 8 Your own suggested mark: . . . %
3111 Mark agreed by assessment group: . . . %
4
5 Signed (1) ..................................................................................................
6
7 Signed (2) ..................................................................................................
8
9 Signed (3) ..................................................................................................
20111
1 Signed (4) ..................................................................................................
2
3
4 Final mark agreed with tutors: %
5
6
7 9 Tutor comment:
8
9
30111
1
2 Figure 16
3
4
5 A further problem was that peer groups sometimes avoided engaging
6 in debate and found it easier just to endorse marks by signing everyones
7 form whatever the mark they had allocated themselves. When marks
8 were modied, students tended to raise, but not to lower them, the rather
9 unsurprising result being that assessment groups awarded each other
40 marks in the same class (usually an upper second) rather than attempting
41111 to differentiate between performances. Although they were set up
1111 informally, the rst assessment tutorials were often difcult, even painful
2 events. They required careful preparation on the part of tutors, with
3 discussion of problem cases beforehand. They were the control which
4 prevented students from awarding each other 80% across the board, but
5 it was also crucial that students did not come away with the idea that
6 we were in any case going to impose our own marks, which would
7 invalidate the exercise. There were certain tactics we used to encourage
8 students to re-enter the debate about how their marks were arrived at,
9 and persuade them to approach the exercise with appropriate reexivity
1011 and objectivity. It helped, for example, to remind them of the following:
1 that the self-assessment procedure was in itself a valuable ethnographic
2 exercise in self-observation, that they were not being asked to be person-
3111 ally critical of anybody, but to be objective, that in terms of transferable
4 skills, the process was useful (e.g. going for promotion and proving they
5 are worth it, doing jobs which involve evaluation of others, organising
6 team work, etc.).
7 The second exercise, conducted at the end of the module, ran far more
8 smoothly. Students were more condent about how to approach it. They
9 felt more comfortable about engaging in open discussions of each others
20111 performances, and commented usefully on the difculties and responsi-
1 bilities of being a student assessor which they had experienced in the rst
2 exercise. Tutors seldom intervened, students took control and were less
3 passive. We found it unnecessary to modify any of the suggested marks,
4 peer groups having determined at least their own classications with
5 what we felt was a high degree of accuracy. They were able to explain
6 how these marks were arrived at through negotiation and demonstrated
7 some maturity in analysing the differences in the performances of indi-
8 viduals between this and the previous exercise. They were also able to
9 make some illuminating statements about the value of self-assessment:
30111 Youve got to know how to judge yourself: its a skill everyone has
1 to learn.
2
3 Its good for everyone to think about their strengths and weak-
4 nesses.
5 If people had peers judge them more, there wouldnt be such a
6 stigma about being personal.
7
It is to do with taking responsibility for yourself.
8
9 Particularly gratifying here was the understanding that the ability to
40 self-assess is in itself a skill, one which they will need to exercise contin-
41111 uously when doing eldwork as well as in many other contexts. We
1111 were also pleased to nd conrmation that this form of assessment

2 helped to increase motivation throughout, and that having one assess-
3 ment half-way through the course and one at the end allowed
4 self-monitoring in the interim, where deciencies detected in the rst
5 round can be worked upon before the second. Students also seemed to
6 appreciate the exercise as a valuable educational objective in its own
7 right a part of learning how to learn, and benecial even when it is
8 problematic.
9 From the staff perspective, the advantages were that students shared
1011 the responsibility of assessment and remained aware throughout of
1 precisely what was required of them. Since the peer-assessment groups
2 were established in the early stages of the course, there was more of a
3111 team effort throughout. Students were more aware of each others contri-
4 butions to group work and were more democratic about sharing the
5 opportunity to present the ndings of the group in plenary sessions. In
6 other words, the exercise helped to bring out the more reticent students
7 and tone-down those who tend to dominate. Overall, therefore, the self
8 and peer assessment exercises encouraged a sense of responsibility which
9 can also affect students orientation to linguistic and cultural difference
20111 while abroad. Instead of only thinking about whether they understand
1 you, it is a question of you trying to understand them.
2 The only disadvantage of this choice of assessment concerned the prac-
3 ticalities of organising such an exercise outside class contact time,
4 although this probably took no more time than marking a batch of essays.
5 It was also a refreshing alternative for staff, more challenging than the
6 impersonal norm of taking in a piece of work and handing it back with
7 a few comments. We got to know our ethnography students better.
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
41111
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 9
5
6 The Student Ethnography Projects
7
8
9
1011 We consider now the most visible outcome of the ethnography course:
1 the projects in their completed form. The main purpose of the
2 chapter is to explain both process and product: the ways in which
3111 students are helped to develop their ability to write an ethnographic
4 account, the range of ethnographies which are written and how they
5 are assessed. We present rst four brief descriptions of ethnographies
6 three undertaken in Germany and one in England to give a detailed
7 impression of what students can in fact produce by the end of the
8 whole process. The process lasts three years: during the introductory
9 course students carry out and write up their rst ethnography in their
20111 home environment; during the Year Abroad, they collect their data
1 but only begin the writing up; on return to the nal year of their
2 university course they write up under the guidance of tutors. The
3 ethnographic projects at Ealing count, as do all Year Abroad projects,
4 towards the nal degree classication. All projects, whether ethno-
5 graphic or not, have a word limit of 57000 words but the assessment
6 criteria for ethnographic projects are somewhat different from the
7 others (see below).
8 In the second part of the chapter we describe the home ethnography,
9 the rst experience of eldwork and writing up. This is also an assessed
30111 piece of work and the criteria used are the same as for the assessment
1 of the nal ethnography. It thus allows students to know from an early
2 stage what is involved in assessment. We then discuss some of the salient
3 characteristics of ethnographies written by students, before describing
4 in some detail the writing process and the role of the tutor. The last
5 section deals with assessment.
6
7
8
9
40
41111
185
1111 Ethnography Projects: Some Examples

2
3 1. Studying with a child an ethnographic study of
4 student single mothers. Daniela G.
5
6 The study begins with the simple question Who are single mothers?
7 and proceeds to describe the life of a group of single mothers studying
8 at the Humboldt or Free Universities in Berlin. Daniela starts with some
9 statistical data on single parents in Germany, then describes how she
1011 made contact with and gathered her own data from her informants. This
1 is approximately the rst quarter of the project. Thereafter she analyses
2 her interviews and observations in terms of three main headings:
3111 Studying and bringing up children; Daily routine; and Social contacts.
4 She explains the ways in which the students arrange for the care of their
5 children, how they organise their time very carefully and how they are
6 part of particular kinds of social networks. She does this by quoting
7 frequently from the interview transcripts, using the concepts proposed
8 by the interviewees to describe their lives. For example, she identies
9 die Morgenfrhe and die Schlafenzeiten (early morning and sleeping
20111 times) as crucial concepts with which students organise their and their
1 childrens lives. But she also examines the meanings of external concepts
2 which might be used to describe single mothers and their children in
3 order to challenge outsider perceptions. For example, she challenges the
4 conclusion of a study by the Federal Ministry for Youth and Women
5 that single mothers are isolated and lonely by demonstrating from
6 interviews and observation that these women have many social contacts,
7 do not feel lonely and have a network of support to replace the usual
8 concept of family.
9
30111 2. Female students in Marburg and their external
1 appearance. Rakhee C.
2
3 The project begins with an autobiography of the project itself, how
4 the topic arose from Rakhees own experience of feeling inappropriately
5 dressed during her rst week at Marburg University. She mentions
6 briey that she investigated the topic by interviews and observation. She
7 identies the issues by describing two groups of female students and
8 their dress, using both her own observations and the vocabulary used
9 by members of one group to describe the other. She explains how,
40 in lectures and seminars, one group dominated by taking seats in the
41111 centre of the room, asking questions during the seminar and using an
Student Ethnography Projects 187
1111 aggressive style of verbal interaction. The other group sat at the edges
2 of the room and spoke to the lecturer quietly after the session had ended.
3 She then examines each group in turn, by quoting from interviews,
4 to identify attitudes to clothing, using make-up and hair styles and their
5 symbolic meanings. She interviewed members of each group for their
6 accounts of themselves and of the other group, and she also interviewed
7 male students. Since she had begun the project from her own experi-
8 ence, she also interviewed other foreign students, female and male, to
9 explore their interpretations of the symbolism of appearance as well as
1011 their individual ways of responding to it in order to be accepted within
1 one of the German groups.
2 She concludes by analysing her observations of members of each group
3111 in public and in the privacy of their own rooms. She argues, drawing
4 upon Goffman to support her analysis, that the question of appearance
5 is symptomatic of projections of images of self, that the dominant group
6 members conformed in public to one image, sloppiness (schlampig) but
7 in private had a self-image of neatness and care.
8
9
3. Politeness on public transport in Berlin. Maria A.
20111
1 Although the title mentions politeness, Maria quickly explains that she
2 found this very difcult to observe and that the project is about inter-
3 action in public transport, and in particular about peoples use of space
4 and their degrees of contact while on buses, trams, underground or
5 urban overground trains.
6 She begins with a description of her eldwork, which consisted mainly
7 of observations but also of interviews. She points out that the history of
8 Berlin is signicant for her topic: that she lived in the former East, that
9 she had contact above all with East Berliners, and that East Berliners are
30111 the main users of public transport, as West Berliners have their own
1 cars. She also describes how difcult it was to interview people on a
2 topic they found insignicant, when they expected her to be interested
3 in the political events of the last few years.
4 Nonetheless, she persevered and her analysis of her observations is a
5 detailed account of how people behave in establishing their territory on
6 public transport and in making and avoiding social contact, particularly
7 eye contact. She supports her analysis by frequent use of Goffman
8 and her project is a kind of replication of his work in a different envi-
9 ronment.
40 She concludes by returning to the theme of politeness and the ques-
41111 tion of whether what she observed can be termed politeness. She also
1111 reects on the methodological difculties of analysing what is taken for

2 granted and considered normal, of making the familiar strange.
3
4
4. Living between two cultures: A case study. Katja R.
5
6 The study arose out of Katjas interest in British Asians at university.
7 As a German student in Britain, and herself not part of mainstream
8 university life, she was interested in how other students who were bilin-
9 gual and bicultural managed their student lives. She started by
1011 interviewing a number of rst year students of South Asian origin but
1 quickly decided to write a case study of one female student. She focused
2 down on the relationship between family obligations, and in particular,
3111 pressure to get married young, and the values and assumptions of rst
4 year student life.
5 She soon found that the stereotypes about arranged marriages
6 were over-simplied. Both parents and children acknowledge the
7 symbolic importance of marriage for the parents as an indication that
8 children have been properly brought up, for the children as an indica-
9 tion of loyalty to the family and the community. However, a close
20111 analysis of her informants comments on marriage suggested that there
1 was room for discussion and negotiation in deciding on her future. A
2 pattern emerged from her informants language in which want state-
3 ments and prefer statements from her parents were contrasted. The
4 want statements by her parents were taken as obligatory, the prefer
5 statements as offering an element of negotiation. She concludes by
6 presenting a nuanced view of arranged marriages, as perceived by one
7 student, who was shifting successfully between university and family
8 life.
9
30111
The Home Ethnography
1
2 The ethnographies described in the previous section are those which
3 are written on the basis of eldwork during residence abroad, and as
4 such represent the cumulative outcome of students work. However,
5 these are not the only ethnographies they write, as has been mentioned
6 in the account of the ethnography course. During the course, either
7 during the Easter or Christmas vacations, depending on when the
8 course begins and ends, students are asked to write a home ethnog-
9 raphy. This is often related to some activity they would undertake during
40 the vacation, or to some local theme in their home area. Some of the
41111 titles indicate this:
1111 Brass roots: How and why the brass band tradition maintains an
2 importance in Saddleworth (Yorkshire).
3 Celtic Daft: what it means to be a Glasgow Celtic football fan.
4 Right to return: refunding at a customer service desk in a Marks
5 & Spencers store.
6 Its a matter of being furbo: the Italian idea of queuing.
7 For one night a year: gift giving in Spain at Epiphany.
8 Cat and Dog People: an ethnographic study of staff at the RSPCA.
9 Were the lads: study of a group of friends.
1011 Steam in the Blood: the lives of steam engine owners.
1 Survival of the ttest: selling double glazing.
2 Things you cant get at Safeways: Portobello Road Market.
3111 I fry with my little eye : a study of a sh and chip shop.
4 All rules are made to be broken: a study of a Serbo-Croat Sunday
5 school in London.
6
7 As well as discussion in class and tutorials, students are given written
8 guidance in a step-by-step explanation of what they should do and be
9 thinking about (see Figure 17).
20111 Students are given at this stage the assessment criteria, which we shall
1 discuss later in this chapter, and an explanation of what their tutors and
2 assessors will be looking for in the ethnography when complete. The
3 stress is on ensuring that they introduce into their writing some of the
4 anthropological and sociolinguistic concepts which they have met in the
5 course, demonstrate that they have used ethnographic methods to gather
6 and organise their data, and draw on their knowledge of ethnography
7 in the analysis of their data. They are also given advice about structure.
8 They should ensure that the introduction explains clearly the research
9 question(s) they address and what methods they used. The account
30111 should be both descriptive and analytical, and they should include an
1 element of reexivity, discussing their own role in the research process.
2 The question of what is appropriate style is also discussed. As we
3 shall see below, this is one of the more difcult issues even in the home
4 ethnography, which is written in English. Many are used to writing
5 essays in a style which excludes the rst person and, when encouraged
6 to be reexive and descriptive, may tend to become too colloquial. It is
7 therefore suggested to them that there may be a storytelling style in
8 part of their account, which will be balanced by an academic style
9 in the analysis of their data. As we shall see in the next section and in
40 the section describing the writing process, style and presentation are a
41111 signicant issue where guidance is crucial.
1111
2 Introduction to ethnography vacation assignment
3 preparing a home ethnography
4 This assignment gives you an opportunity to put into practice the
5 skills you have learned so far and to apply the concepts you have
6 acquired. We suggest you follow the steps set out below and hope
7 you are going to enjoy doing it.
8
9 1. First choose a broad area of interest, e.g.:
1011 Family
1 Education and socialisation
2 Gender relations
3111 Social space and non-verbal communication
4 etc.
5 2. Identify possible informants in general terms, i.e. who will it be
6 possible to work with fairly easily?
7
8 3. Think about a general research problem which interests you, e.g.:
9 (If you are in a job) what has motivated people to go and do this
20111 kind of work and how far did school experience lead them into this?
1 To what extent does the workplace you are studying create/construct
2 different roles for men and women?
3 What is it like being a . . . (profession/job) and . . . (add a specic,
4 relevant problem).
5 How does a local event (e.g. a market) get done, and what does it
6 mean to people who sell/shop there?
7 N.B. We dont expect anyone to actually pick one of these titles. They
8 are just to give you an idea of the kind of question you may want to ask.
9 Former students have done eldwork in areas as various as a parish
30111 church, an animal shelter, and senior citizens social clubs.
1
2 4. Interview two or three informants and/or the same informant
3 several times
4 By interview we mean any kind of eliciting conversation in which
5 you have an opportunity not just to participate but to be a researcher
6 and take things further, i.e. test your understanding. This may mean
7 an interview which is specially set up, or it may mean focusing on
8 a particular aspect your informant is talking about, and by showing
9 interest, questioning or prompting to encourage them to talk more
40 about it. If it is a formal ethnographic interview you may be able to
41111 tape it. Do remember though how long it takes to do transcriptions.
1111 5. Participant observation is a key method of obtaining data, but

