1. Ethnographic Research
English 540

2. Overview
• Discussion of Book Club
• Proposals DUE April 9th or 16th
• Your voices on this week’s readings on ethnography
• Ethnography: Challenges and Dilemmas
• Discussion of Canagarajah and Mills work on Critical
Ethnography (Summer)

3. How would you like to organize
the book club activity?
It could include these four components:
• A quick summary of the main arguments (chapter summaries
if it is an edited book)
• Context, research questions, methodology, findings if it’s a
book-length ethnography/case study etc.
• The main contribution to your discipline/areas of research:
(E.g. Applied linguistics/TESOL; Comp/Rhetoric; Literacy
Studies; Postcolonial studies; Creative writing)
• Remaining critical questions

4. Erin (the issue of generalizability)
• He [Hammersley] brought up some of the risks inherent in ethnographic
research, such as overgeneralizing results to assume they characterize "typical"
activity (5). Later, he notes that critics of ethnography have charged it with "only
documenting the surface of events in particular local settings, rather than
seeking to understand the deeper social forces that shape the whole society, and
that operate within those settings" (7). I was interested in the conflict between
these two positions and how and when, whether in ethnography or other
research methodologies, we can move from the specific to the general and vice
versa.
• This conflict is present in Canagarajah's article as well, in that he first
acknowledges the risk of the teacher/researcher position and details why his
particular subject position (including his status as a native Tamil, bilingual
English/Tamil speaker, and progressive professor) might bear on his findings.
After examining this a bit, he then moves to assert the relevance of his data by
stating, "Although the uniqueness of each teacher/researcher-student
interaction should not be slighted in favor of the generalizability of this study, we
have to note that almost all Sri Lankan ESOL teachers are Westernized, middle-
class, bilingual, native Lankans like me" (620-621). Thus even though he is
cautious about generalizing, he wants the reader to know that this data might be
common across the experience of many Sri Lankan teachers.

5. Erin
• Can one design a study that is both "micro" in its execution
(i.e. involving specific and close analysis), yet allow the
researcher to make larger claims? Should "larger claims," as
I've said clumsily here, ever be a researcher's goal? Does it do
a disservice to your subjects to attempt to make larger claims
or to shy away from them? In what ways is the subject able to
assist in, contest, or question your focus and its "size"?

6. Meg (on partiality of
representation)
• Hammersley notes at the end of his article that “the very character
of ethnography has come to be contested” (11). It is threatened.
The ideological underpinnings of what it means to “study” have
been reveled. What I would argue is that this is not a bad thing.
That those in ethnography perhaps need to just learn to be okay
with partiality, with the idea that the apparatuses conducting any
particular experiment are always going to control the results—
always going to make the results. Those of us in the Humanities can
do much to let them know that it’s going to be alright.
• That, as Haraway recently explained, “No longer able to sustain the
fictions of being either subjects or object, all the partners in the
potent conversations that constitute nature must find a new ground
for making meanings together” (“Otherworldly Conversations” 158).

7. Ana (Teaching ethnographic
approaches)
• ….I believe that Kathy A. Mills’s self-reflection provides us with a great
lesson towards the study of culture, society and language use; before
proceeding to explain her research, Mills takes care to say “In this
critical ethnography, I negotiated my multiple identities as
researcher, PhD student, lecturer, and former classroom teacher” (4).
Through this statement, Mills speaks to Hammersley’s view of
ethnography as one way of telling a story, for our experiences and who
we are affects how we see the world, in the same way that the students'
background affects how they benefit from the tools they use in the
classroom.
• In light of these ideas, it would be interesting to have students share
their ethnographic work once they have reflected on it. In this way, they
will be able to see how their views on the same event differ, even if only
slightly, and they will be able to reflect on what may have promoted
such different views. Last, but definitely not the least, it would be highly
important to have students explore the language they use to “tell their
stories” about the same event. By doing so, students would be able to
see how language and language use do not occur in a vacuum, and so
this would encourage their appreciation of key issues we have been
exploring in this class such as the value of World Englishes or Code
Meshing and their position in today’s society.

