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Are ethnography and discourse analysis compatible?

Chris Lima, Open University

March 2010

INTRODUCTION

The answer to the question posed by the title of this paper is, ‘Yes’, and ‘No’.

Researchers working on both fields have a number of positions on the issue, from the

ones who defend traditional forms of ethnography (Walford, 2009) to the ones who

attempt to integrate both ethnography and discourse analysis in their practices (Rampton

et al, 2006). Some, pragmatically, would answer, ‘It depends.’ Before trying to answer

such a question perhaps it would be advisable to consider a number of factors on which

the answer depends. First of all, it depends largely on one’s understanding of the

theoretical principles and acceptable practices within both traditions. Secondly, it may

depend on what your research questions are and the social phenomena you want to

investigate. Last but not least, we have to consider that whatever answers individual

researchers may give to this question in the process of carrying out their studies, their

answer will be assessed and evaluated by their own research communities and the

traditions within which they work. Thus, it also depends on historical developments in

the field of academic research as a whole. It is very unlikely that there will ever be a

single, unified answer to such a question.

In this paper I compare and contrast some principles and practices that characterise

more traditional forms of ethnographic research to the theoretical and practical notions

that inform discourse analysis. I then briefly examine the work of researchers who seek

to actively combine both methods under what they name linguistic ethnography.

1. WHAT IS ETHNOGRAPHY?

Ethnography has its roots in ‘classical’ anthropology and for many years it had to

struggle to assert its own identity, especially because the first ethnographers very much

followed on the steps of anthropologists (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Most

ethnographic studies written in the 20th

century still had researchers, usually white, male

and Western, moving into isolated communities in developing countries and/or remote

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regions of the planet to study culturally ‘exotic’ and ethically ‘different’ groups. The 20-

30s saw the birth of urban ethnography with the advent of the Chicago School, with its

researchers focusing on the study of human behaviour as determined by social

structures and by the physical environment. Ethnographers then replaced journeys to the

jungle by trips to deprived neighbourhoods in urban areas in their own countries

(Chapouli, 2007). From the middle of the twentieth century anthropologists increasingly

studied urban contexts as well as more rural ones, and also started to study communities

in Western societies. Although, many ethnographic studies are still done in deprived

and/or marginal communities, ethnographic studies nowadays also include

investigations in schools, hospitals, companies, and institutions with the main focus on

the character and effects of urbanisation, and the social processes this involved.

Although most ethnographers aim to locate the setting they are studying within a wider

social context, they are, by and large, interested in the complex relationships between

individuals in a particular social setting, When ethnographers move into the field, they

do so with the objective of observing attitudes, linguistic and cultural manifestations,

relationships and conflicts that may cast light a specific social problem or puzzle

(Emerson, 2009). It is at the core of ethnography that understanding what happens in a

specific group or social context may be potentially useful and helpful to help us to

understand similar or larger social realities.

To achieve their objectives, ethnographers employ a wide range of methods of data

collection and analysis. It would be a gross mistake to equate ethnography with

qualitative research since some ethnographic studies may make good use of surveys and

statistical data to complement interviews, field notes and participants’ observation.

However, most ethnographic studies clearly show a tendency to follow the qualitative

research tradition and ‘participant observation and/or relatively informal conversations

are usually the main’ tools ( Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007: 3) What distinguished

ethnography from other forms of qualitative research, which make use only of data

collected thought interviews or focus groups for example, is the fact that the

ethnographers are always people who, to lesser or larger degree, are immersed in the

community they are studying. Moreover, for ethnographers all data is important. It may

consist of direct observation, participants’ voices and behaviours, documents, and/or

cultural artefacts, but one does not have a privileged position in relation to others. It

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seems to me that this is a crucial point because on it rests, perhaps, one of the most

important differences between ethnography and discourse analysis.

2. WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?

There is not a single answer to this question either. Wetherell et al (2002: ii) list five

core traditions inside the discourse analysis field, namely, sociolinguistics, conversation

analysis, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis and Foucauldian analysis. It

would be far beyond the scope of this paper to discuss all these traditions and there is no

shortage of literature in the field (Jorgersen and Philips, 202; Schiffin et all, 2003,

Rogers, 2004). For the purposes of this paper, I have decided to focus on Foucauldian

analysis because it is, in principle at least, the one which differs the most from

mainstream ethnography, both from epistemological and methodological points of view.

However, once again, distinction is not clear-cut and some ethnographers do work

under the influence of Foucault’s ideas and, strictly speaking nothing could prevent

Foucauldian discourse analysts of going into the field and make use of some

ethnographic tools in their research.

Foucauldian discourse analysis stems from Foucault’s understanding of language,

which fundamentally differs from the notion of language as a system of representation

(Hall, 2001:72). For him, it is through discourse that meaning and knowledge are

produced. The way we see the world is shaped and defined by the way we talk about it.

