ETHNOGRAPHY

ETHNOGRAPHY

Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos "folk, people, nation" and γράφω grapho "I write") is the systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. An ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a group. The resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group.

Features of ethnographic research

•      Involves investigation of very few cases, maybe just one case, in detail.

•      Often involves working with primarily unconstructed data. This data had not been coded at the point of data collection in terms of a closed set of analytic categories.

•      Emphasizes on exploring social phenomena rather than testing hypotheses.

•      Data analysis involves interpretation of the functions and meanings of human actions. The product of this is mainly verbal explanations, where statistical analysis and quantification play a subordinate role.

•      Methodological discussions focus more on questions about how to report findings in the field than on methods of data collection and interpretation.

•      Ethnographies focus on describing the culture of a group in very detailed and complex manner. The ethnography can be of the entire group or a sub part of it.

•      It involves engaging in extensive field work where data collection is mainly by interviews, symbols, artifacts, observations, and many other sources of data.

•      The researcher in ethnography type of research looks for patterns of the group's mental activities, that is their ideas and beliefs expressed through language or other activities, and how they behave in their groups as expressed through their actions that the researcher observed.

•      In ethnography, the researcher gathers what is available, what is normal, what it is that people do, what they say, and how they work.

Procedures for conducting ethnography

•      Determine if ethnography is the most appropriate design to use to study the research problem. Ethnography is suitable if the needs are to describe how a cultural group works and to explore their beliefs, language, behaviours and also issues faced by the group, such as power, resistance, and dominance.

•      Then identify and locate a culture-sharing group to study. This group is one whose members have been together for an extended period of time, so that their shared language, patterns of behaviour and attitudes have merged into discernible patterns. This group can also be a group that has been marginalized by society.

•      Select cultural themes, issues or theories to study about the group. These themes, issues, and theories provide an orienting framework for the study of the culture-sharing group. As discussed by Hammersley and Atkinson (2007), Wolcott, and Fetterman (2009). The ethnographer begins the study by examining people in interaction in ordinary settings and discerns pervasive patterns such as life cycles, events, and cultural themes.

•      For studying cultural concepts, determine which type of ethnography to use. Perhaps how the group works need to be described, or a critical ethnography can expose issues such as power, hegemony, and advocacy for certain groups.

•      Should collect information in the context or setting where the group works or lives. This is called fieldwork. Types of information typically needed in ethnography are collected by going to the research site, respecting the daily lives of individuals at the site and collecting a wide variety of materials. Field issues of respect, reciprocity, deciding who owns the data and others are central to Ethnography.

Ethnography of Communication: A Person-Centered Approach

•      Setting: The resident’s room in the nursing home

•      Participants: A person with dementia and a graduate student in speech-language pathology

•      Ends (goals): These are difficult to ascertain in the case of the person with dementia. However, the graduate student has both overt goals (e.g., to learn about the resident’s life, and to spend time visiting with him/her) and covert goals (e.g., to collect data in order to study and treat dementia)

•      Acts sequence: The types of communication used (e.g., a question-answer format)

•      Key: Whether the interaction is informal or formal

•      Instrumentality: The mode of communication (e.g., conversation or sign language)

•      Norms: Polite conversation

•      Genre: Possibly a friendly chat or “small talk”

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SOLIDARITY AND POLITENESS

SOLIDARITY AND POLITENESS

The purpose of the present research from a sociolinguistic stance is to consider the aspects of solidarity and politeness including face-threatening acts from the point of view of their linguistic components, relevance for social interaction and their usage in male/female discourse.     In essence, this research will show that certain linguistic choices a speaker makes indicate the social relationship that the speaker perceives to exist between his or her interlocutor.

Generalizations concerning address systems

Aspects of social relationships, such as distance, solidarity or intimacy are given linguistic expression by address systems consisting of a T/V distinction and address terms. This way, speakers are given the chance to either be more formal or less formal with their interlocutor on certain occasions (Hickey 2007: 3).