2 remember that the focus of the assignment is also on interviewing.
3
6. You should start taking notes from the very beginning.
4
5
6 Figure 17
7
8
9 Some Characteristics of Ethnography Projects
1011
1 One of the main purposes of the ethnography course and the projects
2 is to encourage students to analyse and understand the new environ-
3111 ment in which they nd themselves and, secondly and, sometimes as a
4 main focus, to come to terms with the difference they experience. It is
5 not surprising then that the examples of nal projects described above
6 arise from the immediate environment, from the university where
7 students study or the transport they use to get there, for example. Nor
8 is it unusual that a topic is formulated as a consequence of personal
9 experience, as in the case of Rakhee. Nonetheless, the choice of topic is
20111 very wide. Figure 18 gives a few examples.
1
2 French
3
4 Le Club de Ptanque Aubervilliers.
La Socialisation au Sein dune Famille Franaise.
5
Le Carnaval de Nice: qui veut devenir Carnavalier ?
6
7
German
8
9 Alltagsbewltigung der Blinden und ihre Interaktion mit Sehenden.
30111 Die Kategorisierung auslndischer Studenten durch ihre deutschen
1 Kommilitonen. Ein ethnographischer Bericht.
2 Ellbogengesellschaft: an ethnographic study of assertiveness in
3 Germany.
4
5 Spanish
6 Prostitutes and Identity in Cadiz.
7 Young people in Seville changing concepts of maleness and female-
8 ness.
9 ONCE an organisation for the blind.
40
41111 Figure 18
1111 There are other common factors in many projects which are a conse-
2 quence, of course, of the recommendations and guidance of tutors. Yet
3 these factors can be handled in many different ways and are not a recipe
4 treated as an automatic means to success. We propose here to identify
5 and discuss some of these factors in order to show how the projects are
6 related to the preparatory course and to anticipate some of the criteria
7 by which they are assessed.
8
9
Reexivity
1011
1 In our analysis of ethnography as a concept in Chapter 5, we pointed
2 out how the experience of ethnography involves epistemological rela-
3111 tivity, reexivity and critical consciousness. Our problem in the Ealing
4 programme was to see how far these dimensions could be introduced
5 into the experience and reection of linguist ethnographers. We
6 suggested that, for linguists in particular, these aspects of ethnography
7 might be most accessible through their developing awareness of the
8 difference in language used by informants among themselves and their
9 familiar contacts, and the language they might use to outsider ethnog-
20111 raphers (Bourdieu, 1977; Cohen, 1983). Ethnographers need to be
1 sensitive to the ways in which their modes of eliciting accounts of cultural
2 practices, and the accounts themselves, may be inuenced by their own
3 impact on the situation, by the ways in which they are perceived by
4 those they observe or interview and with whom they interact. This in
5 turn, it is hoped, will lead them to reect critically upon their own cultur-
6 ally determined pre-suppositions, on what they had taken for granted
7 as natural rather than culturally relative. These are two dimensions of
8 eldwork and writing an ethnography which we call reexivity.
9 Students were therefore encouraged to include in their projects
30111 accounts and analyses of the eldwork process, and they did weave into
1 their texts a reexive analysis of the process of doing ethnographic
2 research. We have already mentioned how they explain the gradual
3 emergence and formulation of a topic and its signicance for them both
4 as researchers and as actors in the social environment they nd them-
5 selves in. These two are not separable and they include in their reections
6 the description of the methods they use to gather data. Sometimes this
7 account of methods and their own anxieties or enjoyment of observa-
8 tion and interviewing become the leitmotif of the project. In other cases
9 the project begins with the analysis of the process and then moves to
40 presentation and analysis of data, perhaps returning to a reexive dimen-
41111 sion as part of the conclusion.
1111 In some cases, the analysis of their interaction with others in the eld
2 including their informants involves the identication of signicant
3 effects of their presence on the data collection. They recount their
4 mistakes, when people around them notice that eldwork notes are
5 being written about them, and discuss the, sometimes painful, ethical
6 problems which arise in the relationships they establish with informants.
7 Thus in the best cases, students begin to understand the ways in which
8 their reconstruction of the others world may differ from the others
9 experience of that world. On the other hand, there is much less evidence
1011 of the second step being taken, towards a relativisation of their own
1 world. It is possible that students consider this to be more suitable for
2 the diaries which some keep and if the ethnography project is to contain
3111 reexive analysis, let alone a critical consciousness of the ways in which
4 ethnographic accounts may be ethnocentric, then an explicit discussion
5 of these issues has to be introduced into the programme.
6
7
Data collection and analysis
8
9 Students often draw attention to the ways in which they conduct inter-
20111 views or carry out observations. They document their eldwork by listing
1 dates of interviews and periods of observation and use these as refer-
2 ences in their study. They also discuss the problems of interview
3 transcription and anonymity of informants. In describing their methods
4 of observation, students discuss the degrees and kinds of participation
5 they become involved in. When travelling on public transport in Berlin,
6 Maria not only observes the behaviour of others but conforms herself
7 to the unwritten rules she is in the process of discovering. Having
8 discovered her topic as a result of a feeling of unease about her appear-
9 ance among students in Marburg, Rakhee changes her own appearance
30111 to conform with one of the groups she analyses, and becomes part of
1 their social networks. Daniela, on the other hand, remains an observer
2 of single mothers and had some difculties in gaining access to them in
3 their specic networks.
4 Thus in their different ways, students live the dilemma of distance
5 and proximity, which, as we suggested in Chapter 5, is fundamental to
6 ethnography, and which is nonetheless an opportunity to see what those
7 in the situation cannot. As with the issue of reexivity and relativisa-
8 tion, however, students do not always problematise the experience, by
9 analysing it with the help of appropriate literature, for example. The
40 question remains whether they should be introduced more explicitly to
41111 recent debates in anthropology, or whether as linguist ethnographers, it
1111 is sufcient that they are aware of different degrees of proximity of their
2 potential as mediators.
3 They often also undertake document analysis. A project on German
4 perceptions of foreigners, for example, includes an analysis of legal
5 documents dening different kinds of immigration and degrees of
6 German nationality, as well as analysing the categorisations used. This
7 type of data is triangulated with their ethnographic data to provide
8 a wider context within which the detailed cultural interpretations can
9 be judged.
1011 Data presentation takes various forms, some students quoting directly
1 from interviews or observation notes, others describing and para-
2 phrasing. Analysis often includes discussion of specic terms used by
3111 informants; for example Rakhee analyses schlampig (sloppy) versus
4 gepegt (neat, careful), and another student bases her project on the
5 signicance of the word Leistung (achievement) in German schools.
6 Thus the analysis is grounded in the data, and concepts evolve as
7 students become more familiar with the environment and the language
8 used within it, rening their research questions as a consequence.
9 They also draw upon the conceptual literature, either in detail by
20111 taking over one persons analytical concepts Goffman, as we saw in
1 examples above or by using the concepts they had encountered in the
2 ethnography course. For example, Daniela discusses the networks and
3 boundaries which underpin the social contacts of single mothers.
4
5
Writing in a foreign language
6
7 The projects are written in the target language and this in itself gives
8 them a particular character. Although marks are not explicitly given for
9 language competence, the use of appropriate register, proof reading,
30111 presentation and so on contribute to the overall standard of the project
1 and so the general assessment if it. Students are encouraged to get help
2 from native speakers who may read the drafts for linguistic accuracy
3 and appropriate register.
4 Writing an ethnographic project in the foreign language raises partic-
5 ular issues. First, when struggling to express their understanding of
6 social phenomena, their renements of methods for data collection,
7 their personal responses to the demands of eldwork or their reexive
8 reassessment of their own culturally determined preconceptions,
9 students might already nd themselves pushing at the limits of their
40 command of their rst language. Some of the issues which arise are not
41111 peculiar to ethnography, since there is much debate about requiring
1111 language students always to write in the foreign language, whether about
2 literature or area studies. It is, however, the case that students are used
3 to writing most of their course work in a foreign language and the over-
4 riding purpose of requiring them to do all projects during the Year
5 Abroad in a foreign language, whether ethnography or not, is to impose
6 greater demands on their language skills and give opportunity for
7 improving linguistic competence.
8 Those issues which are particular to ethnography include the fact that
9 during the Introduction to Ethnography course, students are socialised
1011 into an Anglo-American discourse as the material and theory is largely
1 from that tradition. This means that when they attend courses on anthro-
2 pology or ethnologie at a university in the foreign country, the methods,
3111 approaches or terminology rarely have much in common with their
4 previous experience. They have therefore to transfer the concepts and
5 theory from the ethnography course taught in English into the foreign
6 language. They have to nd ways of expressing not only what they say,
7 but how they say it, and what concepts and frameworks they can use
8 to discuss their analysis. As they are involved in this process of writing,
9 the connections between language and culture become particularly clear
20111 for many students. Writing in a foreign language gives a greater sense
1 of conceptual faithfulness to the informants and their cultural contexts,
2 and some students feel there is less danger of imposing alien concepts.
3 Writing in the foreign language also has the advantage of corre-
4 sponding and interacting with the experience of students themselves,
5 living the demands of their research in the foreign language, with respect
6 to local terms and classications for example. Yet there are doubtless
7 moments when they would have a feeling of clarity in their rst language,
8 while in their foreign language they are seeking to express themselves
9 through a medium they can manipulate with less facility. This some-
30111 times appears in the text as repetition and reformulation of a single
1 point. It is also no doubt a factor in the search for uent formulation
2 of difcult analytical concepts or methodological terms, which some-
3 times leads to inaccuracies of syntax or morphology. Problems of
4 orthography, on the other hand, can be overcome by using a spell-checker
5 from a word-processing package for the language in question.
6 The specic problem of translating terms used during the course can
7 worry students a lot, but most deal with this quite effectively with their
8 tutors help, either with a glossary at the end, or by using the terms in
9 English (e.g. going native, local level politics) with a brief explanation in
40 the foreign language within the text. For example, in the introduction
41111 to one project there is the following statement:
1111 Ich fand es schwer to make strange. Mein Instinkt zwang mich,
2 deutsches Verhalten anzunehmen, weil ich angenommen werden
3 und mich in Deutschland wohl fhlen wollte. Es gab einen Konikt
4 zwischen meinem Wunsch mich darin zu vertiefen und meiner Rolle
5 als teilnehmende Beobachterin.
6 (I found it difcult to make strange. My instinct forced me to
7 take on German behaviour, because I wanted to be accepted and
8 feel at ease in Germany. There was a conict between my wish to
9 plunge into it and my role as participant observer.)
1011
1 Here the student has found the phrase to translate participant observer
2 but not to make strange. Sometimes, as in the case of Goffman cited
3111 above, translations of work in English exist in the foreign language, and
4 a student can read into the discourse and quote from the translation.
5 The problem of register is less easily resolved. Reporting on doing
6 ethnography can lend itself to an anecdotal style, particularly when there
7 is strong overlap of subject and object, as when a student in trying to
8 be more reexive, constantly brings herself into her observation and
9 interpretation of the other. Because students have become acquainted
20111 with academic texts largely through extracts, and since those texts tend
1 to be in English, they have no obvious model on which to draw, unlike
2 students of anthropology who will have read many ethnographic mono-
3 graphs before they write their own.
4 To sensitise students to the issues of writing, there is a unit on Writing
5 an Ethnographic Project during the ethnography course, and there is
6 opportunity to discuss some of the problems with respect to the home
7 ethnographies written before students go abroad. The fact that there are
8 related problems in the home ethnography, written in English, means
9 that not all can be attributed to writing in a foreign language. Another
30111 way of giving students more practice is by encouraging them to do all
1 their eldwork notes and diaries in the foreign language from the start.
2 This is particularly helpful when there is tutorial support available in
3 the early stages of translating from the raw data to more abstract theo-
4 retical language.
5 Tutors help with these problems, as we shall see in the next section,
6 and are themselves aware of the contemporary debates on the signi-
7 cance of the act of writing in ethnographic research (Atkinson, 1990,
8 1992; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Marcus & Cushman, 1982). Writing is
9 itself a cultural production. The ethnographer, in her choice of words,
40 use of metaphor and decisions about what to highlight and what to play
41111 down, is constructing her reality of the group or scene she has observed.
1111 Ethnographic texts do not simply and transparently report an inde-

2 pendent order of reality. Rather the texts themselves are implicated in
3 the work of reality construction (Atkinson, 1990: 7). This is the case
4 when the studies are of a home group where informants and ethnog-
5 rapher speak the same language. The situation is more complex where
6 data and the ethnographic writing are in different languages, as in most
7 anthropological studies, and is even more complex, as with students on
8 the year abroad, where the study is written in the language of infor-
9 mants which is a second language for students.
1011 It is, for example, possible that the process of writing in the foreign
1 language leads students to impose on the reality they are seeking to
2 interpret metaphors transposed from their rst language or simplica-
3111 tions resulting from an imperfect grasp of the foreign language. As
4 pointed out in Chapter 5, anthropologists have become aware of the
5 need to be critically self-conscious about these risks (Asad & Dixon, 1985)
6 It is thus evident that there are specic issues of writing created by the
7 particular circumstances of the course and the requirement to write in
8 the foreign language which are complex and need to be taken into
9 account both by students themselves as researchers and by tutors, partic-
20111 ularly in assessment.
1
2
Valuing the Process
3
4 The nal product is in most cases a text of some 7000 words, and in
5 exceptional cases longer, written in a uent and largely accurate register
6 appropriate to academic writing. Projects are divided by chapters, and
7 follow the usual academic conventions. They are personal reports with
8 a strong sense of reexivity, but they are also academic reports based
9 on original data collected in the eld and requiring particular linguistic
30111 and cultural competences. However, the process of writing is frequently
1 not an easy one and tutorial work is essential. In this section we shall
2 describe the evolution of one project from a rst draft written at the end
3 of the Year Abroad to the nished report, which is bound and submitted
4 for formal assessment.
5 The student, Sophie, was a student of Spanish and French and spent
6 the rst part of her Year Abroad in Spain before going to Nice where
7 she was to do her ethnographic project, briey discussed in Chapter 8.
8 At rst she was uncertain as to her area of research, but her stay coin-
9 cided with the spectacular Carnaval, which seemed to her to be an
40 important part of local life. She became interested in what went on
41111 behind the scenes: what went into the creation of the Carnaval, who was
1111 responsible for making the oats and orchestrating the event. Her eld-
2 work led her to some key informants, M. Provigna, the president of
3 an association called Les Artisans and locally known as king of the
4 carnavaliers, and Annie Sidero, who has written about the Carnavals
5 history. Annie Sidero belongs to a family which has for generations
6 produced carnavaliers, but cannot be a carnavalire in her own right
7 since the title is handed down from father to son. She has nonetheless
8 organised carnivals as far aeld as Bradford and Blackpool and is a
9 campaigner for the right of women to join the exclusive ranks of the
1011 carnavaliers.
1 Sophies main research question was soon narrowed down to an explo-
2 ration of hierarchy, boundaries and exclusion in the world of the
3111 carnavaliers.
4 The rst involvement of Sophies tutor, Shirley, was when Sophie sent
5 a collection of documents from her eldwork, including:
6
locally published documents about Annie Sidero;
7
transcripts of interviews/ethnographic conversations with her four
8
main informants;
9
an index of recurring themes;
20111
articles from a publication Le Monde en Carnaval;
1
an index of recurring themes in the interviews with 27 headings;
2
information about the structure, organisation, history of the
3
carnival;
4
descriptions and notes from her own observations;
5
a eld diary.
6
7 The challenge of writing is often daunting for students. To tell you
8 the truth, Sophie wrote, I dont really know where to start on my
9 research question of inclusion/exclusion. The difculty can partly be
30111 accounted for by her producing what Burgess (1984) calls substantive
1 eldnotes, which are largely a continuous and descriptive record, rather
2 than analytic eldnotes which draw out concepts based on interpreta-
3 tion of the data. It is also partly a question of the contrast between the
4 excitement of eldwork and the discipline of writing up. In tutorials she
5 would talk easily about doing ethnography rather than writing: I mean,
6 its good fun, you know, going out there and seeing loads of people and
7 interviewing, but it is hard, really hard, writing up.
8 Her excitement which was so palpable during the tutorial was not
9 transmitted in the draft. She gave a lengthy and intoxicating oral
40 account of the opening night of the carnival which was supplemented
41111 by photos. She described the early buzz of excitement, the increasingly
1111 unruly activities and the nal ritual burning of oats. She also recounted
2 her growing curiosity about what went on behind the scenes. However,
3 her written account did not linger over the spectacle. Sounds, sights, the
4 atmosphere and even the smells of the carnival were all worth recording,
5 but she omitted them. Shirley pointed out that as a reader she would
6 like to be grabbed by the carnival just as Sophie herself was. Instead
7 her draft began without impact, I decided to do a study of . . ., and all
8 the drama was lost. They discussed how she was overwhelmed by the
9 environment, which she felt unable to capture on the page, and
1011 the difference between that and something more familiar, like an ethnog-
1 raphy of the ofce where she worked. The comparison helped her to
2 see what was lacking in her writing.
3111 Once she got started, Sophie began to enjoy it: Well, Ive started!
4 Im really enjoying it, but organising and nding the right data to
5 put in is a bit mind-blowing . . . It is typical that students do not recog-
6 nise the quality of some of their data. Collecting it has often entailed
7 substantial effort, but they then begin to take it for granted. In the
8 preparatory course much emphasis is placed on becoming steeped in
9 ones data from the early stages, entering into a constant dialogue with
20111 it and indexing it so that it is accessible for interpretation and readily
1 retrievable. Yet students often do not recognise the potential of their
2 data. In Sophies rst draft, for example, some signicant points
3 were only mentioned in passing, and in the rst tutorial Shirley was
4 able to elicit far more information than was in the draft. There was
5 a balance to be struck between relating the data to the anthropolog-
6 ical concepts she had learnt about in the preparatory course and the
7 thick description crucial to an ethnographic account. Discussion in
8 tutorials helped with the former but then Sophie became so involved
9 with the conceptual analysis that she began to write a fairly super-
30111 cial account because she felt that the detail was banal: You get so
1 immersed in it, you know so much about it, you think, oh, everyone
2 else must do too.
3 So at this stage, her analysis was not adequately grounded in an
4 account of the data and there was little evidence for her claims. She was
5 reminded of an early assignment in the preparatory course where the
6 emphasis was on making strange and on providing a highly focused,
7 ne-grained description of what seemed too self-evident to be worth
8 comment, and she realised that she had become so absorbed in the rela-
9 tionship of concepts to data that she had dismissed the most obvious
40 and was not providing the reader with a sufciently detailed descrip-
41111 tion. Initially, she was equally dismissive of her eld diary, notes on
1111 how people were and how they were as informants and stuff, and how
2 the interviews went. Just silly things that I thought Id write down.
3 However she gradually realised they were actually quite handy,
4 providing an aide-mmoire, some new trains of thought and particularly
5 some valuable reexive comments on her informants response to her
6 as a young female researcher interested in the gender politics of the
7 world of the carnavaliers. As a consequence, she was able to introduce
8 a sensitive reexive dimension into her report, contrasting the ways in
9 which Annie Sidero and her male informants had responded to the same
1011 questions and accounting analytically for the taciturn response of some
1 of the carnavaliers.
2 The general organisation of the report was also a problem. The rst
3111 draft had been written without a sufciently detailed plan, and she
4 had not properly formulated her main research questions, as became
5 evident in the discussion with Shirley: . . . the boundaries theyve
6 built around themselves, the carnavaliers, and its preventing the main
7 philosophy of the carnival, and its passion, its their life. My main
8 theme is inclusion/exclusion. Its just trying to put in other sub-
9 headings which are the most connected, like hierarchy and honour,
20111 things like that, family, but I mean theres so much, Ive just so much
1 . . . Sophies index was a help but Shirley encouraged her to produce
2 a scatter sheet also used by staff in writing up their own work as we
3 saw in Chapter 6. This is a kind of mental map, on one sheet of paper,
4 with people, events, concepts major themes, key words, etc. jotted down
5 at random, from which connections can be established between the
6 various items.
7 In the analytical sections of her report, Sophie related her material
8 well to some of the anthropological concepts encountered in the prepara-
9 tory course. These included family, gender, boundaries, hierarchies and
30111 local level politics. Some of her data required her to become acquainted
1 with new concepts. She noticed the signicance of status for the carnava-
2 liers: Its their pride that strikes you most when you meet them. So
3 Shirley provided her with some of the literature on honour and shame,
4 which helped her to consolidate her analysis and see how it was related
5 to other work.
6 Some material was presented through diagrams and charts. Students
7 do not always spot the appropriate place for this. For example, the organ-
8 isation of bodies responsible for the carnival is complex, and in discussion
9 of how this should be presented Sophie discovered it was both a good
40 way to present material to the reader and a way of organising her own
41111 thoughts (see Figure 19).
1111
Reprsentation schmatique de lhirarchie des corps du carnaval
2
3 NICE
4
LA VILLE DE NICE
5
6 LE COMIT DES FTES
7 (This committee chooses the theme of the carnival and is respon-
8 sible for the overall running of the carnival)
9
LES QUATRE ASSOCIATIONS DE CARNAVALIERS
1011
1 LES ARTISANS LES AS LUNION LAMICALE
2
LE PRSIDENT
3111
4 LE CHARISTE
5 (Who organises the construction of the oats)
6
LE GROUPISTE
7
(An established maker of the grosses-ttes.)
8
9 LE SOLITAIRE
20111 (A young carnavalier making his rst grosse-tte)
1
2
3 Figure 19
4
5 Her diagrams included a ow chart of the hierarchy of organising
6 bodies, a list of her main informants and their functions in the
7 carnival, and a breakdown of the different tasks and roles people have
8 in preparing for the carnival according to hierarchy and gender. This
9 latter diagram helped her to establish how rigid the separation of tasks
30111 actually was; for example, how the peripheral work is undertaken by
1 those who can never become carnavaliers, including foreigners and
2 women. She then realised that the tasks allocated to women were largely
3 the traditional ones they also undertake in the family environment, such
4 as sewing, following instructions for painting and generally playing
5 supportive roles.
6 On the other hand, Sophies use of verbatim data demonstrated a
7 common problem among students, namely that they think the quota-
8 tions speak for themselves. Shirley helped her with developing analysis
9 of quotations, looking more closely at the language used, which was
40 particularly important since there was a common discourse among male
41111 informants which needed to be made visible. She needed to give more
1111 attention to key words, to how informants spoke about issues, to the
2 names and categories they used to describe their world. For example,
3 as we have seen, Sophie had gained a strong impression of the pride of
4 her informants in their work and status as carnavaliers. She reported
5 this as fact, but without detailed analysis of the discourse; where ert
6 and honour are mentioned, there is little evidence to substantiate the
7 claim that they are proud to hold the exclusive title of carnavalier.
8 Finally, there is the question of style, tone and voice in an ethno-
9 graphic report. We discussed earlier the issues arising from writing in
1011 a foreign language, but there are also other characteristics of the genre
1 which are new to students. Writing an ethnographic report gives students
2 the opportunity to produce a distinctive and original piece of work,
3111 which is both personal and academic. In many cases, students produce
4 a piece which is too informal throughout. The style of the account,
5 combined with inadequate analysis of data can mean they end up
6 sounding like an informant rather than an ethnographer.
7 As we saw earlier, Sophie had a variety of sources: her own obser-
8 vation notes and informant interviews, historical and background
9 information and anthropological literature. The report would be a combi-
20111 nation of voices: her personal voice, that of her informants, and that of
1 the academic researcher. Unlike many students, she found it difcult to
2 write herself into the report, perhaps due to her training in writing essays
3 where the rst person is strictly avoided. So Sophie and Shirley discussed
4 the report as a piece of writing with a plot, with moments of surprise
5 and suspense, and Sophie decided that in part her report would be a
6 narrative account of her own voyage of discovery, starting with the
7 broad picture, the excitement of the carnival as spectacle, then the formu-
8 lation of her storyline: whats behind the carnival, what goes into
9 making it, who are the people at work behind the scenes.
30111 Her analytic conclusion was grounded in the detailed data she had
1 collected and was also informed by her reading about the carnival and
2 more general anthropological notions of exclusion:
3 Lexclusion contredit la dnition fondamentale du carnaval
4 Antoine (a retired carnavalier) lui-mme a dclar propos du
5 carnaval que a fait un ensemble.
6 Cependant, actuellement le carnaval ne dmontre pas un ensemble,
7 mais est constitu de petits groupes qui sont jaloux les uns des autres,
8 et qui excluent rigoureusement certaines personnes. Antoine ne
9 semblait pas conscient de ces divisions et de la contradiction vidente
40 entre sa dnition du carnaval et la vritable situation; peut-tre, il
41111 ne voulait pas y faire face.
1111 Annie, par contre, est rsolue de raliser sa propre dnition dun
2 carnaval comme un facteur dintgration culturelle et de lutte contre
3 lexclusion, malgr le sectarisme des carnavaliers qui rgne dans le
4 carnaval de Nice aujourdhui. Annie est sre que la situation
5 changera; il faudra bien quun jour il change; cest en train de
6 changer, quand mme en trois ans.
7 En revanche, M. Bozzano nest pas si optimiste: a cest difcile.
8 Cest pour le demain. Cest changer la mentalit complte du
9 carnaval.
1011
Translation
1
2 Exclusion runs counter to the fundamental denition of the Carnival
3111 Speaking of the carnival, Antoine himself declared that Its a harmo-
4 nious whole. Todays Carnival does not, however, reveal a whole,
5 but is made up of small groups who are envious of each other and
6 who work hard to exclude certain people. Antoine did not seem
7 aware of these divisions and of the glaring contradiction between
8 his denition of the carnival and the real situation; perhaps he did
9 not want to confront the issue.
20111 Annie, on the other hand, is determined to bring into being her
1 own conception of the carnival as a force for cultural integration
2 and part of the struggle against exclusion in spite of the reigning
3 spirit of sectarianism the Carnavaliers bring to the Nice Carnival
4 today. Annie is sure that the situation will change: It will have to
5 change one day; there has been a process of change going on in spite
6 of everything over the past three years.
7 M. Bozzano, on the other hand, is not so optimistic: That will be
8 difcult. Its something for the future. It would mean changing the
9 entire mentality of the Carnival.
30111
1 Sophies conclusion was a neat and ironic one but she still had a great deal
2 of work to do to show how the detailed data analysis led her there. The
3 process of writing up is thus a complex one where tutorial help is crucial.
4 Each situation is of course different, but this account of how Sophie and
5 Shirley worked together perhaps gives an impression of the nature of the
6 process and the relationship between student and tutor at this stage.
7
8 Assessment Procedures
9
40 Ethnographies are not the only kind of project students may do
41111 during the Year Abroad. Those who have not followed the Introduction
1111 to Ethnography course carry out Area Studies projects. However, all
2 projects are dealt with according to the same procedures, even though
3 the assessment criteria are different. They are awarded a provisional
4 mark based on the text, by one or two internal examiners and one
5 external examiner from another university. The mark is then confirmed
6 or amended after a 20-minute oral examination, conducted in the
7 foreign language, at which the external and at least one internal are
8 present.
9 External examiners are briefed by the ethnography team the rst time
1011 ethnography projects are submitted to them. They are generally less
1 accustomed to certain features, for example the reliance on rst-hand
2 data and student interpretations of them, or the often unfamiliar
3111 bibliographies, which are usually related to methods or concepts, rather
4 than being country specic as in Area Studies projects, or the issue of
5 generalisability of cultural patterns on the basis of the study of a small
6 group. Furthermore, examiners are not always familiar with the object
7 of study, and the substance, if not all the theory of cultural inte-
8 rpretation, may well be more familiar as it relates to cultural patterns
9 that they do know. This leads to very lively debate and discussion, and
20111 provides students with a valuable opportunity to translate what they
1 have learnt for an outsider who is usually a native or near-native
2 speaker and is regarded as an expert on the culture and society of that
3 country.
4 In the oral examination itself, students are also given a chance to
5 develop or clarify ideas that perhaps were not satisfactorily expressed
6 in the written text. This often results in marks being slightly raised after
7 an oral examination, when the external examiner has veried the value
8 of the project. Examiners have commented favourably on the originality
9 of students research and conclusions, on their engagement with their
30111 topic, on their initiative in developing a topic and on the use of rst-
1 hand data. We mentioned above the signicance of reexive analysis by
2 students of their own effect on the situation in which they are working,
3 and the ways in which they critically reect on their own cultural knowl-
4 edge. This does not always appear explicitly in their project text, but it
5 often emerges clearly in the oral examination as students are questioned
6 on how they decided to interpret their data in particular ways.
7 Examiners also raise problems peculiar to ethnographic projects, with
8 respect for example to what can be considered evidence and how gener-
9 alisable the ndings may be. This is another reason why it is important
40 that students include an explicit description of the circumstances of
41111
1111 the research, with a reexive account of how data were obtained and
2 analysed.
3 The formal criteria for assessment are familiar to students from their
4 Home Ethnography (see Figure 20). In order to explain what can be
5 achieved in practice, we shall describe one successful ethnography which
6 was awarded a rst-class mark and which we have referred to, in passing,
7 already.
8 Graces study was entitled Die Kategorisierung auslndischer
9 Studenten durch ihre deutschen Kommilitonen. Ein ethnographischer
1011 Bericht. She begins with an introductory explanation of the structure
1 of the report, which has two initial chapters describing the develop-
2 ment of the research problem and the report on the eldwork,
3111 methods and sources of data collection. The development of the research
4 problem arose from her own initial response to the expectations of her
5
6
7
8 Assessment criteria
9
The ability to pose interesting and innovative questions that lead
20111
to an illumination of the material.
1
Evidence of theoretical understanding of reading to underpin
2
the particular study.
3
The ability to use appropriate data collection methods both
4
systematically and creatively.
5
A proper recognition of some of the methodological problems
6
involved in the collection of ethnographic data.
7
A proper recognition of ethical issues related to informants.
8
The ability to select, order and describe research material in a
9
coherent and persuasive way.
30111
An ability to draw interesting, analytical conclusions from it
1
which demonstrate underlying patterns and cause.
2
Sensitivity to language use in its social and cultural contexts
3
and an understanding of the construction of concepts and mean-
4
ings out of the language used by participants in social settings.
5
Initiative, commitment and reexivity in developing an ethno-
6
graphic project.
7
The amount of effort put in to overcome difculties, collect data
8
systematically, etc.
9
40
41111 Figure 20
1111 German student peers with respect to what is appropriate behaviour,