It is language that creates what we understand as real and meaningful. It is language that

defines categories and establishes boundaries in social relationships (Foucault, 2002:

38-46). For example, the notion of identity, which is central to my own research, is a

discursive formation that only makes sense to us now because it was constructed and

developed historically by people talking and writing about it. Identity, as we understand

it nowadays, would probably make less sense, say, in medieval times when notions of

individuality and selfhood would be less in tune with the ways of conducting yourself in

a society still profoundly bound together, with strong links to the natural environment

and with a hierarchical metaphysical understanding of Being. Identity was generated by

discourses about it along our history in the West and now this subjective identity

permeates our later discourses about it.

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Ethnographers’ concern with the geographically and temporarily distinct phenomena

observed in the research field would only make sense to Foucauldian oriented

researchers if such data was considered in relation to a much larger historical and

discursive investigation. For instance, ethnographers who wanted to study Pakistani

immigrants and their descendants’ notions of national identity would, probably, go to

live in a Pakistani neighbourhood in an UK large city to observe how such

understanding of national selfhood is influenced by their everyday contacts with other

sectors of British society. Foucauldian discourse analysts, on the other hand, would

probably go to the British Library Reading Rooms to bend over policy documents,

parliamentary papers, the House of Common speeches, cartoons, photographs,

newspapers and all sorts of media to find out how the concepts of national identity/

Pakistani/ British are being generated in the discourses of UK society. Foucauldian

discourse analysis aims to produce genealogies of how current understandings of things

and the meaning we give to subjects and to social interactions came into being through

the historical interplay between language, power and knowledge (Hall, 2001: 75-8).

3. COMBINING ETHNOGRAPHY AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Ethnography and discourse analysis research are not mutually exclusive, but the

epistemological and methodological principles that are at the roots of both traditions

greatly differ. Nonetheless, there are researchers who try to combine them in a novel

way. In a manifesto document for linguistic ethnography Creese (2008: 232) argues for

a ‘socially constituted linguistics’ and defends the integration between both arguing

that,

Ethnography provides linguistics with a close reading of context not necessarily

represented in some kinds of interactional analysis, while linguistics provides an

authoritative analysis of language use not typically available through participant

observation and the taking of fieldnotes. (232)

Linguistic ethnography draws on a broad range of influences, from sociolinguistic

interaction to critical discourse analysis, from Vygostkian concepts of language and

socio-cognitive development to post-structuralism (Rampton et al, 2006). Maybin’s

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(2005) investigation of children’s use of informal language to construct knowledge and

identity as they move from childhood to adolescent is a very good example of linguistic

ethnography drawing on Bakhtin (1982). In it, the researcher’s field work was done

with a group of 10-12 year-old children in two monolingual white working-class

schools. Transcripts of children’s conversations were analysed in order to find

intertextual and frame-switching instances in the discourse, but such linguistic analysis

was always informed by the researcher‘s understanding of the importance of the social

world within which the students were placed. For Maybin (2003), linguistic

ethnography is,

ethnographically grounded detailed analyses of communicative practices in

specific contexts, which produce various kinds of insights about social life.

Language use is seen as a social and cultural phenomenon which needs to be

analysed both in its own detail and in relation to other social and cultural

phenomena. (online)

This may sound like an oversimplification, but for didactic purposes we could perhaps

say that one of the distinguishing factors between ethnography and linguistic

ethnography is that mainstream ethnographers may use discourse as a way to

understand participants’ social context, whereas linguist ethnographers use participants’

social context as a way to understand their discourses. It is, in fact, what originally

distinguished sociolinguistics from sociology. It is a difference that becomes somewhat

blurred once discourse is treated as constituting social reality, so that it can be claimed

(mistakenly in my view) that by studying discursive practices we are simultaneously

studying the social institutions which, it is claimed, they constitute.

CONCLUSION

My answer, at the moment, to the question of compatibility between ethnography and

discourse analysis is also, ‘It depends’. Instead of rigidly defined research categories, I

prefer to see things in a continuum, with traditional ethnography at one end of the

spectrum and Foucauldian discourse analysis at the other; with linguist ethnography

perhaps falling more or less in between. However, the capacity to easily move along

this line depends a great deal on how confident you are about the ontological,

epistemological underpinnings of your research and on how confidently you feel you

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are able to integrate such different methodologies. As I see it, this is very shifting

ground and requires a high degree of reflexivity and experience on the researcher’s part.

For novice researchers, the sheer diversity one can find in approaches to social research

can be a bit overwhelming. Having a clear idea where approaches to research come

from is fundamental to help us adopt an approach to our own investigations which is

coherent with our understanding of the world and of the social phenomena we want to

study. For me, comparing, contrasting and reflecting on different researchers’ positions

is crucial to situate myself in my future research community. Furthermore, it is

fundamental in the process of deciding how to conduct a particular piece of research.

Above all, we should be open to novel forms of research, as long as they are

theoretically grounded, seriously conducted and ethically and morally responsible.

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