Basic concepts and origin of T/V distinction and address terms

v  The term address denotes a speaker’s linguistic reference to his/her interlocutor.

v   Address means  only the main linguistic interaction without opening forms of address.

v   Speaking of forms of address includes words and phrases that are used for addressing.

v  These words and phrases refer to the interlocutor and thus contain deictic expressions designating the interlocutors, but not necessarily so, since their lexical meaning can differ from or even contradict the addressee’s characteristics.

Pronoun of Address

v  Concerning pronouns of address, it has to be mentioned that pronouns referring to the interlocutors are meant. These pronouns are second person pronouns such as English you, German du and Ihr, French tu and vous

v  For convenience sake in order to thus designate a pronoun that either refers to social distance (V) or intimacy (T) in any language (1960: 254).

semantic evolution of the usage of T and V pronouns of address

v  Considering the consequence and the semantic evolution of the usage of T and V pronouns of address, it was apparent that by medieval times the upper classes began to use V forms with each other to show “mutual respect and politeness” (Wardhaugh 1992: 259).

v  Nevertheless, T forms of social intimacy or rather solidarity persisted among the lower classes with the upper classes using T forms only when addressing the lower classes

v  Contrary to this, V forms were on the one hand used by the upper classes amongst themselves to show respect or rather politeness and on the other hand V forms were used by the lower classes when addressing the upper classes so that a social distance was established between these classes.

v  In referring to Brown and Gilman (1960), Wardhaugh points out at that this T/V usage of upper classes addressing lower ones with T but receiving V forms of respect resulted in a non-reciprocal usage of asymmetrical patterns of address that therefore came to semantically symbolize a ‘power’ relationship such as officer to soldier, priest to penitent or master/mistress to servants (1992: 259

v  This power semantic is based upon a strict rule in which the superior says T and the inferior addresses the superior with the V form.

v  In contrast to this power semantic of the non-reciprocal usage of T/V pronouns of address usage, the reciprocal V usage of symmetrical address terms, that is when both interlocutors independent of class address each other with the V pronoun of address, then this usage of V forms, as Wardhaugh puts it, becomes ‘polite’ usage.

v  On the basis of this statement, the V form can be used by both interlocutors to indicate politeness as well as social distance along with the T form now being used by both to show solidarity (Lambert/Tucker 1976: 2).

v   But the non-reciprocal T/V usage can still be used to express status differences,

v  At least in American English when for instance, one person addresses another with a first name and expects a title plus last name in return, for example:

v   ‘Is that you, Max?’ ‘Yes, Mr. Adams.’ (1976: 2).

T/V Usage in English  

v  In English, all kinds of T/V usage or rather address terms combinations, whether reciprocal or nonreciprocal, are possible: Dr Smith, John Smith, Smith, John, Johnnie, Doc, Sir, Mack and so on, with Dr Smith himself expecting to be addressed Doctor from a patient, Dad from his son, John from his brother, Dear from his wife and Sir from subordinants.

Politeness

v  In general sense: taking account of sense: feelings of others, making others feel comfortable.

v  Linguistically: speaking appropriately to the relationship between speaker and hearer. Linguistic politeness requires understanding how language works  in variety of social contexts

Positive and Negative politeness

v  Positive politeness: solidarity oriented,

    politeness: oriented, emphasizes shared attitudes and values

v  Negative politeness: power, status and politeness: distance oriented, pays people respect and avoids intruding on them (does not equal lack of  politeness or rudeness!!)

LINGUISTIC POLITENESS

v  Needs assessing relationship b/w  speaker and hearer along two social dimensions:

v   Social distance/solidarity,

v  Relative status/power.

POWER AND SOLIDARITY

POWER:

       a relation between two people, it determines the negative rights               they expect  of each other: A<B (A  subordinate),

 A>B  other: (A superior),

 A=B (A equal to B)

SOLIDARITY:

characteristic of relation b/w two people; determines the positive rights, \ has two types: low and high. Concerns   social distance b/w two people in terms of how much experience they share.       

CONCLUSION

Expressing the same speech act /speech function may differ markedly from culture to culture. They may seem random, but are not. They reflect social values and attitudes of societies. Being polite involves knowing expression of a range of speech functions in a culturally appropriate way. Learning another language means / involves more than just learning literal meaning of words, how to put them together, etc. Learners also need to know what they mean in the cultural context, so they need to understand cultural and social norms of their users. This makes sociolinguistic competence, important component of communicative competence.

