The ethnography of communication (EC) is an approach to language and social interaction. EC seeks to discover the cultural particularities and general principles of communication. The particularities are demonstrated through cultural analyses of communication practices; in addition to the particularities, the generalities are established typically through comparative study. The approach foregrounds locally situated means and meanings of communication as its primary analytical concern. There are four philosophical assumptions in EC about communication, language, and social interaction: (1) communication is what people have made of it; (2) communication exhibits systemic social organization; (3) communication, language and social interaction are deeply and radically cultural; (4) and communication is formative of social and cultural lives. The approach is traced from Dell Hymes's and John Gumperz's pioneering works using a field-based methodology, to more recent developments such as the theory of cultural communication, speech code theory, and cultural discourse analysis. Keywords: communication research methods; communication theory; intergroup communication; international communication; language and social interaction

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Ethnography of Communication

1

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Oxford, UK ICAE The International Encyclopedia of Communication 9781405131995 © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd April 2007 00 141147 Original Articles Ethnography of CommunicationEthnography of Communication

Ethnography of Communication

Donal Carbaugh

University of Massachusetts Amherst

What are the means of communication used by people when they conduct their everyday

lives; and what meanings does this communication have for them? These are central

questions guiding the ethnography of communication. The ethnography of communication

is an approach, a perspective, and a method to and in the study of culturally distinctive

means and meanings of communication. The approach has been used to produce hundreds

of research reports about locally patterned practices of communication, and has focused

attention primarily on the situated uses of language. It has also been productively applied

to various other means and media of communication including oral and printed literature,

broadcast media, writing systems, various gestural dynamics, silence, visual signs, the

Internet, and so on.

NATURE OF THE APPROACH

The approach is concerned with (1) the linguistic resources people use in context, not just

grammar in the traditional sense, but the socially situated uses and meanings of words,

their relations, and sequential forms of expression; (2) the various media used when

communicating, and their comparative analysis, such as online "messaging" and how it

compares to face-to-face messaging; (3) the way verbal and nonverbal signs create and

reveal social codes of identity, relationships, emotions, place, and communication itself.

Reports about these and other dynamics focus on particular ways a medium of com-

munication is used (e.g., how Saudis use online communication, or how the Amish use

computers), on particular ways of speaking (e.g., arranged by national, ethnic, and/or

gendered styles), on the analysis of particular communicative events (e.g., political elections,

oratory, deliberations), on specific acts of communication (e.g., apologizing, campaigning),

and on the role of communication in specific institutions of social life (e.g., medicine, polit-

ics, law, education, religion).

In addition to its focus on locally distinctive practices of communication, the ethno-

graphy of communication is also guided by a

particular methodology

and general concerns

in theory development. As a theoretical perspective, it offers a range of concepts for under-

standing communication in any possible scene and/or community; as a methodology it

offers procedures for analyzing communication practices as formative of so cial life. The

methodology typically involves various procedures for empirical analysis including

participant observation in the contexts of everyday, social life, as well as interviewing

participants about communication in those contexts (

→

Research Methods).

ORIGINS

The ethnography of communication was founded by Dell Hymes. In 1962, he published

a paper that called for a new area of study, a kind of linguistics that explored language

not just as a formal system of grammar, but as something culturally shaped in the

2

Ethnography of Communication

contexts of social life. At the same time, he called for a kind of anthropology that took

speaking, and communication broadly, as its focal subject matter. The two interests,

together, helped establish an innovative enterprise, a kind of linguistic study that was

grounded in the social life of language; and in turn, a kind of cultural study focused on

speaking and communication generally. In 1964, Hymes and his colleague John Gumperz

published a special section of the journal

American Anthropologist

on the subject, which

formed, in 1972, the basis of a highly influential reader, pioneering a general path for

ethnographic studies of communication (see Gumperz and Hymes 1972).

Collections of research reports were published in the 1970s that helped move such

study from the periphery of some disciplinary concerns in linguistics, anthropology,

sociology, and rhetoric to more central concerns in the study of communication and

culture. These studies explored aspects of communication that were often overlooked,

such as gender role enactment, the social processes of litigation, marginalized styles,

social uses of verbal play, and culturally distinctive styles of speaking (e.g., Bauman and

Sherzer 1974). By the late 1980s and 1990s, a bibliography of over 250 research papers in

the ethnography of communication was published, with another reader and several books

appearing (e.g., Katriel 1986; Philipsen and Carbaugh 1986; Carbaugh 1990). These

demonstrated how communication was a culturally distinctive activity while examining

issues such as the ways communication varied by social agent and class, communication

on and about popular movies, talk as done on television, relationships between speaking

and silence, and intercultural interactions, as well as Native American poetics, political

speech, verbal dueling, and verbal arts generally.

CONCEPTUALIZING BASIC UNITS OF COMMUNICATION

The ethnography of communication offers a system of concepts that can be used to

conceptualize the basic phenomena of study, and a set of components for detailed

analyses of those phenomena. The phenomena of study are understood to be, funda-

mentally, communication phenomena, and thus the ethnographic design focuses

investigators on communication as both the data of concern and the primary theoretical

concern. Hymes introduced several concepts as basic units for the ethnographic study of

communication. Chief among these are communication event, communication act,

communication situation, and speech community.