2 and secondly from her noticing how foreign students tended to meet
3 with each other and have little contact with their German peers. She
4 points out that although, at rst glance, the report appears to be about
5 foreign students, it is in fact about German students and how they
6 respond to foreign students.
7 After these two methodological chapters, there is a background
8 chapter to explain how and why foreign students come to Germany in
9 general and to the University of Marburg in particular, where Grace was
1011 enrolled herself as a student. The next chapter is based on document
1 analysis and interviews with those in charge of the ofce for foreign
2 students. It analyses the categorisation of students to be found in the
3111 law and in the declarations of ofcials and politicians.
4 The next two chapters are introduced as an analysis of the categori-
5 sations used in the student culture with respect to foreign students, for
6 which the legal categorisations serve as a backdrop, but which do not
7 coincide with the legal and ofcial categories. Both chapters are focused
8 on the ways in which foreign students can adapt and be accepted by
9 their German peers, thus revealing the ways in which German students
20111 expect others to present themselves. The rst of these chapters considers
1 the factors which are unchangeable, such as physical appearance, country
2 of origin and length of residence. The second analyses the factors where
3 foreign students can change, such as development of linguistic compe-
4 tence and the adoption of German value systems with regard to order
5 and prociency for example, or social skills and sexual behaviour.
6 The nal chapter summarises the hypothesis which guided the work
7 and the ndings. It also includes a critique of the research reecting on
8 its limitations, on the effects the doing of the ethnography had on Graces
9 understanding of her own situation in Germany as a student, and on
30111 what she felt she learnt about German value systems in general. The
1 report nishes with endnotes which give the sources of statements in
2 the text, including the dates when interviews took place, and an appendix
3 which lists all the sources of data: interviews with German and foreign
4 students, observations in the refectory, cafeteria, lectures, student parties
5 and so on, again with dates, and a bibliography of work on foreign
6 students in Germany.
7 One of the major strengths of Graces work is in her understanding
8 of methodological issues. For example, she explains the ways in which
9 she found and interviewed informants, making distinctions between
40 those who were already known to her and those who were new. She
41111 describes the advantages and disadvantages of each, and how the move
1111 from acquaintance or friend to interviewer could affect the subsequent

2 relationship. She also analyses her own expectations of what would
3 happen in interviews, which topics might be sensitive and difcult to
4 discuss, and then explains how these expectations were not always
5 fullled and the effects on the course taken by the interview. She
6 concludes her discussion of the interview process with foreign students
7 as follows:
8 Durch die Interviews mit den auslndischen Studenten lernte ich
9 vor allem, wie entscheidend meine Rolle als Interviewerin war. Meine
1011 Erwartungen, Vorurteile und ngste konnten die Interviews beein-
1 ussen, und meine Interpretation von ihnen. Obwohl ich die
2 Meinungen der Interviewpartner erforschte, erforschte ich gleicher-
3111 weise meine eigene Rolle und mit jedem Interview verbesserte ich
4 meine Methoden und entwickelte meine Rolle.
5 (Through the interviews with the foreign students I learnt
6 above all how decisive my role as interviewer was. My expectations,
7 prejudices and anxieties could inuence the interviews and my
8 interpretations of them. Although I was researching the opinions of
9 my interview partners, I was simultaneously researching my own
20111 role, and I improved my methods and developed my role with
1 each interview.)
2
3 It is clear from this and similar passages in the report that the ethnog-
4 raphy meets the criteria concerned with ethical issues and reexivity.
5 The careful documentation of data collection and citation from inter-
6 views and documents, together with the discussion of the difculties of
7 interviewing and observing are further strengths in respect of method-
8 ology criteria.
9 The data analysis chapters can be divided into those which are based
30111 on public data, the statistics on foreign students, the legal documents
1 and interviews with representatives of the ofce for foreign students
2 and private data from interviews and observations in the university.
3 The former are presented in a way which draws upon anthropological
4 concepts of boundaries and social groups. The latter are analysed in
5 terms of over-arching categories which Grace has extracted from the
6 descriptive and narrative language of the interviews. She uses quota-
7 tions to support the categories grounded in the data. For example, she
8 argues that one crucial mode of adaptation is in alltgliche Sitten (daily
9 customs) and refers to an extract from an interview:
40 Um gesellschaftlichen Kontakt zu haben, mu der Auslnder
41111 bestimmte soziale Fhigkeiten lernen, z.B. Rino aus Indonesien sagte:
1111 Am Anfang fhlte ich mich nicht wohl dabei, in Kneipen zu gehen,
2 weil ich nicht wute, wie man sich verhalten mute. Es gibt berall
3 kulturelle Regeln, die man lernen mu. Aber jetzt wei ich genau,
4 was ich machen mu, wenn ich in Kneipen gehe, auf Feten, zum
5 Tanzen oder mit Frauen umgehen soll.
6 (In order to have social contact, the foreigner must learn certain
7 social skills, for example Rino from Indonesia said: At the begin-
8 ning I didnt feel at ease going to pubs, because I did not know how
9 to behave. There are cultural rules you have to learn everywhere.
1011 But now I know exactly what I have to do when I go to pubs, to
1 parties, to dances or how to behave with women.)
2
She also uses appropriate literature, for example to support her identi-
3111
cation of the signicance of sexual behaviour as a crucial factor in
4
5 adaptation, as also appears in the quotation from Rino.
6 The sub-headings for these chapters give an indication that Grace has
7 ordered her material according to the analytical categories she has iden-
8 tied, not yielding to the temptation of letting descriptive material
9 dominate. From her initial questions about why foreign and German
20111 students seem to remain separate, she has developed an analysis which
1 demonstrates nuances in the particular situation she was observing and
2 links with general social issues of how Germany is responding to an
3 inux of foreigners in recent years. Thus criteria such as ability to draw
4 interesting, analytical conclusions from (research material) which demon-
5 strate underlying patterns and cause are well met by Graces account.
6 As was pointed out by one of the assessors, Grace raises many inter-
7 esting questions and is looking for new ways of understanding what
8 everyone is conscious of. It is also worth remembering at this point that
9 students write in the foreign language and that the external examiner
30111 commented on her uency and accuracy saying that the project itself
1 is positively stylish in its narrative condence.
2 It is important to have some relatively objective way of assessing
3 cultural learning and the ethnography represents the best way that we
4 have found of doing this. It is possible to assess how much cultural
5 knowledge has been learnt in more traditional ways, through essays or
6 tests, if by that we mean positive facts about the school system, trends
7 in popular music or aspects of a societys history or myths, for example.
8 But, when cultural learning concerns the everyday and the values and
9 beliefs of a particular group and also involves an awareness of the
40 students own cultural being, then an ethnographic study provides
41111 the intellectual and emotional space to display such learning.
1111 But in this chapter, we have also tried to stress the importance of the
2 process of writing an ethnographic project as well as the nal outcome.
3 As we have suggested, for many students the process of being there,
4 collecting data and analysing it was just as important as the writing up
5 and, in any event, cannot be separated off from it. In the next chapter
6 we look more closely at the process of learning while abroad and use
7 students evaluations to examine the whole programme from the ethnog-
8 raphy course through to the nal year of the modern languages degree
9 course after the ethnographic studies have been completed.
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
41111
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 10
5
6 The Year Abroad: An Ethnographic
7
8 Experience
9
1011
1
2
Student Interviews
3111
4 The preceding chapters have focused on the teaching and learning
5 process during the ethnography course. The core of the Ealing project
6 is, of course, the period of eldwork during the Year Abroad. For the
7 students, as we shall see, the integration of their eldwork into the whole
8 process of preparation and of writing up and being assessed on their
9 return, was a crucial experience and one quite different from that which
20111 is offered on more traditional modern languages programmes. This was
1 indeed one of the main aims of the Ealing project as curriculum devel-
2 opment, and the research element of the project included a focus on the
3 evaluation of the integration process. For this reason, students in
4 the rst cohort were interviewed on their return, during their rst term
5 back in Ealing.
6 Evaluation was also carried out informally through class diaries of
7 each session of the ethnography course and through the eld diaries
8 which students were strongly encouraged to keep and which they were
9 free to submit or not as part of their project. In this way, ongoing eval-
30111 uation of the ethnography project as a whole can be maintained but the
1 in-depth interviews reported here can only represent the experience of
2 doing ethnography for the original group. An additional factor to bear
3 in mind is that this group of students was closely monitored. They were
4 as they called themselves the guinea pigs. So their representations of
5 the experience of being student ethnographers may well have been
6 affected by the Hawthorne effect (in which the very process of being
7 researched on can make the experience more positive for the group
8 studied).
9 The focus of the interviews was very much on their experience while
40 in Spain or Germany, doing their eldwork. All the students had spent
41111 several months in two countries, since they studied two languages, but
210
The Year Abroad 211
1111 their ethnographic studies had been carried out in the rst country they
2 visited, in the rst half of their Year Abroad, from September to January
3 or February. The project in the second half of the year was less substan-
4 tial and intended to be of the kind usually required in Area Studies
5 courses a long essay about an aspect of the society in which they were
6 living, usually library-based. Although the interviews concentrated on
7 their rst placement, some students carried over their ethnographic skills
8 into their writing of the second project and this suggested that doing
9 ethnography was compelling, even when more traditional and less ambi-
1011 tious projects were all that was required.
1 The experience of doing an ethnographic study was still a vivid one
2 for them after being back in England for several months, and despite
3111 the intervening stay in a second country. The interviews dealt above all
4 with the eldwork, but also attempted to stimulate discussion on the
5 Introduction to Ethnography course and the writing-up and follow-up
6 phase. They found, on the whole, the former difcult to discuss sepa-
7 rately from their eldwork; it had become an integrated experience and
8 in that respect already demonstrated the success of the Ealing project
9 overall. The follow-up phase, including tutorials and writing their
20111 ethnography projects, was being completed at the time of the interviews
1 and was therefore very much in their minds.
2 In the rst year of the project, nine students volunteered to partici-
3 pate and it is their experience which is reported here. They were all
4 attached to a university rather than in a work placement or acting as
5 language assistants in schools, although one of the group, Antonia, had
6 arranged to be an au pair for a family in Seville and studied her ve-
7 year-old charge Quino as part of her ethnography (see Chapter 2).The
8 students spent about ve months in two out of the three target coun-
9 tries, France, Germany and Spain, and undertook their ethnographic
30111 projects in either Germany or Spain.
1 In succeeding years, the numbers grew quickly as the reputation of
2 the ethnographers became established in the institution, so that a class
3 usually contains about 20 students. They all go abroad as students, but
4 developing language learners as ethnographers could work equally well
5 with those going to a work placement or as language assistants.
6 During their semester in Germany or Spain, they were visited on one
7 occasion by one of their ethnography lecturers. This was part of the
8 existing practice, and other students also received one visit from a
9 lecturer. This allowed students to discuss their work, to assess their
40 progress with the lecturer and, in some cases, encouraged them to review
41111 and organise their eld notes for the discussion. Tutorials were held
1111 with a group in a particular location in Seville, in Granada, in Marburg,