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TALK AND ACTION

TALK AND ACTION

In speaking to one another, we make use of sentences, or, to be more precise, utterances. We can attempt to classify these utterances in any one of a variety of ways. We can try to classify them by grammatical structure, e.g., their clausal type and complexity: active–passive; statement–question– request–exclamatory; various combinations of these; and so on.

                We may even try to work out a semantic or logical structure for each utterance. But it is also possible to attempt a classification in terms of what sentences do, i.e., to take a ‘functional’ approach, but one that goes somewhat beyond consideration of such functions as stating, questioning, requesting, and exclaiming.

Through conversation we establish relationships with others, achieve a measure of cooperation, keep open for further relationships, and so on. The utterances we use in conversation enable us to do these kinds of things because conversation itself has certain properties which are well worth examining. Our concern in this chapter is therefore twofold: we will be concerned both with what utterances do and how they can be used, and, specifically, with how we use them in conversation.

One thing that many utterances do is make propositions: they do this mainly in the form of either statements or questions but other grammatical forms are also possible. Each of the following is a proposition: ‘I had a busy day today,’ ‘Have you called your mother?,’ and ‘Your dinner’s ready!’ Such utterances are connected in some way with events or happenings in a possible world, i.e., one that can be experienced or imagined, a world in which such propositions can be said to be either true or false. They have been called constractive utterances.

Austin (1975), a philosopher, distinguished still another kind of utterance that is the performative utterance. In using a performative utterance, a person is not just saying something but is actually doing something if certain real-world conditions are met. To say ‘I name this ship “Liberty Bell”’ in certain circumstances is to name a ship.

In general, the spoken part of the total act, the actual speech act, will take the grammatical form of having a first person subject and a verb in the present tense; it may or may not also include the word hereby. Examples are ‘I (hereby) name,’ ‘We decree,’ and ‘I swear.’ This kind of utterance is explicitly performative when it is employed in a conventional framework, such as naming ships, making royal proclamations, and taking an oath in court.

There are also less explicit performatives. Declarations like ‘I promise,’ ‘I apologize,’ or ‘I warn you’.  for anyone can promise, apologize, and warn, and there is no way of specifying the circumstances quite so narrowly. What we can observe, then, is that, in contrast to constative utterances, that is, utterances which are often used to assert propositions and which may be true or false, they are used either appropriately or inappropriately and, if used appropriately, their very utterance is the doing of the whole or part of an action.

Speech act is an act that the speaker performs making an utterance. There are some acts conditions in speech; (1) Locutionary act is the statement having grammatical structure and linguistic meaning, (2) Illocutionary act is the speaker intension of the utterance, (3) Perlocutionary act is the effects of the utterance on the hearer, (4) Felicity conditions are necessary conditions to make successful of speech acts, (5) Prepositional contain is the utterance produced if the composer commits himself to be a future act, (6) Preparatory condition is the utterance produced if speaker believes that the listener will not perform the act without being asked, (7) Sincerity  condition is the utterance produced if the speaker wants the listener to do what the speaker has been asked, and (8) Essential condition is the utterance produced if the speaker show to listener that he really wants to persuade and does what he wants to listener.

Austin divides performatives into five categories:

 (1) verdictives

 (2) exercitives

(3) commissives

 (4) behabitives

  (5) expositives

According to Searle (1969), we perform different kinds of acts when we speak. There are utterance acts, propositional acts and illocutionary acts.

Cooperation

According to philosophers such as Grice, we are able to converse with one another because we recognize common goals in conversation and specific ways of achieving these goals. In any conversation, only certain kinds of ‘moves’ are possible at any particular time because of the constraints that operate to govern exchanges.

