The ethnography of communication
The ethnography of communication shares with traditional anthropology not only a methodology for collecting and analyzing data (participant-observation) but, more centrally, a concern for holistic explanations of meaning and behavior. Much of the impetus for this approach was Dell Hymes’ proposal to focus linguistic theory not on competence (i.e., tacit knowledge of the abstract rules of language, Chomsky 1965), but on communicative competence: the tacit social, psychological, cultural, and linguistic knowledge governing appropriate use of grammar. Included in communicative competence is knowledge of discourse, including not just everyday conversation, but other culturally constructed speech events (e.g., prayer, public oratory).
As suggested above, ethnographic approaches analyze conversation as one of many culturally organized speech activities. Ochs (1988), for example, focuses on the role of conversation in language socialization among Samoans; her analysis of repair and clarification practices (see also Ochs 1984) reveals that even this “mechanical” aspect of conversation reflects cultural notions about the distribution of knowledge and responsibility. Duranti (1984) and DuBois (1987) provide ethnographic perspectives on speaker intentionality that challenge the view underlying both pragmatic and speech act approaches to conversation. Other studies that similarly relate conversation to broader social and cultural meanings and practices include Sherzer (1983) on conversation and ritual language among the Kuna, and Katriel (1986) on conversational speech acts among Israelis.
In sum, the traditional anthropological reliance on participant observation helps ethnographers interested in communicative competence uncover the meanings and values that conversation has for its participants, and to interpret those meanings and values in relation to the culture from which they emerge.