专题书摘：The ethnography of communication
“Ethnography is a branch of anthropology concerned with the detailed descriptive study of living cultures. As a research methodology, ethnographic research requires avoidance of theoretical preconceptions and hypothesis testing in favor of prolonged direct observation, especially participant observation, attempting to see social action and the activities of daily life from the participant’s point of view, resulting in a long detailed description of what has been observed. In studies of language learning and use, the term ethnographic research is sometimes used to refer to the observation and description of naturally occurring language, particularly when there is a strong cultural element to the research or the analysis.” (Richards 2003: 187)The concept of the ethnography of speaking – or, more generally, the ethnography of communication was initiated by American social anthropologist and linguist Dell Hymes in the early 1960s. According to Fasold (2000: 39 –40), Hymes was concerned that both linguists and anthropologists were missing a large and important area of human communication. For him, anthropologists had long conducted ethnographic studies of different aspects of cultures but treated language as subsidiary, whereas linguists were paying too much attention to language as an abstract system. The ethnography of communication is thus a combination of the two disciplines involved. It is “the study of the place of language in culture and society” (Richards 2003: 187) or “the study of the organization of speaking as an activity in human society” (Fasold 2000: 62).
There are three essential concepts of the ethnography of communication. One is the speech community. Another is the units of interaction, that is, situation, event, and act. The third is “speaking”, which is an acronym for “certain components of speech that the ethnographer should look for” (Fasold 2000: 40). These are what Wardhaugh (2000: 242) called the factors “that are relevant in understanding how a particular communicative event achieves its objectives”, namely, “situation” (setting and the scene), “ends”, “act sequence”, “key”, “instrumentalities”, “norms”, “genres”. And the data that ethnographers of communication use are collected largely by two methods: participant-observation and introspection (Fasold 2000: 63).
“The major value of the ethnography of speaking to sociolinguistics was in setting up an approach to language that went far beyond the attempt to account for single written or spoken sentences. It widened the scope to include all aspects of the speech event” (Spolsky 2000: 15). This is particularly the case as regarding the language learning. “Working with an ethnographic approach, then, we may attempt to specify just what it means to be a competent speaker of a particular language. It is one thing to learn the language of the Subanun, but quite another to learn how to ask for a drink in Subanun…. Therefore, in learning to speak we are also learning to ‘talk’, in the sense of communicating in those ways deemed appropriate by the group in which we are doing that learning.” (Wardhaugh 2000: 245). But can we apply the ethnographic framework of “speaking” to the actual learning and teaching process? For example, course designs or classroom activities? And how?
参考文献：
Fasold, Ralph. The Sociolinguistics of language. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.
Richards, Jack C. & Richard Schmidt. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2003.
Wardhaugh, Ronald. An introduction to Sociolinguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.
Spolsky, Bernard. Sociolinguistics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language education Publishing House, 2000.
很遗憾，未能读到Hymes的原著。另，新手，请各位前辈指点关照 太厉害了!还谦虚地说是新手！看来我要重新思考“谦虚”这两个词的意思了！ 引用第1楼scalet56于2008-04-03 22:05发表的 :
太厉害了!还谦虚地说是新手！看来我要重新思考“谦虚”这两个词的意思了！
说是新手是因为帖子发得少，帖子发的少是因为怕犯错误，怕犯错误是因为不想把好不容易赚来的一点威望和财富给弄丢了，不想把好不容易赚来的一点威望和财富给弄丢了是因为自己很穷，很穷是因为自己是新手。不知道这样是否解释清楚了？ 引用第2楼jinjin1996于2008-04-04 01:17发表的 :
说是新手是因为帖子发得少，帖子发的少是因为怕犯错误，怕犯错误是因为不想把好不容易赚来的一点威望和财富给弄丢了，不想把好不容易赚来的一点威望和财富给弄丢了是因为自己很穷，很穷是因为自己是新手。不知道这样是否解释清楚了？
典型的循环论证。应该扣分分。 偶是十分地努力不犯错误的，这个大家有目共睹，不料还是犯了，罪过，罪过！还好，醉兄没让雨点也砸向小弟的头上。
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