Grice lists four maxims that follow from the cooperative principle:

•       Quantity

•       Quality

•       Relation

•       manner

Conversation

Speech can be planned or unplanned (Ochs, 1979). We should note that a lot of speech has a certain amount of planning in it: : it may not be all thought out and carefully planned and even rehearsed, as, for example, is the welcoming speech of a visiting head of state. Unplanned speech is talk which is not thought out prior to its expression. Unplanned speech has certain characteristics: repetitions; simple active sentences. i.e., words and expressions such as well, like, maybe, but, sort of, you know, I guess, etc.

Conversation is a cooperative activity also in the sense that it involves two or more parties, each of whom must be allowed the opportunity to participate.

Boxer (2002) provides a very short conversation that illustrates many of the points just made. Two female students pass each other on campus on the way to class:

•       A: Hey, how are you doing?

•       B: Fine, how about you? Going to class?

•       A: Calculus, I hate it! (keeps moving)

•       B: Ugh! Well, catch you later.

•       A: Yeah, see you at the meeting.

However, there are conversational settings that are unusual in still other ways. Because of the way in which certain of the principles are used, particular types of conversation may be given quite specific names: for example, teaching, interviewing, or interrogating.

Classroom conversation is different from ordinary conversation in the sense that the teacher may be said to ‘own’ the conversation, whereas in ordinary conversations such ownership may be said to be shared.

Conversations must also be brought to a close, e.g., an exchange of ‘Goodbye’s. It is into such places that you fit pre-closing signals which serve to negotiate the actual closing. Such signals can involve an expression like ‘Well, I think that’s all,’

The following is an example of such a closing:

•       A: So, that’s agreed?

•       B: Yep, agreed.

•       A: Good, I knew you would.

•       B: Yes, no problem really.

•       A: Thanks for the help.

•       B: Don’t mention it.

•       A: Okay, I’ll be back soon.

•       B: Okay, then, Bye. Take care.

•       A: Bye.

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UTS SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Name : Shelvira Elsa Dwita

Nim: 1588203060 (VB)

1. What is sociolinguistics?

Answer: Sociolinguistics is the study of variation in Language, the way people use language in different social situations.

Sociolinguists also study about dialect, which is the regional, social, or ethnic variation of a language. Sociolinguists study many other issues as well. For instance, they often examine the values that hearers place on variations in language, the regulation of linguistic behavior, language standardization, and educational and governmental policies concerning language.

2. Why do we learn Sociolinguistics?

Answer: Because Sociolinguistics is part of linguistics, as we know linguistics is study of language. So that’s why we have to learn sociolinguistics. In sociolinguistics we learn about speech and society. For example in speech and society we learn about the way when talk like pronunciation, word choice,and grammar. And then we learn about dialects, actually we get dialect in naturally based on we live. Because dialects is varities of language characteristics of groups of speaker. And Idiolects is variation of language within a single speaker. So, we have to learn about sociolinguistics.

3. What is relation between Language and Society?

Answer: Language is tool when we communicate with the other. In the society we can not speak without language. At least we able to speak in one language like national language or mother tongue. Language performs various functions in the society and the society does the same way. If one will not exist, the other one will be affected.  So, language and society have a relation.

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4. Please mention and explain the branches of Linguistics!

Answer:  Linguistics is the science of language. It is the subject whose practitioners devote their energy to understanding why human language is the way it is. They study the history, acquisition, structure, and use of as many languages as possible.

Branch of Linguistics:

Phonetics is the field of linguistics that studies the sounds of language without of whether the sound has a function as a differentiator meaning or not. 
phonetics divided into 3 type:
1.Articulatory phonetics or physiological phonetics.
 how to learn the mechanism of human speech for the tools to work in producing the sounds of language, and how these sounds are classified.
2.Accoustic phonetic
 learning the sounds of language as a physical event or natural phenomena, sounds that investigated the vibration frequency, amplitude, instensitas, and timbre.
3.Auditory phonetics 
how to learn the mechanism of acceptance of the sounds of language by ear. 

Phonology is a study of systematic relationship between sounds,including contrast,positional variation,phonotactic,restrictions,and alternations.
Phonetics illusions and the mistakes of language learners clue us in to the necessity of a level of phonologycal knowledge more abstract than actual pronunciation . contrast and positional variation can be studied through phonemic analysis, which was a particular hallmark of a structualist approach. A phoneme is a unit of contrast (that is,a “family” of sounds that all “count as the same”). The allophones of a phoneme are the positional variants that make up the phoneme.

