Ethnography of Communication

History

The ethnography of communication was initially called the ethnography of speaking (EOS) by Dell Hymes in 1962. Hymes's goal for his approach to the analysis of discourse centered on the role of speech in human behavior. This work coupled two fields of study—linguistics and ethnography. With the interrelationships among language, culture, and society as a traditional anthropological concern, Hymes's proposal diverged from linguistic approaches that, until that time, studied speaking as grammars or abstract linguistic systems. Hymes's proposal also diverged from ethnographic or anthropological models that traditionally studied culture as geographic boundaries, languages, races, and/or ethnicities. Hymes sought to make speech the object of investigation and rectify the problem of taking it for granted. In 1964, Hymes renamed his perspective the ethnography of communication in order to more expressly account for the context-dependent uses of nonvocal (e.g., drumming and whistling) and nonverbal (e.g., gestures, silence) communication.

In 1992, Gerry Philipsen broadened the EOC by introducing speech codes theory (SCT). SCT offers a communication-based analytic framework designed for describing, explaining, and/or predicting cultural communication within the context of speech communities. As an interpretive tool, SCT seeks to answer questions about the existence of codes, their substance, the ways in which they can be discovered, and their social force on the members of cultural communities. Ultimately, the study of codes serves to describe the sets of precepts and rules by which different societies enact and interpret their ways of life. In other words, SCT helps reveal how people feel and talk about what is going on in their collective lives. It helps bring to light, for example, what identities and interpersonal relationships community members can and do construct, how community members relate to their physical (natural) and metaphysical (spiritual) environment, and how different peoples approach uses of time.

Since its inception, the EOC has resulted in hundreds of studies applied across a variety of contexts, including family, leisure, and organizational life; online communication; broadcast media; and myriad other oral and written applications. Over time, the EOC has been subject to criticisms not dealing with matters of power in social interaction. Indeed, the EOC does not advocate prejudging the incidence of particular social meanings (e.g., power and status) prior to examination of the situated interaction in question. To do so would undermine the community-based, culture-rich description the EOC calls for. Because this is a point that has too often been misunderstood, it should be underscored that the EOC can and does take power into account when it is made obvious by speech community members themselves. In such cases, ethnographers must remain open to hearing, describing, interpreting, and reporting on performances of power. For example, Philipsen's critique of a controversial speaking event involving Chicago mayor Richard Daley unveils key power-laden rules for the conduct of public discourse. Further, in a study combining the ethnography of communication and critical Whiteness theory, Patricia Covarrubias demonstrates how silence-mediated discrimination against American Indian college students is enacted in some college classrooms, thereby exposing power-laden structures.

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