2 in Berlin and with individuals. Lecturers took notes during these visits,
3 which are used here, to give an impression of student accounts of their
4 experience mid-way through their eldwork.
5
6
In the Field
7
8 The following is taken from notes made by Ana during her visit to
9 the students in Seville, in November, some two months after their arrival.
1011 They focus on the conversations she had with Gary. Two weeks before
1 the visit, when Gary had been in Seville for only six weeks, he wrote
2 to Ana saying that Im now having big doubts about the whole thing.
3111 Im seeing too many things fault of being taught how to make strange?
4 Changing ideas for the project every hour, i.e. food, gambling, shouting.
5 You name it, Ive thought of it!. But during the visit Ana and Gary were
6 able to clarify things together:
7
8 Gary is making fairly good progress living with a Spanish man,
9 Rafael, who has put him in contact with a lot of people e.g the ex-
20111 mayor of Seville. Gary commented: Ive been casting my net wide
1 to get a feel for what I want to look at, which has made me do a
2 lot more, talk a lot more and go to loads of places I would never
3 have gone to before.
4 When I arrived he had already started narrowing down. Now his
5 project is on Sevillano identity, looking at how Sevillanos differen-
6 tiate themselves from others who are considered to be less andaluz.
7 He has narrowed it down to analysing what the barrio he lives in
8 is all about. His key informants are: R., his landlord, who has been
9 involved with the local hermandad organising for the Feria; A,
30111 the housekeeper who calls herself Sevillana but is from a pueblo
1 near Seville and JL who is also involved in the Feria but on a more
2 popular level than Rafael. JL is from a barriada a nearer suburb
3 of Seville and is also involved in singing and romerias (procession).
4 Gary is exploring, for example, the role played by the two main
5 virgins in Seville in the construction of identity. (There are hundreds
6 for almost every barrio but the people he has met are followers of
7 the two main ones e.g. on everyones key rings etc.). Most of Garys
8 notes are headnotes he hasnt started indexing yet but we worked
9 out a rough plan with analytical categories which he is working on
40 now. He commented: Ive become really weird with all this ethnog-
41111 raphy. Im living it 24 hours a day. So I couldnt stop if I wanted to.
The Year Abroad 213
1111 His main problem has arisen over the issue of informal inter-
2 viewing. He had not told anyone what the topic of his ethnography
3 was going to be when he went out one night with JL to a popular
4 amenco bar. Gary started to question him about his barriada,
5 how he felt about being Sevillano. Gary was bombarding him with
6 questions and JL called him cabezn (stubborn, pigheaded) for
7 pretending to be a bit dumb. Because of this difculty with JL, we
8 discussed the next day the pros and cons of telling JL about the
9 project. We decided that Gary would say that he had just had a bril-
1011 liant idea to do his project on what makes Sevillanos so special as
1 a result of talking to JL. Gary did not want to say he had been
2 studying him all along as they had become good friends over the
3111 last two months. Gary needed to change his approach a little from
4 playing stupid. I suggested that he stopped asking why or what
5 does that mean questions and instead just tried phatic communi-
6 cation or repeating back the others words. He found this much more
7 productive.
8 More generally, the group of students in Seville had really become
9 a group. They help each other, even collect notes for each other and
20111 give moral support by going to each others sites. For example, Gary
1 goes to church with Antonia and, as well as classes on the anthro-
2 pology of Seville, he joins her in the anthropology of religion classes.
3 Also, certain general things overlap in their ethnographies such as
4 performance as an aspect of Sevillano identity. Gary also drew
5 parallels with his home ethnography on his group of friends in
6 a Yorkshire village, specically to do with issues of inclusion
7 and exclusion.
8 Gary said that, like all the others, on the one hand, he felt at home
9 now, he had a life in Seville and he did not want to go to his next
30111 placement and was going back for the Feria as he felt he could not
1 possibly miss it now. On the other hand, he said that ethnography,
2 by virtue of looking always for patterns below the surface, had made
3 him see things in a far less romantic way. So he had to deal, initially,
4 with a certain disillusionment and negativity, before getting to appre-
5 ciate it again. For example, the group are still quite critical of some
6 aspects of Sevillano life, which they say is because they understand
7 it better. In particular, they are critical of what they call the theatre
8 side of Spanish life: Everything is for show. It will be interesting
9 to see if they can develop this idea into a more relative, analytic
40 view that in a sense everyone is a social actor. I talked a little
41111 about Goffman in this respect.
1111 Anas comments demonstrate the importance of the lecturers visit in

2 the early stages of doing an ethnographic project. For Gary, the mix of
3 general moral support, condence boosting that what he was doing was
4 not weird, specic help with methods and some conceptual nudges to
5 remind him and the others to stand back a little from the data to be
6 more analytical, all helped to steer him at a crucial moment in his devel-
7 oping project.
8 On their return to England, at the beginning of the fourth year of their
9 course and after a semester in another country, students had further
1011 tutorials to discuss their writing up of their projects, and seminars in
1 which they presented their work to others in the group. It was at this
2 point that the interviews took place.
3111
4
Preparation and The Real Thing
5
6 In their evaluation of the ethnography course, students were unani-
7 mous in nding the course both rather unnerving at rst but later
8 exciting, quite different from their other courses, valuable as prepara-
9 tion and, more broadly, educational in making them continually question
20111 and re-examine things that I took for granted. One student summed it
1 up this way: The course tackled fundamentally signicant issues. It has
2 given method, structure, condence and legitimacy to the study of areas
3 which have always interested me. However, although students found
4 the ethnography course interesting and worthwhile in itself, bringing
5 them to reect on themselves and the cultural practices in their own
6 society, it was all preparation for the real thing. This in fact fell into
7 two parts, the eldwork and writing up, for although students were
8 encouraged to begin to write their ethnography project while in Spain
9 or Germany, they in fact did so on their return to England. Those who
30111 had made a start found that it did not work:
1
Grace: And the thing was I just couldnt write in Germany. I tried to
2
write in Germany, I just couldnt. Because I was living with a lot of peo-
3
ple Id interviewed and it felt like I was living it every day and I just
4
couldnt get a clear perspective on it at all. And it was only when I left
5
Germany that I could concentrate and actually sit down and write it.
6
7 The choice of a topic was linked in different ways to the ethnography
8 course. Students were encouraged to choose at the end of the ethnog-
9 raphy course while they were still in Ealing, in part to ensure they had
40 an initial focus and also so that lecturers could help them before they
41111 left. In some cases this did actually become the basis for their project.
The Year Abroad 215
1111 In Garys case, as we mentioned above, it was a development of his

2 Home ethnography, done, in his case, during the Easter vacation.
3
Gary: We decided two months before we went out. Actually we did
4
the Easter ethnography.
5
Interviewer: Yes I remember reading, I found that really interesting.
6
Gary: I think I chose it because of the Easter one because that was
7
about identity as well. And it just seemed an obvious thing to do,
8
I dont know why.
9
1011 In more frequent cases however there was a complete change:
1
2 Toni: . . . what I was going to do didnt work so I changed. I went
3111 to church and it occurred to me when I was there (. . .) I was going
4 to do it on women, like my French one. I thought it would be a
5 good idea, especially since my French one had an ethnographic bit
6 but it just didnt work out. I didnt know what was going to be there
7 when I arrived.
8 Anna: I wasnt getting anywhere. But also a lot of people found that
9 when we got there . . . it was all very well choosing a title here but
20111 when we got to Spain there was a thing that struck us much more
1 than what wed already thought of. You know things we saw in the
2 street, thatd be a great project to do, you know, it was so obvious
3 but youd never think of them here.
4
5 In other cases, as we saw in the analysis of projects in chapter nine, a topic
6 arose out of students early experience of the country, in the rst weeks of
7 their stay. One student felt she was treated as a foreigner, yet differently from
8 some other foreigners, and the question of German perceptions of foreign-
9 ers became her theme. Another started from an existing interest in dance:
30111 Sandra: Yeah so then what I started to do, there was this bar in
1 particular. There was a bar in particular in Granada that they just
2 exclusively played the Sevillanas. And so I decided, you know, I
3
started to go there because I love the dance myself, I mean Ive been
4
to Andalusia before, and its a really fun dance you get a lot of plea-
5
sure doing it. So I started to go and I just started to observe it.
6
7
8 Data Collection
9
Much of the ethnography course had focused on data collection and
40
analysis. Students had already had experience of participant observation,
41111
1111 of interviewing, of reviewing and indexing their eld notes, partly from
2 weekly assignments and partly from their home ethnography. In the
3 eld, they engaged in different kinds of interviewing, sometimes audio-
4 recording conversations and interviews and sometimes in informal con-
5 texts where they made written notes afterwards. Grace reported how she
6 ensured her interviewing was on a systematic basis, by comparing of-
7 cial documentation with the opportunities in her immediate environment:
8
Grace: Oh yes, so then I started interviewing people, on my oor
9
basically, cause that was my only real contact with foreigners, and
1011
through them I met other people. And I tried to take a fairly broad
1
section of what was (indistinct) I had gures from the President of
2
the Universitys ofce, it was something about a breakdown of what
3111
nationalities there were (indistinct).
4
Interviewer: Thats very resourceful.
5
Grace: I tried to try and get a cross-section because, well because
6
otherwise I was in danger of just talking to . . . I knew a lot of
7
Indonesians and things like that. So I sort of, like, a mixture of
8
Chinese, Iranian, Palestinian, Persian. And then I did interviews with
9
Europeans and Americans as well. But mainly stuck to the ones who
20111
werent European.
1
2 Gary, developing his home ethnography, took an opposing approach,
3 deciding not to make his topic explicit at rst, as we have seen earlier.
4 People assumed he was writing a project about Expo1990, while in fact
5 he was studying concepts of local identities in Seville. He did this largely
6 through participant observation, and very informal interviewing of
7 people around him, trying to clarify their ways of talking about them-
8 selves as people of Seville:
9
Interviewer: So by Christmas youd got your main informants sorted
30111
out in your mind?
1
Gary: Yeah.
2
Interviewer: Did you ever interview them in a more formal way?
3
Gary: What do you mean by formal?
4
Interviewer: Well . . . Can I come along and talk to you about . . .
5
Gary: No, no. (Indistinct) . . . in bars. And then the other people I
6
knew I didnt, I mean obviously if they started talking about it,
7
I did try and get things out of them. I didnt go out of my way to
8
interview everybody.
9
40 Students also described different levels of participation and observa-
41111 tion. Initially, it was not always evident to them, despite earlier
The Year Abroad 217
1111 experience, how their observation could help with their topic, for example
2 with the project on German perceptions of foreigners.:
3
Grace: Observation was a huge problem, I just couldnt understand
4 how to get anything out of observation. And, you know, cause I used
5 to sit downstairs in the University cafeteria which is where all the for-
6 eigners would group together and it was a place where you could
7 make connections between who sits with Germans and who doesnt.
8
9 She nonetheless persevered, attending various lectures and seminars as
1011 well as the cafeteria before turning to interviewing, which proved
1 productive.
2 Sandra, working on the theme of the Sevillanas, was more of a partic-
3111 ipant and found this gave her plenty of material:
4 Sandra: They knew that (what the topic was), because I would talk
5 . . . and every time I went out and I met different people I would
6 always get talking about Sevillanas. Any excuse I had. And they
7 love talking about them. Its a very passionate subject in Andalusia.
8 And so then if I was with a friend I would dance with them. The
9 thing is theres so much pressure to dance it, from what Ive found
20111 through my participant observation, was that youd be watching a
1 roomful of people dancing Sevillanas and yet youd be watching
2 two couples and one couple would attract you so much and yet the
3 other wouldnt. And I thought well wait a minute you know theyre
4 doing exactly the same dance.
5
6 At this point in Sandras account, there is evidence of how students
7 become interested in semantic analysis. They focus on the language of
8 their informants and on specic keywords. Sandra identied the keyword
9 gracia (grace) and explains how she noticed this in the way people
30111 talked about the dance:
1 Sandra: So then this element of being graceful or having grace came
2 into it. So they were saying, Well thats what differentiates them
3 you know, they have to have grace. So I was thinking, Ive got to
4 look at this dance, and I spent hours I mean I couldnt even tell you
5 how many hours. I mean throughout the whole six months I dont
6 know maybe twenty, thirty hours a week just watching the dance
7 and trying to distinguish the elements of what having grace meant.
8
A similar situation is described by another student:
9
40 Christiane: . . . the thing is that I had an informant and I was using
41111 him quite a lot and I was saying, Well you know there are certain
1111 words that I dont understand, I dont understand what it actually