Ethnographers of communication start their analyses by focusing on uses of the means

and meanings of communication in particular socio-cultural lives. As a result, the

locus of the study is on the practice of communication in contexts. The concept of

communication event

has become a prominent starting point for these analyses, for it

draws attention to communicative action as formative of social processes and sequences.

A communication event is understood to be, from the point of view of participants, an

integral, patterned part of social life. Like gossip sessions, talk shows, and political

meetings, communication events typically involve a sequential structuring of acts, can be

understood by formulating norms or rules about them, and involve culturally bounded

aspects of social life which have a beginning and ending.

Communication events involve actions of many kinds. As such, events can be

understood as the conduct of social actions, with

communication act

being the concept

Ethnography of Communication

3

that brings together the performance of that action and its interpretation. One might say,

e.g., "I enjoy hiking." This saying might perform many actions: it might be used to explain

one's office decorations, to account for one's attire, to counter others with anti-hiking

interests, and so on. The concept of communication act, then, ties ethnographic analyses

to specific social interactions in order to understand the range of conduct and actions that

is getting done within them. Communication acts are most typically parts of larger

sequences of social actions and in this sense are often usefully conceptualized as integral

aspects of communication events.

In any human community, there are many places where communication is expected (or

prohibited). These enter into ethnographies of communication as aspects of a setting in

which communication itself takes shape. The concept of

communication situation

is used

to identify specific settings and scenes for communication. For example, in some

communities, communication situations involve the front porch, the television lounge,

the bar, or a medical office (

→

Communities of Practice). Unlike communication events,

such as a church service, which are typically governed by a set of special rules and

sequences, communication situations may involve activities with some particular

boundaries or shapes, but without a strict sequencing of acts or activities.

A

speech community

is a group of people who share rules for using and interpreting at

least one communication practice. A communication practice might involve specific events,

acts, or situations, with the use and interpretation of at least one essential for membership

in a speech community. The term "speech" is used here to stand in for various means of

communication, verbal and nonverbal, written and oral; the term "community," while

minimally involving one practice, in actuality typically involves many, and is thus used to

embrace the diversity in the means and meanings available for communication.

As communities of people gather in communication, so do they conduct themselves in

particular ways. It is these patterned

ways of speaking

– e.g., about politics, in worship, or

in education – that identify in which community one is, indeed who and where one is. In

this sense, ethnographers of communication explore various ways of communicating, the

situated variety in the events, acts, and situations of communicative life. Of special interest

are specific situations and events in which different cultural styles of communication are

simultaneously active (

→

Interactional Sociolinguistics; Intercultural and Intergroup

Communication; Intercultural Norms; Intergroup Contact and Communication).

COMPONENTS FOR THE ANALYSIS OF COMMUNICATION

Once ethnographers of communication have identified a specific event, act, situation, or

community for study, a subsequent move is the analysis of that selected practice as a

multi-faceted phenomenon. This involves a particular methodology: the systematic

analysis of the selected practice as it has been observed in its normal social contexts,

and as it is discussed by participants. These analyses are conducted systematically

through a range of components. These components were originally formulated by

Hymes, and involve explorations of the variety of dimensions of each such commu-

nication practice.

The components were summarized by Hymes using the mnemonic device

SPEAKING

,

which will be used here for their brief discussion. As Hymes discussed, each component

4

Ethnography of Communication

invites us to ask certain questions about the communication practice of concern. Questions

such as these provide abstract theoretical bases for analyses that accomplish many

objectives, including an understanding of the special qualities of specific communication

practices (e.g., how Nigerian social interaction appropriates texts from popular culture),

and what is common across a variety of practices. In other words, the components

structure both descriptive and comparative analyses.

S: What are the

setting

and

scene

of the communication practice? This component

explores two aspects of context: the physical setting in which it takes place, and the scene,

i.e., the participants' sense of what is going on when this practice is active. Analyzing the

setting and scenic qualities of the practice helps ground the analyses in the specific

contexts of social life.

P: Who are the

participants

in this practice? A significant shift is marked here in

conceptualizing communication as an event in which people participate, and thus the key

concept is "participant" (in the event). This moves away from typical encoding and

decoding models, or others which focus initially on senders and receivers of messages.

What if a practice such as "reading the paper" is considered an event? Who are the

participants in that practice?

E: What are the

ends

of this practice? This asks about two ends: the goals participants

may have in doing the practice, and the outcomes actually achieved. In the event of joke-

telling, many of us are familiar with an off-color joke, the goal of which was to entertain,

with the outcome offending. Communication practice, generally, may target some goals,

yet attain other outcomes (intended and not).

A: What

act sequence

is involved in and for this practice? The practice is part of social

interaction. When does it arise and as part of what sequence? And further, what are the

content of the practice and its form? This component invites a careful look at the

sequential organization of the practice, its message content, and form.