8. Cristina and Meg (on
ethnography as a political act)
• Cristina: As for the political implications of ethnography, as
Hammersley says " understanding people does not require sharing
their beliefs, or being obliged to offer them support" (2006: 11)
or, on the contrary, reject their ideologies. So the aims of
ethnographic research just relate to understand the context behind
a particular situation and do not imply a political position on behalf
of the researcher.
• Meg: In it he argues that “the ethnographer must neither be in the
service of some political establishment or profession nor an organic
intellectual seeking to further the interests of
marginalized, exploited, or dominated groups. Both of these
orientations greatly increase the danger of systematic bias” (11). It
is frankly hard not to laugh here. Ethnographers should try to not
have any political opinions or beliefs? It is a joke to believe that we
can ever escape the ideological state apparatuses, the systems in
which we function and simultaneously and often unknowingly
replicate. I think deep down he knows this (some of the great
questions that he asks elsewhere in his article would point to
this), but he just can’t let go.

9. Sarah (On reporting the
findings in an ethical way)
• Now, I want to go on to consider what seems to me the messiest aspect
of ethnography: how to analyze and report your findings in an ethical
way. Athanases and Heath (1995: 278) point out that “Ethnographic
reporting is the construction of a reality, made possible by the
researcher’s essential instrument, the self. In this way, all seeing is
through a frame (Goffman, 1974), a perceptual lens.” They attempt to
address this issue by insisting that the researcher make clear in his or
her reporting the various lenses, biases, and assumptions through which
he or she is reporting. And while I agree, of course, that this self-
identification of the researcher is an important part of any research
project, I’m wondering now if it’s enough. Just revealing your biases
doesn’t mean that you can then feel free to proceed with representing
the culture you are studying (even if it’s in the way you think is best)
without fear of misrepresentation in some way. Hammersley (2006: 7)
puts it this way: “a host of different stories could be told about any
situation, each one placing it in a different temporal and spatial context.
From this perspective, ethnography is simply one means among others
for telling stories about the social world.” And what if the story you
choose to tell is misrepresentative or damaging in a way that you could
never see through your own perspective?

10. Irina
• Turning to the role of ethnography in considering cultural contexts
and working within them, the surroundings are impossible to escape
while attempting to discuss what occurs in the classroom since the
classroom is in no way an isolated space. The attempts to treat it in
such a way when it comes to the study of language indirectly asks
the students to turn a blind eye to society. When Canagarajah
mentions fighter jets and bombs in the background of the students
taking the English placement tests, the conscious social experience
is at the forefront and the classroom cannot escape it. Inside the
classroom, daily, perhaps subtle activities emphasized their
identities as students in the larger social context. The example of
correcting pronunciation, which revealed the distinction between
standard and nonstandard Sri Lankan English (616), comments on
the global, multiplying prejudices within a "single language."

11. Lisa (Ethnography and online communities).
Does ethnography depend on the physical
presence?
• Hammersly’s query into how ethnographic research methods may
be deployed in online communities is at the forefront of my mind.
That we have a different relationship based in different kinds of
sensory exposures to each other online makes for an interesting
shift in research practices. Because I am interested in how different
ratios of sensory perception may impact how we feel about each
other in different environmental contexts, Hammersly’s essay may
draw attention to what is omitted in online discourse. I don’t believe
you can know whether the person on the other side of the screen is
“real” or not. This Baudrillardian sense of hyperreality transforms
ordinary human interaction. Put differently, one does not have the
same kind of sensory engagement one does with another real-live
human being or other creature. Sociological studies—Sherry Turkle’s
Alone Together comes to mind—begin to examine the disconnect
between face-to-face human interactions with online or robotic
machine interactions. How does one do ethnographic research of
robotic interactions? If so, how does one shift analytic components
to reflect the non-human aspects of communication across this two-
way bridge?