2 means so can you explain it to me? And he would do it like that,
3 used to do it like that.
4
They also, in some cases, kept diaries, which served a double purpose
5
of allowing them to give vent to their doubts and emotional stresses,
6
and also to serve as a collection of observations:
7
8 Grace: Well I kept a diary like we were supposed to, every day, and
9 that really helped enormously. Even if I didnt do anything the whole
1011 day, Id take the diary, because there were things that came up in
1 the diary that you pick out afterwards, and you know theyre such
2 a help, this little instance you dont realise.
3111 Interviewer: And stuff as well that you might forget later?
4 Grace: Oh totally. I put down all my thoughts about the whole thing
5 you know. Any of the grievances I had or anything like that.
6 Interviewer: Are we going to see this or is this . . .
7 Grace: I think Hanns (tutor) saw it. Ive still got it somewhere.
8 And that really helped, cause later you make connections and think,
9 Oh that happened to me earlier.
20111
1 In another example, the diary merges into eld notes and an alternative
2 to using a tape-recorder for interviews:
3 Chris: I used it for some of that, questioning the whole point of why
4 I was doing it. Just thoughts that came into my mind however
5 disconnected I just put it down. Whats the point of doing this?
6 Followed round by . . . I dont know who it was a male prostitute
7 followed me Whats the point? I used to stick in my diary inter-
8 esting. I was enjoying it but What the hell am I doing? That kind of
9 thing. Also, trying making comments of a reective nature myself
30111 and about the nature of each of the informants and the source
1 where I got the information from, as to why it may or may not be a
2 meaningful piece of data either given or been received and inter-
3 preted and what might have inuenced what I actually put in the
4 main part as data. Did not use tape recorder, I could not have, really
5 couldnt have handled the volume of stuff coming over. I would have
6 to be spending hours listening to the tape and trying to decipher.
7
8 In fact, during their stay they said they were totally immersed in their
9 project and couldnt stop taking notes. At the same time, there were
40 other students from Ealing who were not doing ethnography projects
41111 and who perhaps felt that the ethnographers formed a clique, always
The Year Abroad 219
1111 talking about identities and boundaries and so on. The ethnographers
2 compared themselves with their colleagues and felt that they had become
3 involved in the society around them more quickly, had a more sensi-
4 tive awareness of, for example, forms of politeness in Spain, and
5 sometimes felt embarrassed by their colleagues who made less effort to
6 adopt appropriate ways of behaving. They also felt greater ownership
7 of their projects and saw them as very different from the factual account
8 they were used to writing:
9
Grace: At college you get loads of facts. Most of it isnt your own,
1011
1 but this is all your own. None of this is anyone elses.
2
3111 The Writing Process
4
5 One of the issues which students felt insecure about at the point when
6 their tutors visited, was the style in which they should write their projects.
7 They needed at this relatively early stage to discuss writing-up in general,
8 but the question of reexivity, which had been introduced in the course,
9 was still worrying them. Most of their academic writing up to that point
20111 required an impersonal style, but as we saw in the analysis of nished
1 projects earlier, they were encouraged to analyse their relationship with
2 informants in the eld, and the possible impact of their own presence
3 on the data they were collecting.
4 On the other hand, there is little evidence either in the projects them-
5 selves, or in the interviews cited here, of a reexive reassessment of their
6 own pre-suppositions about the environment they found themselves in
7 and also their own environment in England. It would be surprising if
8 the experience of analysing the values and meanings of people in another
9 cultural environment did not have this effect. What was perhaps lacking
30111 in our work with students was an explicit incentive to see reection on
1 self and the relationship of their own cultural values to those of the
2 people they were studying as a legitimate aspect of foreign language
3 work. It is only recently that this aspect of language learning has become
4 an explicit objective stated in curriculum documents at secondary school
5 level, and it is even less evident in higher education. Traditionally, the
6 attention of language teachers and their learners has been focused exclu-
7 sively on the foreign, leaving reection on the self at best to tacit learning.
8 Only in the case of translation exercises is there explicit comparison and
9 contrast, and the purpose is to search for equivalences, implying an
40 underlying uniformity, rather than to face difference and the challenge
41111 of denaturalisation of the all-too-familiar .
1111 Students were also concerned, during their tutors visits, about the
2 assessment of their projects, which they knew would be part of their
3 nal degree classication. On the other hand, they knew that it counted
4 for only 5% of the total, a peculiarity of the institution but symptomatic
5 of the low priority given to work from the Year Abroad in many other
6 universities. In fact, their commitment to the project led to a higher than
7 average grade across the group.
8 The writing process itself came at a later stage, although the degree
9 of integration with eldwork varied. From one point of view, the process
1011 was constant and not really separable, even if the writing was delayed
1 until the following summer:
2 Toni: Im handing it in on Friday. It seems to have just dragged on
3111 for ever now cause its been over a year since we went, and weve
4 been doing it since then. And really apart from the time that I was
5 in France, and even then I was thinking about it, and the other girl
6 I was with, Kate, was going through it as well, we kept noticing
7 how much it inuenced us then. So we were never free of it for the
8 whole year, even though we werent actually working on the project
9 in France, and all through the summer writing it all up, yeah, sorting
20111 it all out, and now typing it up, because its so long.
1
2 Even when a certain distance has been achieved and with it a perspec-
3 tive that allows the writer to reect on how they are going to organise
4 the work, the experience of writing varied. Whereas Grace said she hated
5 it, because I had the ideas but maybe the categories werent clear,
6 others found it less difcult. Anna was the kind of writer who mulls
7 things over and then sits down to write.
8 Anna: Id already worked it out in my head in which categories I
9 wanted them all to go, Id already worked out. So when I worked
30111 it out, when I wrote it up it wasnt too difcult, just getting the data
1 together I think and working out what a tradition is and which parts
2 belong to an institution maybe, and just working out what the actual,
3 like, the headings would be. How this information had to be sorted.
4
Sandra reported two stages in her writing-up on the Sevillanas. She
5
had come to some conclusions while still in Spain, but began to ques-
6
tion them as she gained more time and distance and then she reviewed
7
the whole dissertation in a concentrated period after returning to
8
England:
9
40 Sandra: Because I mean I went to Spain (again) this summer but I
41111 went to the north and I remember I was talking to people about my
The Year Abroad 221
1111 conclusions then, but I mean, I started to question them. And I was
2 thinking well you know wait a minute, it cant be as empty. But I did-
3 nt pursue it any further until afterwards. I came back and I started
4 reading over it and I handed it in here. And they (the tutors) were
5 saying you know I was always talking about this empty performance
6 and thats when you know I took it home and in a week I mean I just
7 basically lived it, like maybe two weeks ago, completely got into it.
8 And you know I started to see these things and I also started to see
9 different aspects. Religion came into it as well. Image came into it.
1011
We suggested when analysing the ethnographies, that writing in a
1
foreign language is an unusual aspect of these projects, and students
2
were clearly aware of this issue. They felt that accuracy was not their
3111
main problem, but rather their awareness of semantic elds and conno-
4
tations.
5
They had often made a particular effort to study the semantics of their
6
topic and this doubtless heightened their feelings of inadequacy, and yet
7
also increased their sensitivity to the language. Grace speaks for herself
8
and others when comparing with English. It is a moot question whether,
9
if writing in English, they might have encountered simply a different
20111
kind of problem:
1
2 Grace: I think the main problem is being able to express, you know,
3 in the correct way. Youre never sure when youre writing it in
4 German if youre actually saying what you wanted to say in English.
5 Because obviously theyre so, like, something in English may mean
6 something different in German and not in a huge way but in a small
7 way. You know, different connotations or words or something you
8 know, or things like that.
9
The effect of writing in a foreign language, after acquiring the discourse
30111
of ethnography in English, was evident in the nished projects, and there
1
was the constant danger of simplication and transposition of modes of
2
interpretation embodied in the writing itself. The students themselves
3
were aware of repetitions and grasping at terms in their writing; trying
4
to translate things like going native and participant observation, as
5
one student put it. It was felt to be a particular problem by those who
6
had begun to learn the language at the start of their university course:
7
8 Toni: Yes it is hard because my Spanish isnt that brilliant, even
9 though as I say it did get better when I was in Spain, I think. But
40 its hard enough to express some concepts of ethnography in English
41111 let alone do it in a language thats not even my second language
1111 because I was ab-initio, like Christiane. So I dont know. A lot of the
2 time I couldnt express exactly how I wanted to or put it in any
3 depth or any subtleties, nothing. And its all very repetitive prob-
4 ably for that reason. Thats the only way that I could do it and get
5 across everything that I want to as best I can, so it wasnt all bad.
6
Other difculties included the wish to put into the project the whole
7
experience, the feelings there are lots of feelings that are not there
8
and the personal development involved:
9
1011 Toni: It is very difcult and more than anything else its frustrating
1 because you cant really, or I havent been able to and I know other
2 people are frustrated with theirs. There isnt any way that you can
3111 condense into a project of that size everything that you went through
4 to get to the state where you can actually write about the project.
5 Youd have to be having a sabbatical and writing novels to be able
6 to do it and were not, so it is frustrating because theres so much
7 more that you want to say or so many more parts of the net that
8 you want to explore but you really cant. And even having cut it
9 down as much as we have, theyre still too long.
20111
1
Living the Ethnographic Life
2
3 Some students thus regretted that they could not describe everything
4 that you went through, and others needed their eld diaries to express
5 some of that feeling and reect upon it. The Year Abroad is for many
6 people a moment of signicance in their lives as linguists. It is a period
7 of major change. Doubtless part of this is general maturation, but linguists
8 certainly consider that there is at least an acceleration of that process,
9 and probably much more, because of the demands and stresses involved.
30111 One of the hypotheses of the project was that there would be some
1 specic advantages in using ethnographic methods. Although there are
2 many purposes for the Year Abroad, the major ones seen from the univer-
3 sities point of view are the increase in students understanding of a
4 society where their target language is spoken, and an improvement in
5 their mastery of the language itself. It is nonetheless possible for students
6 to spend a substantial period in another country and have little contact
7 with native speakers or with the institutions and practices around them.
8 This is particularly the case when students live in university hostels with
9 other foreign students, and take courses designed specically for foreign
40 students. We hoped that ethnography would at least bring students into
41111 closer contact with their environment.
The Year Abroad 223
1111 In practice they felt that doing ethnography was the dominant factor
2 in their stay, in contrast to those doing Area Studies projects:
3
Grace: Their project (referring to other Ealing students) was some-
4
thing that they could just go home after lectures and do for an hour
5
or two, you know, and thats it and nish and thats it, switch off.
6
They would be researching it in books or whatever as well as
7
pamphlets and whatever. But it was something that you had to do
8
all the time, ethnography is something you had to do all the time,
9
so I felt it made my time there more productive for me.
1011
1 For some it became such a dominant factor, that they began to feel
2 annoyed:
3111
4 Christiane: And I was really angry and thought, Heck Im not doing
5 ethnography. Im just going to have a social life. But ethnography
6 doesnt leave, I mean doesnt go, its there to stay. And I found
7 myself saying well you know I left the ethnography I said, well
8 thats it you know. Stuff this whole project Im going down to the
9 pub, Id been invited to the pub. And we were sitting in this pub
20111 and I was talking to these German friends and I started looking
1 because they were people I was living with and my ethnography
2 was about them. I started looking at the way they were sitting and
3 why they suddenly, in that particular set-up, chose to speak to certain
4 people about certain things. You know I was thinking, Oh, Christiane
5 this is getting a bit crazy. Here you are at eleven oclock at night in
6 a pub trying to relax and youre doing ethnography, it cant go on.
7 Others echoed the notion of getting a bit crazy with phrases such as
8 why cant I just enjoy this (Gary) and I kept seeing all the way through
9 the things that related to my project . . . I would probably, you know,
30111 have done my head in, in the end (Toni).
1 One effect for those who went to Spain, was to remove quite quickly
2 the illusions they had. They reported this to their tutor when she visited
3 them and again when reecting on their stay in the following year:
4
5 Sandra: I went to Granada with a very romantic idea of Sevillanas,
6 very romantic idea. You know, I believed this whole image of Spain,
7 you know, sun . . . I mean even though I go there every summer I
8 still have this very touristic image of Spain because thats all I do,
9 I go to the sun, I go to the beach, sunny weather, go out. And so I
40 went to Granada, decided to do Sevillanas and went in with a very
41111 romantic view of it. I absolutely love Sevillanas you know, I love
1111 dancing so, you know. But then when I started to do this ethnog-
2 raphy I started to see. I didnt actually at the beginning realise. It
3 wasnt obvious, the social and moral values in the dance arent
4 obvious so I didnt actually gure this out till maybe two weeks
5 ago. So I just had this like really big transition from having such a
6 romantic idea of it to a completely depressed view about it.
7
It is particularly interesting to see how Sandra rst had an indenite
8
sense of disillusionment and only later was able to analyse the dance in
9
terms of its values. This then gave her a deeper satisfaction through her
1011
increased understanding. This is a parallel process to that which some-
1
times took place in the classroom during the course. We saw how
2
students resisted the analysis of gift-giving as exchange and poisonous
3111
but then, at least in part, accepted that at a more analytical level there
4
was another way of looking at gifts. The ethnographer quickly gains
5
a quite different view of a country she might be familiar with in
6
another role.
7
With respect to increased knowledge of the country and people, some
8
students attributed this directly to the ethnography project:
9
20111 Grace: It really was basically about the Germans, how they view
1 everything, their perception. Even though it was through the
2 foreigners talking about the way Germans saw them. But I think I
3 have a really much better understanding of how the Germans tick
4 now than I did.
5 Interviewer: In what way?
6 Grace: Just things like why, what motivates their kind of behaviour,
7 things like that. I mean one of the major chapters in our project was
8 about German law and how rigid it is and people just do tend to
9 stick to the law you know.
30111
So, here we have evidence of how some stereotypes can persist, although
1
with a qualication in the phrasing just do tend to. One of the effects
2
of doing ethnography was to reduce this way of observing. Already
3
during visits from tutors, it was noticed that students were being more
4
cautious about hasty generalisations and the usual clichs. In contrast
5
to Graces statement, Christiane takes one such generalisation, that
6
German students study a lot, and qualies it as a consequence of her
7
observations:
8
9 Christiane: It doesnt mean that the whole nation does the same
40 thing, thats one of the things you learn too. I also know that.
41111 OK, I was with German people, German students and they were
The Year Abroad 225
1111 particularly nice in that particular set-up. But I cant say that all
2 German people are very nice people as a result of that. It was in
3 that set-up, it was with these people. But I can understand also better
4 about the way they see life. There was one thing, about the German
5 students: they study a lot. Well I mean it is a bit of a myth actually.
6 It is true to say that some people do study a lot but some others do
7 not study that much. But it is depending on what theyre doing,
8 what stage of their studies. All sorts of factors come into it.
9
The point was reinforced by Sandra who made an explicit link with the
1011
demands of ethnography:
1
2 Sandra: Well I think, you know, the conclusions that you come up
3111 with (in) ethnography, you cant just come up with them if youve
4 just seen it once. So you know you need to be culturally aware, you
5 have to spend a hell of a long time actually looking at it. And every
6 time you look at a certain situation you observe different things and
7 then they lead you on to other things.
8 Interviewer: So it would make you more wary now of jumping
9 quickly . . .
20111 Sandra: Oh yeah I dont take things at rst glance at all.
1
This kind of circumspection about the extent of their knowledge was
2
pursued by Toni, who suggests there are distinct limitations to the under-
3
standing and to the sense in which one might feel at ease in a foreign
4
country. She argues that if one has not been brought up in a certain
5
culture there are some things, tiny, stupid things, which remain beyond
6
ones grasp and that the difference creates a tension. It is of course
7
precisely such tiny things which the ethnographers were studying in
8
specic aspects of their environment. This tension leads to an awareness
9
of being an insider to a certain point, but with a critical perspective
30111
which, elsewhere, we have called critical cultural awareness (Byram,
1
1997a):
2
3 Toni: And youve already had an upbringing somewhere else thats
4 played a part in creating the person that you are, you cant lose that,
5 theres nobody whos a neutral person. So I suppose thats one thing
6 that really did become apparent, you know, you felt as I said before,
7 they let you into their group or they let you become involved, but
8 only up to a point. But its far enough for you to be teetering on the
9 edge between feeling really bad about what you say about them and
40 actually realising that youll never be one of them so why should it
41111 matter what you say.
1111 Interviewer: But in a way what youve been saying is you become
2 more critical than they would be of themselves. Do you think thats
3 true or not?
4 Toni: Yes. Probably due to two things, the fact that you did start as
5 an observer and you are purposely looking at them with specic
6 questions in mind. And the other reason being what weve just said:
7 that you werent brought up that way.
8 So the critical perspective has been heightened by the task of formu-
9 lating and investigating questions in the ethnography, and Toni at least
1011 has gained a complex insight into the nature of social groups, inter-
1 group relationships and the process of socialisation.
2
3111
4 Language Acquisition
5 The issue of having close contact with people around them, through
6 interviews and observations and sometimes from participating and
7 friendships, is also related to the question of language acquisition. We did
8 not set out to measure language acquisition as others have done
9 (Coleman, 1996; Dyson, 1988) but we did ask students for their views.
20111 One, Anna, felt that she had not made noticeable progress because she
1 had been quite procient already, having lived a year in Spain on a pre-
2 vious occasion. Grace said she felt she had not made as much progress as
3 in her understanding of Germans and German culture: I know its a
4 learning process but for me it was more a learning process about Germans
5 and German culture than about German language. Others felt that doing
6 ethnography had obliged them to make contacts despite their reticence:
7
8 Toni: The rst thing is I think my language improved (indistinct) .
9 . . because it made me approach situations differently. It made me
30111 more bold where perhaps I wouldnt have been before. Regardless
1 of my ability in the language Id just, like, go for it, and so that
2 helped ultimately.
3 Christiane: Well it did help because it forced me, as I say, to go
4 and talk to people, which I wouldnt have done. I would have quite
5 . . . I think I would have quite happily sat down at my desk and
6 done my law work, taken my books. I would have quite happily
7 done that because I felt so cut off when I arrived in Germany, that
8 thats basically what I would have done.
9
Christiane also compared this favourably with attending university
40
language classes in Germany, which were either too difcult when
41111
The Year Abroad 227
1111 intended for native speakers or too crowded with little opportunity to
2 speak, when provided for foreigners.
3 The students and their tutors had already remarked at the time of the
4 visit that the project forced them out into the community and gave us
5 something to talk about, particularly improving their listening skills
6 through speaking with local people. In retrospect they contrasted this
7 with an Area Studies project which they had seen their colleagues
8 engaged in:
9
Gary: Getting back to the language thing, I hadnt thought about
1011
this, but rst of all there were three other students there and thinking
1
back now, they never used to sit . . . The only Spanish person
2
living there was the landlord but I used to sit with him for hours
3111
and used to talk to him about Sevillian identity. So yeah it did. It
4
did improve it.
5
6 Sandra: Yeah. And you have to speak to people, whereas if youre
7 doing Area Studies you dont have to speak to anybody at all really,
8 I mean you can just go into a library and do that.
9
Finally, we return to the issue of doing semantic analysis as part of
20111
the ethnography project and the attraction this has particularly for
1
linguists. One student said her sensitivity to words in the foreign
2
language had been enhanced:
3
4 Christiane: Yes. Ive always done that anyway with French and
5 English because Im interested in words, I like words. I like the use
6 of words. I like playing with words. And before ethnography I
7 suppose I didnt know that the same word would have, to certain
8 people, slightly different meanings. I mean its so slight at times its
9 very difcult to see. Because I would tend to use the dictionarys
30111 interpretation or meaning of certain words and OK thats very inter-
1 esting but what is even more interesting is how people see that word,
2 rather than what the dictionary says.
3
Here we see the interests of the linguist and the ethnographer clearly
4
coinciding.
5
6
7 Summing Up
8
We said earlier that the Year Abroad is often experienced as a cause
9
of change and maturation. Not surprisingly, the ethnographers shared
40
this and attributed much of it to doing ethnography:
41111
1111 Christiane: Because I realise now that I am changing, my views are

2 constantly changing and its very unsettling, especially when changes
3 are really sort of really big changes. And it changes you as a person
4 and you dont know quite who you are anymore and what you think
5 anymore and where youre going. Its like being in this dark room
6 and not nding the door. You know that its there and youre going
7 to nd it you know, but its that time when you do ethnography
8 which is very . . . And its the learning about yourself in terms of a
9 person, it was a bit frightening at times.
1011
This fear of the effect on oneself is compounded by the anxiety felt at
1
2 constantly observing others and looking for explanations of them which
3111 prevents a more familiar relationship. Several students spoke about this
4 in some detail, talking of their tendency to start to look at lots of things
5 in different ways, including people, and people around you . . . some-
6 times, you know, it is better to live in ignorance (Toni). A similar concern
7 is expressed by Sandra:
8 Sandra: . . . because you learn a lot through experiences in life and
9 this ethnography is a very big experience, for me anyway. And its
20111 good because you dont take things just as cut and dried, you start
1 looking at a situation. But then as I say when you look at situations
2 you might not like the conclusions that you come out with. You
3 know, they might be negative conclusions. And then you think, Oh
4 God and then you start asking questions about yourself, questions
5 about people that you know. And then if you always, like, come
6 up with an answer at the end that you might not like, you feel really
7 . . . Is there anything good out of it?
8
9 She feels, too, that there is sometimes a need to discuss this, perhaps
30111 with support from tutors, and we are again reminded of the ways in
1 which, already in the classroom, students had found some issues unset-
2 tling. Perhaps some of this is the effect of having the opportunity to talk
3 about the Year as a whole, as well as about doing ethnography. This is
4 certainly an important facet of the integration of the Year into the whole
5 course, and one which is often neglected.
6 Finally, two students had interesting remarks about their career plans.
7 Grace said she would like to do something a bit more socially orien-
8 tated and Sandra thought she might take an MA in Social Anthropology
9 rather than in interpreting, as had been her earlier intention. Although
40 we did not set out to make linguists into ethnographers, living the
41111 ethnographic life was clearly a major experience for these young people.
1111
2
3
4 Chapter 11
5
6 Conclusions and New Perspectives
7
8
9
1011 It has been our purpose in this book to argue for a new understanding
1 of language learning, one which starts from the fact that linguistic
2 learning has to be integrated with cultural learning in order to respect
3111 the nature of intercultural communication. We have not only presented
4 an argument but demonstrated an approach on the basis of a case study.
5 The argument is also being made elsewhere (Kramsch, 1998) and the
6 conclusion that language teaching should aim to develop in learners an
7 intercultural competence, rather than an imitation of a native speaker
8 competence, is being increasingly accepted, for example in the Common
9 European Framework of Reference of the Council of Europe (Council
20111 of Europe, 1998). What we hope to have demonstrated in this book is
1 how, in one set of circumstances, language learners can become inter-
2 cultural speakers through ethnographic practice.
3 In this nal chapter, we shall review the issues and the approach we
4 have represented from two perspectives: the signicance of the Ealing
5 project for individual learners involved in it, and the ways in which the
6 language learners as ethnographers approach can inuence learning
7 and teaching in other circumstances and situations.
8
9
30111 Ethnographers as Intercultural Speakers
1 Two juxtaposed quotations from earlier chapters demonstrate one
2 dimension of our approach to language teaching/learning and its signif-
3 icance for language learners. In Chapter 3 we quoted Pocock:
4
5 Social anthropology is concerned with the whole of life, and not just
6 something you do until six oclock. The study of social anthropology
7 encourages you to have a new kind of consciousness of life; it is a
8 way of looking at the world, and in that sense it is a way of living.
9 (1975: 1)
40 This was closely echoed in Chapter 10 by Grace:
41111
229
1111 (. . .) it was something you had to do all the time, ethnography is

