The structure of everyday narrative in a city market: An ethnopoetics approach

Abstract

This paper considers the value of Hymesian ethnopoetics as a means of analysing everyday narrative in conditions of mobility and change. The paper offers an account of the development of ethnopoetics as a means to make visible and valorize narrative in the Native American oral tradition, and as a method of revealing culturally specific relations of form and meaning. Hymes’ ethnopoetic approach viewed narrative structure as a reflection of a cultural tradition of meaning‐making. Hymes’ analysis proposed that traditional narrative was a culturally shaped way of speaking, and analysis of narrative structure could reveal and recreate culture. His orientation rested on an assumption that the culture of a group was more or less stable and fixed. This paper adopts an approach to analysis based on ethnopoetics, representing everyday narrative dramatically, organized not only as lines and verses, but also as scenes and acts. Representation in scenes and acts makes visible the dynamic nature of the narrative. The paper asks whether Hymes’ ground‐breaking work on ethnopoetics still has currency and purchase in 21st‐century conditions of mobility, change, and unpredictability. Analysis of everyday narrative in a city market concludes that, notwithstanding the complexity of notions of ‘culture’ and ‘language’ in such conditions, ethnopoetics can be productively applied to everyday contexts for the analysis of narrative.

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“…In communicative action, the principle of talk used to succeed communication between one for another. Hymes (1996), as cited by Blackledge, Creese, & Hu (2016), makes a group of people easy in understanding their connection by developing his speaking model. Those are setting, participant, ends, act, key, instruments, norms, and genres.…”

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“…Al-Azami et al 2010;Kenner et al 2008;Sneddon 2000), as well as on translanguaging and spatial multilingualism in specific public spaces (see e.g. Blackledge and Creese 2017;Blackledge, Creese, and Hu 2016), the experiences in the home of families who are not a part of identified languages communities are less well documented. In order to address this gap, this paper reports on a study which asked:…”

Ethnopoetics and Narrative Analysis

“…He focused on oral cultures, which he saw as linguistically and socially disadvantaged. Although rightly criticized for essentializing culture, the emancipatory possibilities of Hymesian ethnopoetics make it a method worth rescuing (Blackledge et al, 2016). As Riessman (1993) puts it, "Western, white, middle-class interviewers seem to expect temporally sequenced plots and have trouble hearing ones that are organized episodically" (p. 17).…”

“…In educational settings in the U.S., Gee (2014Gee ( , 2015, Mills et al (2021) and Riessman (2008) have all observed how privileging certain forms of (White, middle-class) storytelling further disadvantages Black American children whose stories frequently go unheard or are dismissed as "bad." Blommaert (2006a) and Blackledge et al (2016), meanwhile, have demonstrated how an ethnopoetic approach can be applied to a variety of settings in which narratives are produced cross-culturally and may be of particular import in professional settings marked by inequality.…”

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