Linguistic ethnography

Maybin, Janet; Tusting, Karin

doi:10.4324/9780203835654.ch36

Cited by 30 publications

(36 citation statements)

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“…Analysis of the recordings (50 hours on-going talk and eight hours of interviews in 2009) was informed by ethnographic observations, collections of texts and photographs and by contextual knowledge about the educational and local environment. This combination of the analysis of children's spoken language interactions with an ethnographic understanding of practices falls under what has been termed 'linguistic ethnography' where ethnographic methods are used alongside linguistic or discourse analytic procedures to describe patterns within communication (Maybin and Tusting, 2011). …”

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confidence: 99%

Towards a sociocultural understanding of children's voice

Maybin

2013

Language and Education

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While 'voice' is frequently invoked in discussions of pupils' agency and empowerment, less attention has been paid to the dialogic dynamics of children's voices and the sociocultural features shaping their emergence. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic research involving recent recordings of ten and eleven year-old children's spoken language experience across the school day, this article examines how pupils' voices are configured within institutional interactional contexts which render particular kinds of voice more or less hearable, and convey different kinds of value. Analysis shows how children appropriate and reproduce the authoritative voices of education, popular culture and parents in the course of their induction into social practices. At the same time they also express varying degrees of commitment to these voices and orchestrate their own and other people's voices within accounts and anecdotes, making voice appropriation an uneven, accumulative process shot through with the dynamics of personal and peer-group experience. The examination of children's dialogue from different contexts across the school day highlights the situated semiotics of voice and the heteroglossic development of children's speaking consciousness. IntroductionIn his vision for a good society, Dell Hymes suggests that the concept of 'voice' should combine two kinds of freedom: 'freedom to have one's voice heard, freedom to develop a voice worth hearing. ' (1996: 64). While this would seem an eminently worthwhile goal, however, such freedoms are not as straightforward as they might at first sight appear. The 'freedom to develop a voice worth hearing' is affected in complex ways by children's access to and positioning within institutionally configured conversations, interactions and encounters with diverse texts, as indeed is the freedom to have their voice heard. While 'voice' has been frequently invoked in discussions of identity, agency and empowerment, less attention has been paid to the dialogic nature of its emergence and the sociocultural dynamics which shape the views children put forwards, and the responses they experience. In this article I therefore take a step back to examine some of the ways in which children experience and express voice in their everyday spoken language across the school day. I define 'voice' as speaking consciousness (Bakhtin, 1981) together with a speaker's 'capacity to make themselves understood by others' (Blommaert, 2005: 255). However, I also see voice or, more accurately, voicing, as intrinsically dialogic, incorporating elements of addressivity and responsivity both in relation to speakers in a specific interaction and also in relation to voices from past experience and in the surrounding environment (Bakhtin, 1981; Volosinov 1973 Volosinov , 1976.In the next section below I explain my use of the concept of dialogicality, and go on to discuss how I combine Bakhtinian theory with ethnography and ideas from linguistic anthropology about indexicality (Ochs, 1996;Agha, 2005; Blommaert, 2006)....

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confidence: 99%

Towards a sociocultural understanding of children's voice

Maybin

2013

Language and Education

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“…We brought to our analysis a range of sensitising concepts from linguistic ethnography [38]. Firstly, the contribution of Bakhtin on the evaluative nature of language and the concept of ‘voice’ as ‘speaking consciousness’ in which particular values or viewpoints are enacted [39].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Cosmetic boob jobs’ or evidence-based breast surgery: an interpretive policy analysis of the rationing of ‘low value’ treatments in the English National Health Service

Russell

Swinglehurst

Greenhalgh

2014

BMC Health Serv Res

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BackgroundIn England the National Health Service (NHS) is not allowed to impose ‘blanket bans’ on treatments, but local commissioners produce lists of ‘low value’ procedures that they will normally not fund. Breast surgery is one example. However, evidence suggests that some breast surgery is clinically effective, with significant health gain. National guidelines indicate the circumstances under which breast surgery should be made available on the NHS, but there is widespread variation in their implementation.The purpose of this study was to explore the work practices of ‘individual funding request’ (IFR) panels, as they considered ‘one-off’ funding requests for breast surgery; examine how the notion of ‘value’ is dialogically constructed, and how decisions about who is deserving of NHS funding and who is not are accomplished in practice.MethodsWe undertook ethnographic exploration of three IFR panels. We extracted all (22) breast surgery cases considered by these panels from our data set and progressively focused on three case discussions, one from each panel, covering the three main breast procedures.We undertook a microanalysis of the talk and texts arising from these cases, within a conceptual framework of interpretive policy analysis.ResultsThrough an exploration of the symbolic artefacts (language, objects and acts) that are significant carriers of policy meaning, we identified the ways in which IFR panels create their own ‘interpretive communities’, within which deliberations about the funding of breast surgery are differently framed, and local decisions come to be justified. In particular, we demonstrated how each decision was contingent on [a] the evaluative accent given to certain words, [b] the work that documentary objects achieve in foregrounding particular concerns, and [c] the act of categorising. Meaning was constructed dialogically through local interaction and broader socio-cultural discourses about breasts and ‘cosmetic’ surgery.ConclusionDespite the appeal of calls to tackle ‘unwarranted variation’ in access to low priority treatments by ensuring uniformity of local guidelines and policies, our findings suggest that ultimately, given the contingent nature of practice, this is likely to remain an illusory policy goal. Our findings challenge the scientistic thinking underpinning mainstream health policy discourse.

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“…Recently linguists have published a series of related work in the field of Socio-and Applied Linguistics assembled under the umbrella term "linguistic ethnography" (Creese 2010;Maybin and Tusting 2011;Rampton, Tusting, and Maybin 2004;Rampton 2007). This strand of work is strongly influenced by ethnography of communication (Hymes 1968(Hymes , 1972(Hymes , 1974(Hymes , 1996, interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982) and microethnography (Erickson 1996).…”

Section: Contribution Of Applied Linguistics: Binding Micro and Macromentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The exploration of phenomena like societal change, culture, or globalization cannot be just derived from linguistic data or ethnographic observation and therefore require theories about the social world and social interaction. Questions about the interplay of agency and structure have been framed in linguistic ethnography in terms of a tension between social constructionist and realist perspectives (Maybin and Tusting 2011). Ethnographic studies rely on researcher descriptions.…”

Section: Contribution Of Applied Linguistics: Binding Micro and Macromentioning

confidence: 99%

7 Authorship and context: Writing and text production as situated activities

Gnach¹,

Powell²

2014

Handbook of Writing and Text Production

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In this chapter, the authors examine the study of text production in relation to the ways that agency, author, and social context intersect, examining such questions as who are the agents of text production and how do they act in contemporary institutions of individual and organizational text production? In addition to outlining several related theoretical frameworks (Realist Social Theory, Activity Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis), the authors address the ways that research methodologies are inextricably linked to the theoretical perspectives informing them. Highlighting the interplay of socio-cultural contexts with authoring activities, the authors use two examples from the traditions of media linguistics and new literacy studies to address the ways that understanding context is crucial in analyzing and interpreting authors as agents of text production.

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Linguistic ethnography

Cited by 30 publications

References 0 publications

Towards a sociocultural understanding of children's voice

Towards a sociocultural understanding of children's voice

‘Cosmetic boob jobs’ or evidence-based breast surgery: an interpretive policy analysis of the rationing of ‘low value’ treatments in the English National Health Service

7 Authorship and context: Writing and text production as situated activities

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