12. Ethnography
• Ethnos: People; Grapho: to write. Writing about the culture of
people.
• Early ethnologists: Franz Boas,Margaret Mead, John
Gumperz, Dell Hymes (linguistic anthropology): Discussed
relevance of anthropology to education and linguistics.
• Ethnographic approaches have their roots in anthropology and
sociolinguistics. Characterized by (1) contextualization of a
social phenomenon; (2) participants’ point of view (emic
perspective); (3) finding connections between micro and
macro processes by critically examining the web of
social, cultural and political meanings.
• Multiple kinds of qualitative methods are employed: E. G.
DA, CDA, Micro-ethnography, narrative analysis, life history

13. Guiding principles
(Athanases and Heath)
• Researcher become immersed in the culture and act as a
participant or distant observer
• Data sources: Thick-description of people and their actions;
abundant field notes, audiotaped/videotaped data; collecting
cultural artifacts; ethnographic interviews; observations.
• “The researcher who lack sensitivity to demands in the lives of
informants, or who holds fast to the comfortable distance of
authority rather than becoming a learner in the
culture, severely limits the nature of the data and undermines
the research” (p. 268)

15. Dilemmas
• Selecting Research Sites:
Was the site chosen merely it was easily available? Why did you
chose this site? What key characteristics will allow findings from
this study t be compared with those of other school research?
• Negotiating Entry and Building Rapport:
How do you establish rapport? How do you balance the
demands of participants’ local contexts and demands of
research? How do you build a nonjudgmental relationship
between researcher and all participants in the study?
Selecting Participants:
How do you decide who to select? What considerations effect
your decision?

16. Fieldwork
• Field notes journals/Diaries
• Texts about the field
• Writing that records both what the ethnographer learns and
observes.
• A record of one’s reactions, comments and questions.
• Construction and reconstruction of events: Observations and
conversations.
• Develop a log technique/ a strategy to take notes
• You might pursue whatever is interesting and worth noting
related to language, literacy and culture
• You can jot down phrases, key words, incomplete sentences
(sensory, visual etc.)
• As opposed to classical ethnographies we see in 20th
century, fieldwork carried out by many ethnographers today is
likely to last months rather than years (Hammersley, 2006)

17. Sample data resources

18. Identifying what to analyze
• Decisions had to be made regarding which stretches of talk to
analyze and how to do so. Balancing micro and macro-level
analyses.
• Analyzing macro-level themes or classroom events. Focusing
on “rich poiins” (Agar, 1998) and “telling cases”
(Michell, 1997).

19. Ethnographic Reporting
• “Ethnographic reporting is the construction of a reality, made
possible by the researcher’s essential instrument: the self” (p.
Anthanases & Heath, 1995, 278)
• “For this reason, the author of a well researched and wrll
reported ethnography has the responsibility to reveal how
theoretical assumptions and philosophical and political
biases, as well as practical considerations, have shaped
methodological choices and research moves” (p. 278)
• Myth of value-free inquiry.
• The uses of ethnography enables researchers to discover “the
informal logic of actual life” (Geertz, 1973): How does this
research contribute to theory or theories of human behavior?

20. Insuring credibility and rigor
• Can I believe the researcher’s account? Can I trust this report?

21. Credibility and rigor
• Triangulation of data sources to build consistent
interpretations: teacher reflections, student interviews, field
notes, observations, sample writing to check on emerging
themes and trends.
• Search for and write about conflicting themes.
• Conduct member-checks and peer-debriefing with the
participants during data transcription and analysis.

22. Reliability
• Researchers can address the issue of reliability by making clear
their decision rules and by reading their ethnographies
through the eyes of not only their audience of professionals
but also those at the center of the work (p. 282)

24. Areas of disagreement
• Duration of time spent in the field
• What is considered ethnography? Holistic vs micro-
ethnography
How are we to determine what is the appropriate wider context
in which to situate what we are studying? How are we to gain
the knowledge we need about that context?
• Context as virtual? Does ethnography depend on the physical
presence of the ethnographer in the midst of people being
studied? Are there limitations of internet data from a
traditional ethnographic point of view?

25. Critical Ethnography
• Canagarajah
• Mills