Ethnography

(according to WaW)

Ethnography is a research methodology for carefully observing and describing people participating in some activity.

At its broadest, ethnography can be written of entire cultures; more narrowly, ethnographies can be written of a class of students, a church and its members, or a videogame arcade and the gamers who play there.

WaW, p. 724
What is Ethnography video: http://vimeo.com/3248398

Ethnography for Us
What should we investigate? What would someone need to know to go undercover in the discourse community youre investigating?

SWALES SIX Discourse DEFINITION

Research Objectives
What should you be looking for?

Figure out if your community meets Swales criteria. Please refer to the redefined Swales characteristics from class today to help you.

From the Discourse definition we learned on Wednesday:

words acts values beliefs attitudes social identities gestures glances body positions clothes

Writing Your Research Plan

Your research plan should include the following:

What community will you be investigating? Why are you interested in this community? What connection do you have to it? What existing knowledge do you have about the community? What two (or more) methods of research do you tentatively plan to use? Why?

Interview (1 with a significant member of your community, or 2 with average members) Survey (Must ask at least 5 people a set of the same 5 or more questions Observations (You must complete at least two 30 min 1 hour long observations of your community, preferably in different situations and take notes)

Textual analysis (You will examine key texts of your community for use of language, etc. in terms of discourse)