2 something you had to do all the time, so I felt it made my time there
3 more productive for me.
4
The fact of doing ethnography had created for Grace, and others, a
5
mode of engagement with her new environment, a means of under-
6
standing and relating to it, which she felt other linguists from Ealing
7
did not have. This mode of engagement involves the students in a height-
8
ened sense of awareness as they participate in the routine acts of their
9
life abroad. It requires a constant questioning of the way things are done
1011
1 and an active approach to nd their signicance.
2 Nonetheless, it has been a central tenet of our approach that our
3111 ethnographers were not attempting to become the social anthropologists
4 whom Pocock is describing. They remain linguists and language learners
5 with a new and charged sense of communication and interaction, as
6 another quotation from Chapter 10, from Christiane, shows:
7 I like words. I like the use of words. I like playing with words. And
8 before ethnography, I suppose I didnt know that the same word
9 would have to certain people slightly different meanings.
20111
1 She goes on to contrast the dictionarys interpretation with how people
2 see that word. The false transparency of a bilingual dictionary, with its
3 apparent one-to-one relationships between language and meanings, is
4 replaced by the discovery of complex relationships. Those relationships
5 are also evident in how students talk about their writing, in the self-
6 conscious use of language, in the ways in which they struggle with a
7 foreign language both because they feel less secure in their linguistic
8 competence, and because they are aware of the heavy charge, the embed-
9 dedness of language in the environment and the culture which people
30111 do. Their understanding of language and of themselves as linguists has
1 been radically affected by their ethnographic life.
2 At the end of Chapter 2, we suggested four broad categories of learning
3 which our approach would facilitate:
4
local social and cultural knowledge;
5
processes of interrogation and relativisation;
6
observation, social interaction and analytic skills;
7
personal development.
8
9 We have discussed in Chapters 9 and 10 how students language
40 learners as ethnographers developed in these different ways, as seen
41111 from their own accounts and as evident in their projects. No doubt they
Conclusions and New Perspectives 231
1111 did so to differing levels and degrees of intensity, and as with all educa-
2 tional process, we cannot know the longer-term effects (but see below
3 for a case study of one student).
4 We have also suggested that their development as linguists can be
5 understood in terms of the concept of the intercultural speaker. This is
6 above all someone who can see and analyse relationships between
7 cultural practices associated with one language, often their rst language,
8 and the language and cultural practices of others. They do so as a
9 learner, as someone who is still conscious of constantly acquiring new
1011 linguistic and cultural insights. That learning process is however not
1 only focused on the other language and cultural practices but also on
2 what they have hitherto taken for granted and left unquestioned in their
3111 own (Todorov, 1988).
4
5
Les savoirs
6
7 The characteristics of the intercultural speaker can be dened as ve
8 savoirs or competences additional to those which are more linguistic
9 (Byram, 1997a). Briey they are:
20111
Attitudes: curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief
1
about other cultures and belief about ones own (savoir tre).
2
3 The indications of the ways in which the ethnographic life led students
4 not only to be open to the environment and cultural practices they met
5 but also to reconsider their own taken-for-granted world are to be found
6 particularly in their reections analysed in Chapter 10. This sense that
7 you cannot take things cut and dried is encapsulated in Sandras refusal
8 to jump to conclusions:
9
Sandra: Well I think, you know, the conclusions that you come up
30111
with (in) ethnography, you cant just come up with them if youve
1
just seen it once. So you know you need to be culturally aware, you
2
have to spend a hell of a long time actually looking at it. And every
3
time you look at a certain situation you observe different things and
4
then they lead you on to other things.
5
Interviewer: So it would make you more wary now of jumping
6
quickly . . .
7
Sandra: Oh yeah I dont take things at rst glance at all.
8
9 Similarly, in the writing-up of the project, as one student com-
40 mented, the writers world and that of the group being studied mesh
41111 together:
1111 When you are doing ethnography, its you and the place, its
2 you and the people. You cant not write yourself into it. You are
3 part of it.
4
Knowledge: of social groups and their products and practices in
5
ones own and in ones interlocutors country, and of the general
6
processes of societal and individual interaction (savoirs).
7
8 The knowledge which they acquired was specically local, about the
9 social and cultural practices and underlying beliefs which they met in
1011 their chosen topic, and more generally in the local world in which they
1 interacted with their informants and others. For example, the study of
2 the French ptanque club in Aubervilliers led to knowledge about social
3111 relationships between the younger and older players. In another case, it
4 is again Sandras careful account of the stages of her growing under-
5 standing which reveal the insider knowledge she acquired. She had
6 started by looking at Flamenco and then moved on to the Sevillanas
7 dance because it was less staged and more part of everyday life:
8
Las Sevillanas are staged as well but theyre danced in class, theyre
9
danced in bars. If theres a esta, theyre danced out in the streets.
20111
So I thought that was very interesting and the fact that why this
1
dance in particular was danced. Sevillanas is a dance, a Flamenco,
2
but you cant call it Flamenco because its separated from the others
3
because its practised in everyday life. Whereas Flamenco nowadays
4
you just see it staged . . .
5
. . . by going out to bars and discos, I would always bring up the
6
subject of the Sevillanas and people kept on saying to me, they had
7
to have grace or in Spanish, gracia. And you know I was thinking,
8
what the hell is this gracia? . . .
9
What it is I found that to have grace you have to be accepted
30111
by the people in your culture, and the way youre accepted in the
1
dance . . . is that you have to represent gracia. Now having gracia
2
is to show that you are able to use stylistic movements in the dance,
3
also you have to have a certain talent to dance and you have to have
4
self-esteem . . . Theres two different roles for men and women in
5
the dance, it represents a collective identity . . . theyre portraying
6
their own social and moral values in the dance . . . so grace isnt
7
natural at all.
8
9 Skills of interpreting and relating: ability to interpret a document or
40 event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents
41111 from ones own (savoir comprendre).
1111 It was above all in their projects that students demonstrated their ability
2 to interpret one set of events, one set of practices, in ways which made
3 them evident to their readers. They drew on the concepts and theory of
4 social anthropology to do so, and their task was all the more complex
5 because they were establishing relationships between the language in
6 which they had rst met these, English, and the language in which they
7 had experienced and investigated their topic and were producing a
8 written report, Spanish, German or French. Chris talked about how he
9 interrogated his own interpretations and tried to be reexive about them:
1011
. . . trying to make comments of a reective nature myself and
1
about the nature of each of the informants and the source, where I
2
got the information from as to why it may or may not be a mean-
3111
ingful piece of data.
4
5 He did his second project in France after spending ve months in Seville.
6 He chose to do a topic on why there was no longer any bullghting in
7 Toulouse. He found himself comparing the bullghting he had seen in
8 Spain with how this event had been experienced in Toulouse:
9
[the people of Toulouse] go slightly more wild because they are so
20111
isolated within the community they have adopted in Toulouse
1
between two natural areas of bullghting. They adopted the Spanish
2
style pure and simple. The only period in fact when there was any
3
bullghting activity was when they wanted to be different, they
4
wanted to exaggerate something. They wanted to be gatekeepers, I
5
didnt say it in those terms, but thats basically how I perceived it.
6
They wanted to be in charge of some wild, exciting, exotic, external,
7
therefore, cultural phenomena. Because they were close to, but not
8
really quite part of genuine ones. It was an exploration of identity
9
and belonging and all that.
30111
1 Here he is using one phenomenon to understand another and the concept
2 of gatekeeper and identity to place it within a theoretical frame.
3
Skills of discovery and interaction: ability to acquire new knowledge
4
of a culture and cultural practices and the ability to operate
5
knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-time
6
communication and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire).
7
8 This is the activity of eldwork par excellence, what we described above
9 as observation, social interaction and analytic skills. This became so
40 much a part of students experience that they could not escape it even
41111 after six oclock.
1111 Rachel studied the blind students at Marburg university and explains
2 how this brought her into constant interaction with others as she used
3 her ethnographic skills to observe and analyse:
4
I think the greatest thing was that I really did get to know the people
5
I was writing about . . . I think I got to know a lot more German
6
people that way than I would have done doing another project
7
because youre more involved. I mean you have to speak and you
8
have to listen. I mean its not a matter of going to the library you
9
know get some books out and just sit in the library, you know you
1011
1 have to meet people and talk to people and thats what I liked about
2 it really . . . you get more enjoyment, more satisfaction yourself in
3111 doing it because you know its your own work, you know youve
4 done it yourself and you really do know what youre talking about
5 . . . I had to listen a lot because I couldnt record so I was really
6 relying on my notes, which at the beginning I found quite difcult
7 but later I sort of was able to take notes and if I wrote them up
8 quickly afterwards I usually got most of the information.
9 Grace, when thinking back on her study of overseas students, valued
20111 the knowledge she had gained from interactions, from living the expe-
1 rience:
2
3 . . . before, if it wasnt in a book, Id be jumping you know, Id be
4 really nervous, you know. Why cant I get something really solid
5 about this out of a book . . . I think this way is more integrated, isnt
6 it, because you have to live the experience to be able to write it, you
7 have to participate in it.
8 Critical cultural awareness/political education: an ability to evaluate
9 critically and on the basis of explicit criteria perspectives, practices
30111 and products in ones own and other cultures and countries (savoir
1 sengager).
2
3 In our earlier denition of the intercultural speaker (Byram, 1997a), this
4 element was described in terms of language teaching/learning mainly
5 in the classroom, and was seen as part of the educative responsibilities
6 of the teacher which go beyond mere instruction. In the Ealing project,
7 teachers/lecturers were instrumental in providing the framework, devel-
8 oping students ethnographic skills and ethnographic imagination, but
9 it was above all during eldwork and in their constant reections, often
40 to be found in their journals rather than in their projects as such, that
41111 students became self-conscious about their own perspectives, practices
1111 and products. It was, as Christiane said, very unsettling, and a bit
2 frightening at times.
3 Toni, again on the subject of bullghting, was able to take a more crit-
4 ically evaluative view of an activity which she didnt like:
5
Im not going to barge into their culture, and say no you cant do
6
it because its linked up with too many other things or it must be.
7
My logic tells me from having done the religion part that it must
8
be. It doesnt alter the fact that I dont like it, it just means that I
9
can look at it in a more objective way and I can argue my position
1011
more objectively as well as by saying you know they say its art.
1
And I say, well yes it is the art but theres no need to put vaseline
2
in their eyes and cotton wool up their noses, knowing you have to
3111
kill them in the end. You can have the art without it.
4
5 This is not to say that the students discussed here were complete
6 intercultural speakers as a consequence of their ethnographic learning,
7 for this would be a self-contradiction. They remained acutely aware of
8 the unnished nature of their learning. As linguists, they were particu-
9 larly aware of this with respect to their linguistic and sociolinguistic
20111 competences. As ethnographers, they knew that their savoirs remained
1 partial, had to be constantly questioned, even if they had to come to
2 some conclusions in their written-up projects as they neared the dead-
3 line for submission.
4 What, in a classroom environment, we have called critical cultural
5 awareness, a teacher-led reection on the ethical viewpoint in compar-
6 ative analysis of cultures, becomes in eldwork engagement with the
7 minutiae of local interactions and the processes which are both observed
8 and, as participant, experienced. For Sophie, the politics of the carnava-
9 liers are in the processes of power and position and the marginalisation
30111 of women. The evolution for Antonia of a critical cultural awareness of
1 the relationships between religious practices and eating and drinking is
2 in the gradual problematising of the discourse.
3
4
Individual Development in the Year Abroad
5
6 As we have noted from the beginning, the Year Abroad is a tradition
7 for language learners which, as an obligatory phase of higher education
8 studies, is peculiar to Britain. Conceived as part of the language learning
9 process, it inevitably also has other effects on the individuals involved.
40 For some, it coincides with a rst separation from home and family. For
41111 others, it also involves living as an isolated foreigner in a new community.
1111 The effects in personal maturation, as opposed to the development of

2 linguistic and intercultural competence, are inevitably idiosyncratic and
3 part of the personal biography (Alred, 1996). Students may change their
4 career aspirations, like Grace and Sandra in the Ealing project. They may
5 change their physical appearance like a young woman interviewed in
6 an earlier project which was a stimulus for the development of the Ealing
7 project:
8 Ive completely changed, appearance, physical appearance. Ive
9 grown my hair. I used to have really short permed hair, very very
1011 curly, very very short. And Ive grown in the idea of becoming chic
1 and French-like. Ive changed my style of dressing, becoming more
2 conscious of what Im wearing, rather than just putting something
3111 on in the morning. But thats all obviously an inuence of being in
4 France. Because they do have this idea, you know, they are conscious
5 of what they are wearing and how they look. So I mean I have
6 changed physically an awful lot and people didnt recognise me
7 when I came back. (Byram & Alred, 1993: 56)
8
9 For some the experience has an effect on their social identities, partic-
20111 ularly their national identity, as these accounts from two informants
1 from the same research show:
2 I have never really thought of being English as something that was
3 important to me anyway. But going over there, I realised the great
4 differences that exist between countries. So I suppose, at the begin-
5 ning especially, I felt very much English. You are the representative
6 of your country. But then I felt less English in the way I really settled
7 into their culture and got very used to it and in fact I prefer it. So
8 in that way I dont feel English at all. So I do and I dont.
9 I would love to be French, but you cant. I can never be French
30111 because you have to be born French. I could be a European. I
1 couldnt be French though. Theres no way you can become French.
2 You could live in France. You could speak French but youll
3 never be French unless youre actually born French. (Byram & Alred,
4 1993: 54)
5
There may also be longer-term effects which have not yet been
6
investigated.1 Evans also argues that the Year Abroad is crucial to the
7
formation of the identity of linguist analogous perhaps to a rite of
8
passage:
9
40 A degree in Modern Languages is a sandwich course and the meat
41111 is the year abroad. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that no other
1111 degree, no other subject, offers this opportunity (. . .) Only students

2 in vocational subjects like Law, Medicine or engineering have such
3 an intensely formative experience built into their programme of
4 studies and of these only Medicine in its later stages offers anything
5 like the same human challenge. (Evans, 1988: 42)
6
It is interesting to see how in the decade or so since Evans was writing,
7
the opportunities have been opened up to other students through
8
European Union programmes, in particular ERASMUS and SOCRATES,
9
and this is an area for extension of our approach as we shall see later.
1011
1 Evans argued too, as we have, that the crucial dimension is that of
2 identity: The experience is so formative that it involves basic issues
3111 of identity, and he found a similar range of attraction and rejection of
4 new identities: from I think Im English (. . .) I prefer to stay in England
5 to Spanish is me. I am more me speaking Spanish than English. I felt
6 wrong speaking English (Evans, 1988: 48).
7 It is possible therefore to argue that such effects of the Year Abroad
8 are independent of the approach taken to linguistic and cultural learning.
9 On the other hand, our ethnographic approach clearly involves the
20111 whole person, and this has been a leitmotif of our work encapsulated
1 in the quotations from Pocock and from the student Grace at the begin-
2 ning of this chapter. Language learners as ethnographers are inevitably
3 engaged with the otherness of their new environment not just as an
4 opportunity to improve linguistic competence and their ability to produce
5 appropriate utterances, but as whole social beings who are developing,
6 dening and being dened in terms of their interactions with other social
7 beings. As ethnographers and intercultural speakers, they negotiate a
8 particular relationship with those around them, a relationship tradi-
9 tionally described as participant observation, although this fails to
30111 capture the complexity of the reexive effect on the linguist-ethnogra-
1 pher. Once more this is best articulated by Christiane in Chapter 10:
2 And it changes you as a person and you dont know who you are
3
anymore and what you think any more and where youre going. Its
4
like being in this dark room and not nding the door. You know
5
that its there and youre going to nd it (. . .) and its the learning
6
about yourself in terms of a person. It was a bit frightening at times.
7
8 So the Ealing project to develop language learners as ethnographers
9 is not just a methodology and a set of techniques for preparing language
40 students to prot from the opportunity for language learning during a
41111 period of immersion. Such a metaphor does not reect the complexity
1111 of language-and-culture, teaching-and-learning, neither in residence

2 abroad nor in the processes of the classroom. The project is concerned
3 with the affective, the emotional, with the acting out of new identities,
4 and this means that we need to reconsider the ways in which we concep-
5 tualise what is traditionally called language learning.
6
7
From Language Learning to Intercultural Interaction
8
9 The label language learning is very convenient because it reects the
1011 focus of the activity of teachers and learners, their concern with the
1 linguistic code which is the most evident problem they have to solve if
2 they are to succeed. The concern with language is reinforced by the use
3111 of language as an indicator of identity I am X because I speak X; You
4 are an X citizen and should speak X and this is a position taken by those
5 who govern nation-states. These were issues addressed in one of the units
6 during the ethnography course (Unit 13) and in Chapter 4 of this book.
7 Similarly, much professional academic effort in the modern period of
8 language teaching, since the Reform Movement in the 1880s, has centred
9 on the description of linguistic codes, and how these are internalised
20111 by infants, children and adults, as rst, second or other languages.
1 The language teaching profession has become increasingly sensitive
2 to labels, distinguishing language teaching from language learning, or
3 distinguishing the study of a language as an object for analysis from
4 learning and acquiring the competence required to communicate. The
5 major contribution of the communicative approach has been not to
6 introduce yet another teaching method but to change the purpose of
7 language learning: from language as a key to high culture to language
8 as a basis for everyday communication. At the same time, the commu-
9 nicative approach coincided with the ourishing of mass secondary
30111 education in Europe and mass higher education in North America, and
1 seemed to offer the means of making language learning available, and
2 necessary, not just for a social elite, but for everyone.
3 Communication thus seemed, and perhaps still seems, to be the key
4 word to encapsulate the aims of language teachers. It is certainly a domi-
5 nant word in governmental and similar statements about the purposes
6 of language teaching in many education systems. Unfortunately, as we
7 pointed out in Chapter 2, communicative competence has been inter-
8 preted too narrowly by language teaching professionals (Byram, 1988),
9 and it is for that reason that we need, reluctantly in some respects, to
40 introduce another label, namely intercultural competence, to emphasise
41111 a re-conceptualisation of language learning.
1111 The description of learning we have provided in previous chapters

