Ethnography of Speech

The role of speech in human behavior has always been honored in anthropological principle, if sometimes slighted in practice. The importance of its study has been declaimed, surveyed with insightful detail, and accepted as a principle of field work.

Concept of Ethnography: That the study of speech might be crucial to a science of man has been a recurrent anthropological theme.  Is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group, but revealing more of basic processes because more out of awareness, less subject to overlay by rationalization. Some anthropologists have seen language, and hence linguistics, as basic to a science of man because it provides a link between the biological and sociocultural levels. Some have seen in modern linguistic methodology a model or harbinger of a general methodology for studying the structure of human behavior. 

The Ethnography was pioneered in the field of socio-cultural anthropology but has also become 

a popular method in various other fields of social sciences—particularly in sociology, 

communication studies, history. —that studies people, ethnic groups and other ethnic 

formations, their ethnogenesis, composition, resettlement, social welfare characteristics, as well 

as their material and spiritual culture.   

It is often employed for gathering empirical data on human societies and cultures.Data collection

 is often done through participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, etc. Ethnography aims

 to describe the nature of those who are studied (i.e. to describe a people,anethnos) through 

writing.

Ethnography of communication or Speaking

The Ethnography of communication (EOC) is a method of discourse analysis in linguistics, 

which draws on the anthropological field of ethnography. Unlike ethnography proper, though, it 

takes both language and culture to be constitutive as well as constructive.

In their book Qualitative Communication Research Methods, communications 

scholars Thomas R. Lindlof and Bryan C. Taylor (2002) explain "Ethnography of 

communication conceptualizes communication as a continuous flow of information, 

rather than as a segmented exchange of messages“. According to Deborah Cameron 

(2001), EOC can be thought of as the application of ethnographic methods to the 

communication patterns of a group.

EOC can be used as a means by which to study the interactions among members of a 

specific culture or, what Gerry Philipsen (1975) calls a "speech community." Speech 

communities create and establish their own speaking codes/norms. 

The meaning and understanding of the presence or absence of speech within 

different communities will vary. Local cultural patterns and norms must be understood 

for analysis and interpretation of the appropriateness of speech acts situated within

specific communities

Thus, “the statement that talk is not anywhere valued equally in all social contexts suggest

a research strategy for discovering and describing cultural or subcultural differences in the

value of speaking.

Speaking is one among other symbolic resources which are allocated and distributed in

social situations according to distinctive culture patterns”.