Workshop on Ethnography and Variation

NWAV 31 Stanford University October 10, 2002

Penelope Eckert Rudolf P. Gaudio

eckert@csli.stanford.edu rudolf.gaudio@purchase.edu

I. Introduction: What is "ethnography" and what is it good for?

A. What makes a study "ethnographic"?

1. time and social energy spent in a community

2. depth and breadth of social interaction with community members

3. discovering social categories and norms (vs. locating “known” categories)

B. Ethnographic knowledge allows us to socially situate our data

1. identify relevant social categories:

a. situate speakers in relation to each other and to the community at large;

b. situate our linguistic data within the social life of the community;

2. specify and situate the "community" itself

a. vis-à-vis other communities (including larger aggregates such as cities, nations, the world)

b. in terms of social-interactional and institutional practices (including practices mediated by technological means).

C. When is ethnography (possibly) not required?

1. When our questions pertain to language per se, not to social organization or to the sociocultural meanings of linguistic forms, e.g.,

a. when we're focusing on linguistic constraints

b. dialectological surveys to track geographic and demographic distributions

2. When we have a reasonable sense of what the relevant social categories are likely to be, e.g.,

a. when we already have extensive ("native") ethnographic knowledge (but beware)

b. when our sociological questions are at a highly general level

c. when other scholars' ethnographic findings are good enough to start with

II. What questions can ethnography help us answer?

A. What is a relevant social category?

1. Ethnography (like variationist sociolinguistics) is a science of the social

a. Using a priori social categories is unempirical, unscientific

2. Social identities are not a priori, but are defined by speakers' social practices, i.e.,

a. Speakers' habitual interactions with others

b. Speakers' social networks (practical and affective ties)

c. Speakers' use of social-identity labels for self and others ("native categories")

i. A label is not a person

ii. Speakers use labels to make sense of their own and others' social relationships and social networks

iii. A label is an ideological claim about a person's relationship to other people and to society at large

3. In variationist research, we can best generate analytical categories by critically appropriating native categories

B. What does a correlation mean?

1. Category as fetish: the problems of typicality and ideology

a. A category is not a group

i. the former is an abstraction; the latter is composed of individuals with differing kinds and degrees of affiliation to it

ii. don't get too excited when you discover a category; don't let your haste to locate the "right" categories lead you to stop looking for others

b. Search for "typical speaker" (& discounting "atypical / deviant speakers") is problematic

i. Makes certain speakers' practices and norms definitive of entire group

ii. Uncritically accepts one ideological perspective at the expense of others

> e.g., implications of labeling someone "slut" or "lame"

iii. “Deviant” speakers are deviating => possibly innovating

2. Linguistic variables index social categories (as opposed to merely reflecting them)

a. A correlation is not a meaning; it needs interpretation

b. Correlating a linguistic variable with a social-identity category is just the tip of a cultural-ideological iceberg

i. A correlation is an index of the stances speakers assume in particular social situations

ii. Example of a “gay” variable (released /t/)

C. Is there “a” vernacular?

1. Interrogating the notion of “authenticity” (“real” vernacular, “most” vernacular, etc.)

2. “The” vernacular vs. the range of linguistic styles and the things people do with them

D. How do variation data fit into the sociocultural context?

1. Linguistic data are situated within the sociocultural life of a community.

a. Language use always occurs in identifiable situations

b. Speech situations are associated with particular speech genres

2. Genres involve conventions for using language

a. interactional: who speaks when, to whom, for how long, about what, etc.

b. stylistic conventions: lexical, syntactic, phonological

3. Genres provide a framework for interpreting sociolinguistic correlations

a. correlations don't just index social identities and stances

b. correlations also index the speech situation and the genre

III. How is ethnography done?

A. Fieldnotes

1. Fieldnotes are data: a fundamental part of scientific practice

a. Fieldnotes remind you to pay attention to your surroundings (“how hot is it?”)

2. Systematic fieldnotes are part of the process of intellectual discovery

a. Going over your fieldnotes right after you write them gives you insights you can use immediately

i. Who is missing from today's or this week's fieldnotes?

ii. What don't you understand?

b. Today's fieldnotes help you plan tomorrow's research agenda

3. Fieldnotes provide a record of how your sociocultural understanding evolved over time

a. Fieldnotes are indispensable for interpreting and writing up your findings

B. Getting in, getting on, getting data

1. How do I start? Always have a task!

a. Initial contacts (e.g., where you live)

b. Institutional affiliations

c. Working in institutional settings

2. Participating in & observing social practice

a. Learning the language

i. Talk about language gives insight into language attitudes & ideologies

b. Observing performances of verbal art (song, poems, jokes)

i. These trigger questions we can ask later on

ii. Artistic uses of language often highlight salient linguistic variables

c. Getting to know people better is analytically, methodologically & ethically beneficial

i. familiarity improves research questions & analysis

ii. intimacy & solidarity makes further research possible, e.g.,

> participating in a wider variety of social situations

> tape-recording and interviewing

3. When do you tape?: Logistics, appropriateness, ethics

IV. Conclusion: What can variationism contribute to ethnography?

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