2 has in fact put little emphasis on learners internalisation of a linguistic
3 code, but this is not to say that it is unimportant, either for the learners
4 or for the teachers. Our decision to teach the ethnography course in
5 English rather than Spanish, German or French, was an acknowledge-
6 ment of the linguistic difculties students would have with a new
7 discipline in their foreign language, although they did have some read-
8 ings in these languages. Students themselves became very aware of
9 the complexity of internalising a linguistic code, that it is not the rela-
1011 tively simple matter they had encountered in the classroom up to that
1 point. They talked about the issues in their ethnographic reports,
2 about the advantages and disadvantages of having been taught the
3111 Introduction to Ethnography Course in English, the problems they had
4 to face when nding no literal and easy translations of some of the
5 concepts they had been working with, and what all this taught them
6 about the nature of language and its relationship to the cultural reali-
7 ties and practices they had observed.
8 While aware of these issues, however, our emphasis has been delib-
9 erately on other dimensions of learning to interact with speakers of
20111 another language in their own environment. We have done so to
1 redress the balance, not to ignore the acquisition of linguistic compe-
2 tence. We have also followed this emphasis because of the nature of
3 the learners being described and the learning conditions they were
4 experiencing.
5 These factors, of course, determined our specic approach, but at this
6 point we want to argue that a general view of language learning in
7 terms of intercultural interaction can be developed from the particular
8 case of the Ealing project, a view which has evolved from our view of
9 language learners as ethnographers, and as intercultural speakers not
30111 merely as competent communicators.
1 The most important point is that learners are not simply, and not
2 centrally, acquiring skills. The process in which they are involved engages
3 them as people, requires them to reect upon and analyse how they
4 interact with others. The process is thus both cognitive and affective,
5 but the affective is not merely a reduction of anxiety or the creation
6 of appropriate attitudes and motivation in order to facilitate the inter-
7 nalisation of a linguistic code, as has been suggested by much of the
8 research on the affective dimension of language learning (e.g. Gardner
9 & MacIntyre, 1993; Drnyei, 1998) important as this may be. It is,
40 rather, an engagement with a new social identity which is integral with
41111 the acquisition of methods and concepts for reection and analysis.
1111 Ethnography provides the means, and the mind-set, to develop those
2 dimensions of intercultural interaction which have hitherto been ignored,
3 those savoirs (tre, comprendre, apprendre, sengager) which are crucial to
4 being a successful intercultural speaker, not merely an unsuccessful
5 imitator of a native speaker.
6 An ethnographic approach thus requires learners to engage in acad-
7 emic study, in intellectual engagement with new concepts and new ways
8 of analysing social phenomena, and in higher education this is entirely
9 appropriate. It ensures that language learning has an educational
1011 purpose, a development of the whole person, and this in turn ensures
1 a proper justication for language learning in higher education. As well
2 as, and not instead of, the study of the high culture written in another
3111 language, learners in higher education are introduced to the study of
4 intercultural interaction, which largely takes the form of verbal and non-
5 verbal communication. This has two dimensions: conceptual analysis
6 and methodological issues of data collection. What makes the ethno-
7 graphic approach, as a basis for such study, different from literary studies
8 or area studies is the emphasis on both cognitive classroom-based
9 analysis and experiential learning in eldwork, both in the home country
20111 environment during the ethnography course, and in the other country
1 during the period of residence.
2 There are also implications of this view of language learning for
3 language teaching. We have described in earlier chapters how those
4 teaching the ethnography course, and advising on and assessing the
5 students ethnographic projects, had to reconsider their focus and profes-
6 sional identities. We have described not just language learners as
7 ethnographers but also language lecturers as ethnographers, who
8 engaged in similar learning processes to those of their students. In some
9 respects, this was more difcult, since lecturers have established them-
30111 selves as language people (Evans, 1988) whereas student learners are
1 still involved in a process of professional identity formation.
2 Since we hope that readers of this book will include higher educa-
3 tion language people, with specialist interests in literary studies, area
4 studies or other elds, we do not underestimate the implications of our
5 view of language learning for language teaching. It is for this reason
6 that we offered in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 an overview of the issues which
7 we have engaged with ourselves, of the journey we have made, and in
8 later chapters an account of the ethnographic learning by staff as well
9 as students.
40
41111
1111 Language Learners as Ethnographers:

2 A Generalisable Approach?
3
The generalisation of our view of intercultural interaction and of the
4
language learner as ethnographer and intercultural speaker takes several
5
directions:
6
7 towards different kinds of learners in other sectors of both compul-
8 sory and post-compulsory education, including life-long education;
9 towards learners in higher education other than language people;
1011 towards other kinds of language people, in particular translators
1 and interpreters;
2 towards learning limited to the classroom and learners immediate
3111 environment, as opposed to residence abroad and long-term eld-
4 work.
5 The question of generalisation has to be seen in two ways. First, we are
6 condent that our description of what is involved in intercultural inter-
7 action is relevant to all learners. Whatever their age, occupation or degree
8 of identication as language people, they can only be successful to the
9 extent that they become intercultural speakers. It is worth repeating at
20111 this point that the concept of intercultural speaker encompasses a wide
1 range of levels of prociency and effectiveness. It is not an all-or-nothing
2 concept, although it may be that there is a minimum level of intercul-
3 tural competence needed for successful interaction with interlocutors
4 of another cultural identity, particularly in some affective dimensions of
5 relativisation. If the notion of intercultural interaction is relevant to all
6 learners, so, we would argue, the model of the intercultural speaker
7 must be generalised, and it is for this reason that we traced the evolu-
8 tion of the theory in Chapter 2.
9 In fact, the history of language teaching and learning has been subject
30111 to increasing renements of purposes as research and understanding of
1 the nature of language in use has developed. One of the innovations
2 of the Reform Movement and its successors in the early part of the
3 twentieth century was to recognise and introduce into language teaching
4 the signicance of spoken language. The communicative approach added
5 the emphasis on the use and functions of language in social interaction,
6 and the introduction of sociolinguistic and discourse competences to
7 complement linguistic competence. The notion of interculturality adds
8 a further dimension: the recognition of social identities involved in any
9 interaction, and the signicance of understanding the constantly
40 changing worlds and lives of the other, always important but particu-
41111 larly so when the interaction takes learners into other languages and
1111 societies. Since the aims and purposes of language learning in many
2 contemporary contexts are very clearly to enable learners to interact
3 personally with the other, there can then be no doubt that the notion
4 of interculturality must be generalisable.
5 The second dimension of generalisation concerns the ethnographic
6 approach to the development of intercultural competence. We have
7 argued in the rst part of this chapter that the Ealing project demon-
8 strates how the ethnographic approach develops and enhances the
9 characteristics of the intercultural speaker. It does so because it involves
1011 learners in a type of interaction with people of another language and
1 society which makes them conscious of and reexive about cross-cultural
2 relationships by engaging them directly with the local and the specic.
3111 They develop both linguistic and intercultural competences in the expe-
4 rience of eldwork interaction as both verbal and non-verbal, as
5 embedded in a context of situation (Firth, 1968).
6 The question is therefore whether the ethnographic approach can be
7 extended to other learners in other situations, to the groups identied
8 at the beginning of this section. Perhaps the most crucial issue is whether
9 learners have opportunity for investigative eldwork, but we also need
20111 to ask whether the concepts and methods introduced during the
1 Introduction to Ethnography Course can be accessible to other types of
2 learner, particularly those who are younger.
3 In the European context, the opportunity for direct personal interac-
4 tion with people of another language and society is quickly becoming
5 available for many learners. In European Union countries, there are a
6 number of schemes to encourage mobility of learners in various educa-
7 tion sectors. In the wider Europe, such mobility is much less frequent
8 although there is doubtless a strong potential if practical and nancial
9 difculties can be overcome. In other contexts, for example North
30111 America or Japan, the notion of study abroad is also well established
1 both for language people and other students. Where eldwork oppor-
2 tunities and the possibility of participant observation are not available,
3 however, one option is ethnographic interviewing (Spradley, 1979), the
4 exploration, over a number of encounters, of peoples perceptions, narra-
5 tions and conceptualisations of their experience. This could be carried
6 out at a distance through telematic channels such as video-conferencing,
7 especially as the quality of the technology improves. The affective
8 engagement with others in such intercultural experience will doubtless
9 be different from that in the eld but may also be valuable and valid.
40 The adaptation of eldwork for younger learners has been the subject
41111 of some experimentation (Snow & Byram, 1997) and involved presenting
1111 learners with investigative skills; but there is a need for further system-
2 atic work. On the other hand, the extension of eldwork and an
3 ethnographic approach should not in principle present signicant dif-
4 culties in courses for interpreters and translators, for whom the role of
5 the intercultural speaker as mediator is central.
6 Similarly, adult learners in higher, further or lifelong education who
7 are not language people but for example engineering students, or local
8 politicians involved in town-twinning, will in principle also nd the
9 ethnographic approach accessible. An Introduction to Ethnography
1011 Course for engineers or politicians who are to spend some time in another
1 country is easy to envisage and their eldwork investigations would
2 doubtless reect their particular experience of local cultural practices in
3111 an engineering company or a town council. This is not to underestimate
4 the difculty of persuading those in charge of preparing such people
5 that an ethnography course is necessary, but the extension of our
6 approach is conceptually feasible and relatively manageable.
7 The major difculty in generalisation is to learning situations where
8 learners cannot break out of the walls of the classroom, where neither
9 eldwork nor telematics are available. The difculties of presenting
20111 learners with intercultural experience, with opportunities to engage with
1 others, to investigate and analyse and to establish relationships, are
2 evident and not underestimated. They are perhaps also the reason why
3 many teachers, themselves often with no intercultural experience, focus
4 exclusively on linguistic competence, with perhaps some attention to
5 sociolinguistic and discourse competences, but certainly no attempt
6 to develop intercultural competence. This therefore remains an impon-
7 derable, but insofar as the social and cultural conditions of the
8 contemporary world are the source of new experiences of intercultur-
9 ality and the re-conceptualisation of the learner as ethnographer and
30111 intercultural speaker, it is also possible that classrooms too will change
1 in as yet unforeseen ways which will facilitate the acquisition of inter-
2 cultural competence.
3 Finally, there is the issue of generalisability for the Ealing students
4 themselves. What have they been able to take from the experience and
5 integrate into their lives over the years since they left Ealing?
6 We conclude the book with the views of one student, Chris Day,
7 and his reections, looking back eight years. Since leaving university,
8 Chris has taken a post-graduate teaching certicate and now teaches
9 Spanish in Devon, at Exeter College of Further Education. He remem-
40 bers clearly the excitement of taking the ethnography course and the
41111 shock it gave him:
1111 I started seeing things which I used to see all the time but never
2 interpreted . . .which was presumably one of the main aims . . .
3 looking for meaning and patterns and clues . . . getting into the
4 grammar of meaning rather than the grammar of language . . .
5 The experience of doing the project is still vivid: I had some unusual
6 evenings out chatting with certain male transvestite prostitutes; as is
7 writing it up: I was reasonably satised with a 14,000 word block-busting
8 Spanish project that was an achievement in itself. From the experi-
9 ence of the course, collecting the data and writing up, he identies three
1011 areas which have had a profound and long-lasting effect on the way he
1 sees the world. The rst was concerned with empathy, with the skills
2 of interpreting and relating, mentioned above:
3111
4 It had never occurred to me before the project to look at things from
5 other peoples point of view. Thats one thing I overcame through
6 this ethnography project, not to use your own vision, your own
7 terms to describe things as a rst resort. It was a huge step not only
8 to see and speak to people but communicate with them in their own
9 terms which was an excellent thing and one of the long-lasting effects.
20111 The second area concerned attitudes more generally:
1
2 Another general effect it has had the preparation and the whole
3 ethnography terminology is the effect of enabling me and I suppose
4 all of us to handle ambivalence, ambiguity which is an important
5 language learning skill a deep structure, a deep grammar leading
6 beyond just language.
7 The third area, connected to both of the rst two, relates to a general,
8 perceptual level the way one looks at the world:
9
30111 I dont still hang around with prostitutes in bars chatting! But I can
1 probably spot different things going on around I think its a broader
2 more perceptive level very few things would shock or surprise me
3 now. I wouldnt let myself be surprised. So thats been a long-lasting
effect on me.
4
5 He recognises that ethnography cant change the kind of person you
6 are if youre never going to be a curious, open, empathetic kind of person,
7 I dont think it can make you one but it can develop things which are
8 in you. So, if a student is receptive to change and ready to develop, the
9 experience of doing ethnography can have a long-term inuence.
40 Reecting on himself as a former language learner and now a language
41111 teacher, he sees ethnography as making the links between language
1111 learning skills, interpreting otherness and taking on a new social iden-
2 tity. He makes connections between the urgent need to communicate
3 in the foreign language and the whole process of writing an ethnographic
4 project:
5
Im better at learning language from people I listen more to the
6 message in what people are doing the effect on my Spanish
7 learning. The absolute urgent need to take in, understand, interpret
8 and re-present something which is difcult to get your head around.
9
1011 So every act of communication is, in a sense, a miniature ethnography
1 project in which it is necessary to:
2 nd something out and subsequently make sense of it to myself and
3111 then present my ndings.
4
5 The process of doing this, Chris argues, affects ones social identity so
6 that one may be able to pass oneself off as Spanish:
7 Ive always held in the back of my mind what a marvellous thing
8 to pass myself off as a speaker of another language. I suppose I
9 must have learnt from the ethnography thing, as well, a more neutral
20111 way of being so that I can, to an extent, be taken for a Spanish
1 person through things that Ive absorbed posture, body language.
2 Heightened awareness from the ethnography would have con-
3 tributed to that. (Ethnography) sparked off a huge curiosity an
4 interpenetration of the culture and me such that I behave, feel
5 and act to it like members of that group like Spanish people but
6 not fully . . .
7
8 He takes things further in linking his partial membership of the group
9 with his development of cultural knowledge. The relationship between
30111 this new knowledge and changing identity he attributes to an ethno-
1 graphic approach which he contrasts with a tourist, info, consumer
2 approach:
3 Getting into Spanish culture identifying with it building up a
4 complex and detailed picture of it that I wouldnt have done if I
5 had had a tourist, info, consumer kind of approach as opposed to
6 the ethnographic, bifocal approach. I see that through a thick version
7 of what I think it means. I think the ethno project did achieve that
8 to take in things from the inside. Theres a word in Spanish I
9 cant think of the word in English, maybe thats part of it asumir
40 to assume ones responsibilities, it feels like it grows out from
41111 within you it becomes part of you rather than responsibility being
1111 placed upon you. It doesnt necessarily start outside you do you
2 know what I mean?
3
Since many students of modern languages in higher education are likely
4
to become teachers, the long-term effects of ethnography on Chris as a
5
language teacher are relevant here. He contrasts the idea of teaching
6
language skills that can then be used on others with a more reective
7
approach to language learning and teaching:
8
9 A customs ofcer once said to me Oh Ive learnt some Spanish. I
1011 really enjoy using it on other people. He obviously hadnt done any
1 ethno!
2
Instead Chris tries to:
3111
4 put over the idea that its possible to look at the world in a very
5 different way and I do it at a linguistic level with simple phrases
6 at beginners level. I try to give a feel for how a Spanish attitude to
7 life or things is represented in simple things in the language. I also
8 ask bilinguals if it is possible to think without using a language. The
9 bilingual kids say yes. Theyre used to having an idea in Language
20111 A and having it slightly different, untranslatable, in language B and
1 realising that theyre got an idea that they cant quite express in
2 either language. Its possible to think something in Language A
3 which cant be formed in Language B because you havent got the
4 tools. But because the idea exists in Language A, its just that
5 Language B is inadequate not the nature of ideas. I dont say this
6 to 16 year olds because they would just look at me. But you just
7 have to word it something as simple as me gusta It pleases
8 me suggests that Spanish people look at things as they come to
9 them as opposed to the English I like it. Youre lucky as opposed
30111 to Luck touches you which maybe suggests a more receptive atti-
1 tude to life. I try by adopting odd points of view, asking slightly
2 awkward questions about interpretations of why people speak in a
3 certain way why certain language is used that its possible to
4 see things in quite a different way but they are OK people.
5
In small but frequent ways, Chris uses the ethnographic experience
6
to introduce to language students the idea that language and cultural
7
practices are wired in together (Agar, 1994). But he remains a language
8
learner as well as a language teacher:
9
40 My life is largely made up of language learning and language
41111 teaching and accumulated cultural knowledge and awareness.
1111 So, Chris is still a language learner as ethnographer. The original course
2 undertaken eight years ago took me places where I wanted to go and
3 he is still crossing borders and boundaries. The challenge of being an
4 intercultural speaker is always present for Chris and any other language
5 learner who wants to take it up. What is important is setting off on the
6 journey and remaining a traveller in the new places and spaces of an
7 intercultural world.
8
9
Note
1011
1 1. A new project to carry out a follow-up study with a cohort of students
2 10 years after their Year Abroad began in March 1999.
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
41111
1111
2
3
4
5
6 Bibliography
7
8
9
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30111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
41111
Index
Ableson, R. 40 Berger, P. 9, 49
Abu-Loghod, L. 39 Berger, B. 49
Acculturation, see Cultural learning Besnier, N. 39
Agar, M. 20, 40, 42, 76, 92, 103, 118, 142, Bertrand, G. 34
147-9, 246 Bhabha, H. 6, 86
Alix, C. 34 Biculturalism 30
Alred, G. 34, 236 Billig, M 66
Althusser, L 6 Bloome, D. 4
Analytic induction 96 Bochner, S. 40
Andersen, H. 27 Boundaries 5, 7, 30, 42, 55, 57, 65, 82, 105,
Anderson, B. 66 111, 116, 125-6, 128, 136, 172, 198, 200,
Anomie 69, 76, 102 219, 247
Anthropologists 11-12, 35, 88-9, 102, 197 maintenance of, 96
Anthropology 11-12, 26, 29, 31, 32, 38, 41-2, Bourdieu, P. 68, 81, 84, 94-5, 192
89 Briggs, C. 142-3
cognitive 50, 60, 142 Brislin, R. 31, 32
cultural 23-4, 27 Brgger, F 27, 29
linguistic 3, 23-4, 40, 50 see also Relativity Brown, P. 63, 169
social 45, 88-9, 233 Byram, M. 4, 7, 10, 15, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 38,
students of, 15 231, 234, 236, 238, 242
Appropriacy 25, 35 see also Communicative Byrne, J. 9
language teaching Burgess, R. 198
Area Studies 32, 35, 103, 204, 211, 227 Buttjes, M. 27, 28, 30
Asad, T. 42, 52, 89-90, 93, 197
Atkinson, M. 60 Campbell, D. 124
Atkinson, P 43, 82, 103, 121, 196, 197 Canale, M. 25
Autonomy 38, 41, 43 Candlin, C. 25, 27
Carter, R. 25, 27
Bailey, F. 109, 156, 157, 158-60, 168 Case study 4, 96-7, 134 see also Ethno-
Bakhtin, M. 29, 86 graphic projects
Barley, N. 166 Categorisation 70, 72, 148-9, 205-7, 220 see
Barro, A. 11, 27 also Linguistic analogy
Barth, F. 65, 90 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Bartlett, F 40 28 see also Cultural studies
Barton, D. 80 Chancerel, J. 25
Basnett, S. 27, 29 Cheater, A. 153
Bauman, R. 59 Churchland, P. 41
Baumgratz-Gangl, G. 4, 27, 34 Cicourel, A. 84
Beale, C. 57 Civilisation see Area studies
Beattie, J. 156, 158 Clark, H. 76
Beaujour, M. 42 Classification, symbolic 117, 195, 135-9 see
Beeman, W. 161 also Belief and action
Belief and action 51, 117, 127, 135-9 Clifford, J. 3, 41, 86-7, 90, 96, 135, 196
Bennett, M. 32 Clyne, M. 7
261
Language Learners as Ethnographers