Morphology is the study of the minimal meaningful units of language. it studies the structure of the words,however from a semantics viewpoint rather than from the viewpoint  of sound. morphology is intimately related to syntax. for everything that is larger than a word is the domain of syntax.

Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences, the principles, both universal and language specific, that govern how words are assembled to yield grammatical sentences.

Syntax discussed about structure,function,categorized,and role of syntax,and then tools that use in build it. Units of syntax such as: word,phrase,clause,sentence and discouce.

Lexicology is the science / studies on the shape, the history and the meaning of words. whereas in Arabic, lexicology is called Ilm-Ma'ajim, namely the study of the ins and outs of the dictionary.
by language lexicology lexicon comes from the word that means: dictionary, the Qur'aan or the terms of a science. 

Semantics the study of the meaning of word and fixed word combination, and how these combine to form the meanings of the sentence.

Pragmatics the study of how uttenrances are used (litearaly, figuratively, or otherwise ) in communicative acts.

Discourse Analysis the analysis of language use in text ( spoken, written, or signed )

Applied Linguistics concerned with application of the concept in everyday life, including language teaching.

5. What is standard language? Giving an example!

Answer:  A standard language is a variety of language that is used by governments, in the media, in schools and for international communication. By using a standard language rather than a local variety. For example you will invariable reach a much wider aand audience.

6. Elaborating the Language, Dialect, amd Accent!

Answer:  Language is a tool to communicate with the other without language we can not speak. In language of course have a variety of  Dialect and Accent. Why? Because dialect is variety of language characteristics of groups of speakers. Or describes both a person’s accent and the grammatical features of the way that person talks. And how about Accent the way that particular person or group of people sound.  It’s the way somebody pronounces words, the musicality of their speech, etc.

7. Giving an example of formal language and informal language!

Answer: Informal : i can’t speak english well

                Formal   : i can not speak english well

                Informal : i don’t believe that the result are accurate

                Formal     : the result are not believed to be accurate

8. What aspect of Language, are sociolinguistics interested in?

Answer:  Sociolinguistics are interested in explaining why people speak differently in different social in different social context. And the effect of social factors such as social distance, social status, age, gender, and class. On language varieties  ( dialect, register, genre, etc ) and they are concerned with identifying the socual function of language and the way are used to convey social meanings.

9. When two or more people from different language met and tried to communicate, what should they do?

-Pidgin

-Creole

-Lingua Franca

Answer: .

They are use a Lingua Franca.  Lingua franca is a created common language that enables people who have no common native language to communicate with each other. This common language is either created from different languages or it adopts a dominant language. 

10. Why do people switch and mix a language?

Answer: Because the people want to say something in secret, want to look cool and smart,want to get something for example you want to buy something in the market, you don’t know about their language so thats why you have to mixing or switching.

11. Giving an example of code Mixing and code Switching!

Answer:

Code Mixing

A: Hi dude, where you wanna go?

B: I mau go to bioskop. You wanna join?

A: Oh, lanjut. Saya wanna ask sesuatu..

B: ya. What it is?

A: Tomorrow you datang kerumah I ya, I buat acara dirumah

B: Ok.. tomorrow i come to your house. I ajak my sister ya..

A: oke.. see you tommorow ya, jangan forget..

Code Switching

A: About our appointmentt on Thursday, i dont think i’d be able to see you then

B: Apakah ada masalah?

A: Its not big problem

B: Jika kamu tidak keberatan, saya ingin menjadwal ulang janji pertemuan kita

A: Sure, anytime you’re available

B: what if i move it to Monday?, are you busy then?

A: Tidak, hari Senin tidak apa-apa.

B: Great. I hope you dont mind with this changes of schedu;e.

A: Relax..no problem.

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Word and Culture

Word and Culture

A few words are necessary concerning what I mean by ‘culture.’ I do not

intend to use the term culture in the sense of ‘high culture,’ i.e., the appreciation

of music, literature, the arts, and so on. Rather, I intend to use it in the sense

of whatever a person must know in order to function in a particular society.

