No abstract

Craft and ethics in qualitative field research are vitally related to each other in that the satisfaction of the demands of each is closely dependent on an honest engagement with the local contingencies of fieldwork, which includes a willingness to keep oneself and one's research agenda open to transformation by these contingencies. Similarly, craft and ethics in fieldwork compel the researcher to provide considerable epistemological space to one's subjects; when these epistemological obligations are fulfilled, a sound moral relationship with one's field subjects can develop. Three professional obligations are discussed-an obligation to the integrity of the corporate life of the people one is investigating, to the individual persons one is researching, and to the value of one's own research. Certain distinguishing features of ethnographic craft are identified.

No abstract

The lability of the meaning of words has been a longstanding topic in ethnomethodology, and this review provides many specific details while analyzing the drift of the sense of words over the course of naturally occurring conversations. Ethnomethodologists do not see equivocality in the meaning of words merely as a problem for members, but they recognize that it is a resource for parties in their organizing the local interaction. Through the use of many concrete illustrations, an account of this pervasive phenomenon makes clear just-how sense develops, evolves over the course of an interaction, and is used to organize the local orderliness. Some ethnomethods used by parties to tame the developing sense for practical purposes are described and analyzed. Especially, the reflexive properties of sense-establishment are identified and described, along with their material details, and the opportunism of parties in taking advantage of the semiotic play of their talk is summarized. Finally, the components of a model for analyzing communication intersubjectively are presented. Keywords Indexical expressions Á Reflexivity Á Semiotics Á Intersubjectivity Es cazador, el lobo, he said. Cazador. Me entiendes? The boy didn't know if he understood or not. Cormac McCarthy 1Semantic drift is a ubiquitous feature of ordinary conversation. By semantic drift I refer to the phenomenon that the meaning of a word is naturally unstable over the course of a conversation, and a word can continuously gain, or lose, sense based

No abstract