Coates, J. 130 write 3, 135 see also Ethnographic writing

Cohen, A. 20, 67, 192 Cushman, D. 196
Coleman, J. 34, 226
Communication 23, 24, 55, 238 see also Dark, S. 4, 15
Ethnography of communication Data analysis 116, 145-50, 193-4, 199
and cultural learning 23 Davis, J. 152-3, 163
cross-cultural 31-2 Delamont, S. 35, 152
intercultural 8, 10, 15, 31, 58, 62, 229 Delors, J. 8
Competence 95 Diary
communicative 9, 24-5, 26, 30, 34, 59, 95, class 173-5, 210
238, 241 field 34, 42, 174, 196, 200, 210, 218 see also
cultural 30 Field
intercultural 7, 36-7 40, 229-235, 239, 242, Discourse 23, 29, 36, 37, 77-83, 201-2
243 academic 90
in interviewing 145 analysis 25, 27, 40, 78, 81, 83-4
linguistic 34, 35 Anglo-American 117, 195, 221
sociocultural 8, 10 and power 117
Compliments 63, 151, 169-70, 173 and practice 80-3
Connectionism 41 racist 66, 138
Construction Dixon, J. 42, 89-90, 93, 197
cultural 30, 41, 136 Dnyei, Z. 239
of reality, social 37, 42, 49, 60, 69, 70, 74, Douglas, M. 138
82, 125, 142-3, 156, 196-7 Doy, P. 10, 30, 31
Constructivism 47-50, 74, 128, 133, 135, 136 Drew, P. 60
Context 24, 37, 42, 75, 131 Dubin, F. 26, 95
high and low 32 Duranti, A. 24
of situation 242 Dyson, D. 34, 226
Contextualisation 58
cues 58, 160 Ecological validity 84
Conversation analysis 56, 60-3 Edwards, J. 65
Cope, M. 26 Egan-Robertson, A. 4
Cowan, J. 132-3 Ellen, R. 37, 145, 147, 149
Council of Europe 8, 229 Ellis, R. 8
Crapanzano, V. 42 Empathy 34, 38-9, 155, 244
Cultural studies 26-9, 67, 77 Essentialism 23, 47, 53, 66, 69, 73, 127 see
and foreign language learning 3, 25, 26-9 also Stereotyping
integration with language learning 35-6 Ethnicity 6, 65-6 see also Stereotyping
and texts 28-9, 77, 79-80 Ethnographers 30, 38, 41, 77, 81, 84, 86, 94-5,
Culture 18, 27, 62, 67, 81, 92, 133 109, 192, 219, 224, 237
autonomous model of 53 and cultural learning 41
cognitive view of 50, 54 Ethnographic
as communication 24, 131 conversations 69, 94, 108-9, 116, 134
critical view of 7, 27, 39 52-3, 54, 66, 89-90, description 27 see also Thick description
93-4, 120, 192, 225, 234-5 imagination 43, 121, 128, 139, 173, 234
and everyday life 27-8, 37, 42, 118-9, 150 interviews 38, 94, 106, 140-5, 190, 213, 216,
as inference-making machine 57, 86 242
and mediation 3, 7, 12, 95 projects 5, 11, 41, 81, 96, 104-8, 130, 140,
models of 31-2 170-3, 185-209, 239, 244, 245 see also Case
as networks 74 studies
shock 40 writing 42, 82, 85, 89-90, 107, 110, 117, 189,
symbolic view of 51-2, 54 194-7, 200, 202, 214, 219-222, 232 see also
translation see Translation Ethnography projects
as travel 86-7 Ethnocentrism 40, 90, 94, 193
as a verb 18, 54-5, 86 Ethnography 3, 32, 37-8, 48, 88-98, 112-3,
Index 263
211, 222, 228, 230, 244 see also Case Gatekeeper 105, 108, 135, 233
studies, Home ethnographies, Gee, J. 31, 41, 52, 78
Assessment Geertz, C. 18, 30, 51, 54, 124, 141
in anthropology 88-9 Gender relations 60, 116, 128-135, 200
assessment, of course 175-184 and interaction 161
of projects 204-9, 220 Generalisation see Ethnography
criteria for 205 Gift-giving see Exchange
course 13, 14, 67, 112, 115-8, 175-188, Giles, H. 9
210-11, 214, 232, 242 Gilmore, D. 80, 160
in the classroom 154-5, 161-3 Gilroy, P. 66, 126
of communication 40, 45, 56, 59-60, 62, 89 Glaser, B. 148
and distance 30, 91-3, 133, 134, 140, 193, Goffman, E. 57, 84, 115, 187, 194, 196, 213
220 Goodenough, W. 50
at Ealing 11-3, 113, 185, 210 Gospodinoff, K. 57
and epistemology 112-3, 135, 192 Green, J. 147
and ethical issues 108, 193, 207 Grillo, R. 52, 64
and issues of generalisation 97-8, 101, Grimm, H. 27
112-3, 132, 143, 204, 224-5, 231, 241-7 Grossberg, L. 29
and language learning 10-12, 27, 73, 94 Grounded theory 149-9
as method 11-12 Gudykunst, W. 31, 32
programme 13-14, 38, 40, 44, 98, 209 Gullestad, M. 38
projects 13, 14, 18-23, 96, 104-8, 130, 134-5, Gumperz, J. 24, 41, 56, 58, 59, 62, 68, 73, 74,
140, 149, 170-3, 185-209, 239 75
Evaluation see Research
Evans, C. 43, 101, 237, 240 Habermas, J. 81
Evans-Pritchard, E. 91-2 Habitual thought 70-71
Exchange 42, 109, 151-4, 157-166, 167-72, Habitus 84-5
174-5, 224 Hall, E. 24
Hall, S. 6, 8, 29, 67
Face see Politeness Hallam, L. 6, 61
Fairclough, N. 26, 53, 78, 79 Halliday, M. 77
Fardon, R. 89, 90 Hammer, M. 32
Featherstone, M. 18 Hammersley, M. 96, 103
Fernandez, J. 72 Hannerz, U. 23
Field 4, 33, 45, 89, 165, 212-4 Hatch, E. 8
diary see Diary Hawkins, R. 34
notes 42, 110, 147, 196, 198, 212, 218, 234 Heath, S. 34
work 11, 36-8, 42, 89, 91-4, 103-8, 192, 210, Heller, M. 4, 68
220, 242 Henriques, J. 39
Firth, J. 77, 242 Heritage, J. 60
Fishman, J. 65 Herzfeld, M. 153
Fishman, P. 130-132 Hewitt, R. 6, 68
Fiske, H. 29 Hierarchies 23, 105, 111, 161, 198, 200, 201,
Fleming, M. 28 215, 233
Forsythe, D. 67, 126, 138 Higher Education 15, 39
Foucault, M. 78, 84 integration of language and cultural
Frake, C. 59 studies in, 32-5
Frankenburg, R. 160 Hobsbawm, E. 65, 67
Freed, B. 4, 34 Hofstede, G. 31
Functionalism 25, 31, 46-7 Hoggart, R. 28
Furnham, A. 40 Holec, H. 41
Holland, D. 50
Gardner, R. 8, 239 Home ethnography 45, 104, 110, 114-5,
Gass, S. 8 139, 147, 171-2, 175, 188-91, 196, 215 see
also Ethnography Language

Hymes, D. 24, 25, 59, 62, 76-7, 80, 83, 84, 139 lecturers 13, 35-6
mediators 7, 30, 43
Intercultural learner 29, 30-1, 39, 42-3, 44, socialisation 9-10, 11, 45, 75, 141, 226
63, 85, 86, 94, 231, 235, 237, 239, 240-2, Language acquisition
247 see also Intercultural speaker second 8-9, 12, 226-7 see also Language
Identity 4, 5, 7, 30, 32, 64, 75, 125-8, 134, 143, learning
212, 213, 215 Language learning 3, 4-5, 229, 238-40, 246
social 6, 8, 11, 25, 43, 52, 57, 65, 67, 75, 117, see also Ethnography
161, 234, 239-241, 245 advanced 4-5
of the language learner 30 and cultural learning see Learning,
Ideology 29, 69, 77-8, 118-20, 126, 133, 170 cultural
and discourse 79 and policy statements 8
and practice 53, 80 as social practice 8-9
sexual 134 task-based 25
Imagined community 126 see also theories of 38-42
Nationalism Language Teaching
Index 110, 212 communicative 9, 24-6, 27, 29, 35, 46, 238,
Indexicality 75 246
Inference 57-8, 63 and sociocultural emphasis on 26
Informants 20, 37, 95, 106, 108-9, 133, 198, Lantolf, J. 8
218 Lave, J. 8
Intersubjectivity 39 see also Empathy Learning
cultural 5, 8, 12, 13, 22-3, 24-6, 34, 58, 73,
Johnson, M. 72 103, 107, 121, 143-4, 208, 225, 228-9
Jordan, S. 11, 27 experiential 39-40, 105-6
Jurasek, R. 4, 5 language see Language learning
Le Wita, B. 46, 47-8, 75, 158
Kalantzis, M. 26 Legutke, M. 25
Kane, L. 4, 28 Leinhardt, G. 169
Kasper, G. 8 Levinson, S. 63, 73, 74, 169
Keller, G. 34 Lincoln, B. 137
Kim, Y. 31 Lingua franca 7-8
Klein, W. 8 Literacies
Kluckhohn, C. 18 academic, social and cultural element of
Knowledge 26
cultural 22, 24, 42, 52, 62-3, 93, 208, 230, Little, D. 41
230, 245 Local level politics 109, 151-4, 155-7, 200
and awareness, inseparability of, 32 Long, M. 8, 27
tacit 25 Luckmann, T. 9
social 24, 42, 59, 62-3 Lucy, J. 71
sociocultural 7, 9-10, 34, 35, 45 Lurkers and soakers 11, 81, 85
Kohlberg, L. 39 Lutz, C. 39
Kolb, D. 39
Kramer, J. 27 Male/female interaction see Gender
Kramsch, C. 3, 27, 30, 31, 44, 54, 58, 86, 229 relations
Kress, G. 5 Malinowski, B. 46, 88-9, 145
Kroeber, A. 18 Manes, J. 169
Kuper, A. 88 Marcus, G. 3, 41, 90, 96, 135, 196
Mauss, M. 152, 166
Lacoste, M. 35, 61 McCarthy, M. 25, 27
Lakoff, G. 72, 74 McConnell-Ginet, S. 27
Landeskunde see Area studies McCurdy, D. 35
Languaculture 44 McDermott, P. 57
Index 265
Meanings 25, 46, 77, 118-9 Prabhu, N. 25

analysis of 32 Practices 9, 22, 26-8, 30, 42, 55, 75, 80-83,
associated with practice 20 165, 231, 232-3
consensual 31 and discourse 53, 80-83, 94
local 24 language 24
public 51 and texts 30
situated 75 Professional stranger 20
system of 11, 23
Meara, P. 34 Quinn, N. 50
Metaphor 50, 72-3, 90, 92, 120, 168, 197,
237-8 Race 66, 68
and value 166 Raeburn, R. 118
Melde, W. 27, 31, 39, 54 Rampton, B. 6, 68, 86
Meyer, M. 27 Realism 46-7 see also Construction
Miller, D. 152 Reciprocity 39, 49, 105, 109, 151-4, 163-4,
Milroy, L. 160 168, 171, 173 see also Exchange
Misunderstandings 8, 35, 55, 57-8, 105, 173 Reflexivity 82, 93, 95, 105-6, 110, 113, 120,
of concept of culture 13 128, 129, 132, 133, 134, 135, 140, 189,
Mitchell, C. 96-7 192-3, 207, 219, 230 see also Culture,
Mobility 4, 242 see also Residence abroad critical view of
and cultural mediation 31, 33-5 reflexive 42, 43, 142, 144, 145, 172
language learning for 33 account 174
Moerman, M. 62-3 analysis 132, 192, 204-5
Mohan, B. 26 frame 143
Moka 152, 156, 167-9 habit 150
Montgomery, M. 27 reassessment 194
Moral communities 161 Relativisation 42, 152, 160, 169, 193, 213
Morgan, C. 4, 38 Relativity 31
Murphy, E. 27 cultural 60
epistemological 11, 93
National identity see Identity linguistic 60, 69-77
Nationalism Representation 22, 23, 42, 55, 64-5, 67
banal 66 Reputation 159-60, 173
romantic 126 Research 12-3, 94, 101, 112-3, 210-28
Network structures 160 Residence abroad 5, 13, 14, 28, 33-5, 41, 195,
New times 5-8, 30, 67 222, 228, 235-8
Non-verbal communication 83-5, 115 Richards, J. 25
Richterich, R. 25
Ochs, E. 9, 10, 54, 75 Risager, K. 27
Order Rivers, W. 26
symbolic 47 Roberts, C. 28
Otherness 4, 6, 32, 37, 136, 257 Rouxville, A. 34
Rubin, J. 41
Parker, G. 34
Participant observation 29, 38, 42, 43, 62, 69, Sacks, H. 57, 60
76, 104-7, 116, 122-3, 139-141, 142, 190, Sahlins, M. 137
193, 196, 216-7, 221, 242 Sanjek, R. 42, 147
Patronclient systems 7, 152-3 Sapir, E. 70
Paulston, C. 30 Saville-Troike, M. 59-60
Pavlenko, A. 8 Savoirs 231-235, 240
Pennycook, A. 7 Schank, R. 40
Piaget, J. 39 Schema 40-1, 161
Pocock, D. 45, 229, 237 Schieffelin, B. 3, 9, 10
Politeness 63, 141, 169-70, 187 Schmidt, R. 25
Schoepfler, G. 11 Street, B. 6, 18, 52, 53, 54, 61, 80, 91, 112
Schumann, J. 9 Style
Schutz, A. 39, 49 communicative 57, 68, 131, 132
Scollon, R. 83 Swain, M. 25
Scollon, S. 83
Seelye, H. 26 Tambiah, S. 79
Semantics 217, 228 Tannen, D. 57, 58, 130, 161
cultural 29 Text 77-83, 89-90 see also Cultural studies,
ethno 76 Ethnographic projects
of topic 221 Thick description 17, 30, 32, 51-2, 53, 115,
Sercu, L. 27 124-5, 141, 154, 170, 199
Sheerin, S. 41 Thomas, H. 25
Sheridan, D. 37 Thompson, E. 28, 84
Sherzer, J. 59 Thompson, J. 84
Singer, A. 91 Thornton, R. 32, 90
Singer, E. 122 Ting-Toomey, S. 31
Singerman, A. 31 Todorov, T. 91, 92, 94-5, 231
Skehan, P. 25 Towell, R. 34
Slobin, D. 74 Translation 42, 82-3, 85-6, 90-2, 138, 150,
Snow, D. 4, 15, 242 195-6, 204, 219, 221 see also Culture and
Sociolinguistics 9, 26, 29, 31, 130, 173 mediation
interactional 23, 24, 41, 45, 56-63, 75 Triangulation 131, 162, 194, 239, 241
Socialisation 22, 40, 45, 65 Trim, J. 8, 25, 27
primary 9
secondary 10 Valdes, J. 27
tertiary 10 see also Language socialisation van Ek, J. 8, 24, 25, 27
Space Varonis, E. 8
ritual 85
social 83-5, 115 Wallace, C. 27
symbolic 105, 111 Wallman, S. 65
Speakers Warner, M. 126
intercultural 3, 29-32, 36, 40, 234, 241 see Weil, A. 39
also Intercultural learner Wenden, A. 41
theory of 25 Wenger, E. 8
Speech Werner, O. 11
act, theory of 25, 46 Whorf, B. 69-74
community 68 Widdowson, H. 25, 27, 80
event 59, 83, 89 Wilkins, D. 25
Spradley, J. 35, 109, 139, 142, 242 Williams, R. 18, 28
Staff development 36, 101-8 Willis, F. 34
Stereotyping 6, 20, 27, 34, 56, 58, 65, 67, 69, Willis, P. 28, 118
75, 120, 121, 127, 150, 188, 224 Woolard, K. 68
challenging 40, 65, 120, 150
self 68-9 see also Essentialism Year Abroad see Residence abroad
Stern, H. 8, 26, 27
Stocking, G. 42, 92 Zaharlick, A. 147
Strauss, A. 148 Zarate, G. 4, 28, 30, 31, 34

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Celia Roberts-Language Learners As Ethnographers (2001)

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MODERN LANGUAGES IN PRACTICE 16

Series Editor: Michael Grenfell

Celia Roberts, Michael Byram,

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN 1-85359-503-9 (hbk)

Multilingual Matters Ltd

Typeset by Florence Production Ltd.

1111 4 Representations, Discourses and Practices 64

1111 10 The Year Abroad: An Ethnographic Experience 210

1111 learners in a process of encountering otherness and representing that

1111 multiethnic, multilingual urban communities which are a commonplace

1111 misunderstandings that do not come to light in a supposedly neutral

1111 acculturate or with generalisations about groups divorced from any

1111 school, children are expected to learn the institutional practices of

1111 We can make a further distinction between methods and purposes.

1111 then added: Here in Andalucia we like to celebrate everything . . .

1111 particular events generalised beliefs, values and attitudes in an unprob-

1111 as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice. (Duranti, 1997:

1111 Hymes notion of communicative competence stresses the cultural in

1111 He suggests several reasons for this including the slipperiness of

1111 understandings of cultural processes. In this way, it can connect texts

1111 dimensions as individual/collective, personal/positional or even more

1111 knowledge-based, intellectual elds of enquiry with what are generally

1111 Recognising the learning opportunities of an exchange visit or stay

1111 can undertake ethnographic projects. If language learners are to develop

1111 and cultural experience, it is important for language staff to develop

1111 implies a process of social interaction and dialogue. In the literature

1111 the psychological theories, direct use of these themes in developing

1111 (3) Observation, social interaction and analytic skills

1111 sociolinguistic perspective which combines cultural practices and

1111 waiting prone to be discovered. Until quite recently, ethnographers

1111 chaque partie sexcuserait de faire attendre le tout. voluant discrte-

1111 home ethnography on Reyes, the Twelfth Night celebrations in Spain,

1111 A Symbolic View of Culture

1111 in redening itself. In particular, a critical view of culture challenges

1111 Part of this representation is the natives stereotyping of her own

1111 Another way of putting this is Sacks denition of culture as an infer-

1111 routine categories is a useful method for language learners as they

1111 In addition to the type of institutional encounters that this patient

1111 description of the pipe player as a sick person. In conversation analytic

1111 to talk about others outside it and in interaction as a way of claiming

1111 ethnography course, students are given a reading by Forsythe (1989) in

1111 As well as language representing ethnic and national differences,

1111 inuence of language on habitual thought. Whorf himself had been

1111 individual features of language and cultures, that in Sapirs terms we

1111 causal way. Linguistic categories, by analogy, group experiences and

1111 that most of our understanding is metaphorical rather than objective.

1111 If we look at what people actually do when they communicate, in the

1111 events, persons, and institutions. To an important extent, such mean-

1111 On returning to the UK he presented this approach as a key to under-

1111 Eurocentric politics and epistemology. They cite a description by

1111 of particular dominant societies at a particular period. The ways in which

1111 students were themselves going to experience the ethnographic reality

1111 learning about methodologies of ethnography;

1111 making strange. We discovered the limitations of our perceptions of

1111 a member of academic staff apparently descending on them as

1111 Evaluation and Generalisation

1111 in a small-scale project based on a group activity or set of practices which

1111 6. Gender relations

1111 14. Language and social identities

1111 What is going on?

1111 Understanding cultural meanings is a process of recognising the inter-