Various aspects/approaches of word and culture

1. Whorf

2. Kindship

3. Color

4. Taxonomies

5. Prototypes

6. Taboo words and Euphemism

Kindship

One interesting way in which people use language in daily living is to refer to various kinds of kin. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a considerable literature on kinship terminology, describing how people in various parts of the world refer to relatives by blood (or descent) and marriage Kinship systems are a universal feature of languages, because kinship is so important t in social organisation. Some systems are much richer than others, but all make use of such factors as gender, age, generation, blood, and marriage in their organization One of the attractions that kinship systems have for investigators is that these factors are  fairly readily ascertainable.

Taxonimoes

Analyses into taxonomies s and components are useful in that they help us to organize data in ways that appear to indicate how speakers use their language to organize the world around them The analyses show how systematic

much of that behavior is and do so in a rather surprising way. This is talk about hierarchy in a situation, for example like in animal.

Color

Our world is a world of color but the amount of color varies from place to place and time to time. A January flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to Toronto, Canada, takes one from a sun-drenched array of colors to a gray drabness. Except to those blinded to it, color is all around but it is not everywhere treated in the same way The terms people use to describe color give us another means of exploring the relationships between different languages and cultures. The color spectrum is a physical continuum showing no breaks at all. All languages make use of basic color terms. A basic color term must be a single word, e.g., blue or yellow, not some combination of words, e.g., light blue or pale yellow. Nor must it be the obvious sub-division of some higher-order term, as both crimson and scarlet are of red. It must have quite general use; i.e., it must not be applied only to a very narrow range of objects, as, for example, blond is applied in English almost exclusively to the color of hair and wood. Also, the term must not be highly restricted in the sense that it is used by only a specific sub-set of speakers, such as interior decorators or fashion writers.

Prototypes

a prototype-based concept can be learned on the basis of a very small number of instances – perhaps a single one – and without any kind of formal definition, whereas a feature-based definition would be very much harder to learn since a much larger number of cases, plus a number of non-cases, would be needed before the learner could work out which features were necessary and which were not. Moreover, such a view allows for a more flexible approach to understanding how people actually use language. In that usage certain concepts are necessarily ‘fuzzy,’ as the theory predicts they will be, but that very fuzziness allows speakers to use language creatively. According to Hudson, prototype theory may even be applied to the social situations in which speech occurs. He suggests that, when we hear a new linguistic item, we associate with it who typically seems to use it and what, apparently, is the typical occasion of its use. Again, we need very few instances – even possibly just a single one – to be able to do this. Of course, if the particular is atypical and we fail to recognize this fact, we could be in for some discomfort at a later time when we treat it as typical.

Taboo and Euphemism

Taboo is the prohibition or avoidance in any society of behavior believed to be harmful to its members in that it would cause them anxiety, embarrassment, or shame. It is an extremely strong politeness constraint. Consequently, so far as language is concerned, certain things are not to be said or certain objects can be referred to only in certain circumstances, for example, only by certain people, or through deliberate circumlocutions, i.e., euphemistically. Of course, there are always those who are prepared to break the taboos in an attempt to show their own freedom from such social constraints or to expose the taboos as irrational and unjustified, as in certain movements for ‘free speech.’ English also has its taboos, and most people who speak English know what these are and observe the ‘rules.’ When someone breaks the rules, that rupture may arouse considerable comment, although not perhaps quite as much today as formerly, as when Shaw’s use of bloody in Pygmalion or the use of damn in the movie Gone with the Wind aroused widespread public comment. Standards and norms change. Linguistic taboos are also violated on occasion to draw attention to oneself, or to show contempt, or to be aggressive or provocative, or to mock authority – or, according to Freud, on occasion as a form of verbal seduction, e.g., ‘talking dirty.’ The penalty for breaking a linguistic taboo can be severe, for blasphemy and obscenity are still crimes in many jurisdictions, but it is hardly likely to cost you your life, as the violation of certain non-linguistic taboos, e.g., incest taboos, might in certain places in the world.

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