K: How is the practice being

keyed

? What is the emotional pitch, feeling, or spirit of the

communication practice? Regarding funerals, most are keyed as reverent and serious.

Other events, such as some talk shows, can be keyed as more light-hearted. The ways

practices are keyed, and the ways the key can shift from moment to moment, are

questions raised and analyzed with this component.

I: What is the

instrument

or channel being used in this communication practice? The

oral mode may be necessary, or it could be prohibited in favor of a specific gesture or

bodily movement. Is a technological channel preferred, or prohibited? Should the practice

be conducted in print or via a face-to-face channel, through song or chanting? The range

of instruments being used to design a practice, and the ways each is interpreted, are

entered into the analysis here.

N: What

norms

are active when communication is practiced in this way and in this

community? This component distinguishes the two senses of norms that may be relevant

to a communication practice: what is done normally as a matter of habit (e.g., few vote),

and what is the appropriate thing to do (e.g., one should vote in every election).

Standards of normalcy can be productively distinguished from the morally infused,

normative dimensions of communication practices.

There is a second distinction that guides this component: norms for interaction can be

distinguished from norms of interpretation. The norm for interaction can be formulated

Ethnography of Communication

5

as a rule for how one should properly interact when conducting the practice of concern:

e.g., one should respect one's elders. The norm for interpretation can be formulated as a

rule for what a practice means: e.g., sitting in silence with an elder counts as respecting that

elder (

→

Discourse Comprehension). Both norms are analyzed through this component.

G: Is there a

genre

of communication of which this practice is an instance? This might

involve identifying the practice as a type of a formal genre such as verbal dueling, or a

riddle, or a narrative. As a result, the properties of those formal genres become relevant

to its analysis. Alternately, the practice might be understood as part and parcel of a folk

genre, and be analyzed accordingly.

The investigative methodology summarized here involves identifying a unit of

communication practice for purposes of analysis, generating data about that practice

through procedures of participant observation and interviewing, then analyzing instances

of the practice through the components. For any one practice, some components may

prove more fruitful for analysis than others, and thus the use of the theoretical framework

itself becomes an object of reflection during the ethnographic study.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Recent ethnographies of communication have examined mass media texts in various

societies, political processes at the grassroot and national levels, interpersonal commu-

nication in many cultural settings, organizational communication in various contexts

from medicine to education, intercultural communication around the globe, processes

of power, advantaged and disadvantaged practices, and so on. And further, these studies

have been conducted in and about several languages, including Chinese, Danish, English

(of several varieties), Finnish, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish (in

several locations), among many others. The growing number of native ethnographers

conducting ethnographies of communication in their own speech communities is

important to note, for this helps generate a fund of such studies, from a variety of

authors, which is ripe and rich for future comparative work.

Several trajectories of work have evolved over the years that derive from or are indebted

to the ethnography of communication. Some ethnographers have recently explicated a

model of communication that is a discourse-centered approach both to culture (Sherzer

1987), with developments of it through explorations of indigenous practices (Urban

1991), and to the problem of intertextuality (Bauman 2004). Other trajectories involve a

newly formulated theory of cultural communication and codes (Philipsen 1997, 2002),

with developments of it through applications to work organizations (Covarrubias 2002),

interpersonal life (Fitch 1998), and intercultural interactions (Carbaugh 2005). There is

much recent work that is comparative and focuses on aspects of conversation and media,

with special attention to the ways people conceive of and evaluate television texts, various

uses of the computer, and how these relate to face-to-face channels of communication

(Katriel 2004). In any event, all illustrate what is culturally distinctive about communica-

tion, yet also suggest some general properties in communication, additional units for

study, and so on.

And thus we have come full circle. For ethnographers of communication, communica-

tion is explored as something locally patterned and practiced as a part of social life, and

6

Ethnography of Communication

as something crucially important, being formative of all societal and cultural com-

munities. Discovering the locally distinctive means of all communicative media is crucial

to our understanding. Interpreting what meanings are associated with these various

means of expression is also essential. Knowledge of what is common across our various

communities of communication is being served as well. In the process, ethnographers of

communication demonstrate how communication is formative of social and cultural

lives, comparatively analyzing both the cultural features and the cross-cultural properties

of communication.

SEE ALSO:

Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis

Communities of Practice

Culture and Communication, Ethnographic Perspectives on

Discourse Compre-

hension

Interactional Sociolinguistics

Intercultural and Intergroup Communication

Intercultural Norms

Intergroup Contact and Communication

Microethnography

Research Methods

Speech Codes Theory

References and Suggested Readings

Basso, K. (1996).

Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the western Apache

.

Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Bauman, R. (2004).

A world of others' words: Cross-cultural perspectives on intertextuality

. Oxford:

Blackwell.

Bauman, R., & Sherzer, J. (eds.) (1974).

Explorations in the ethnography of speaking

. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Carbaugh, D. (ed.) (1990).

Cultural communication and intercultural contact

. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Carbaugh, D. (2005).

Cultures in conversation

. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Covarrubias, P. (2002).

Culture, communication, and cooperation: Interpersonal relations and

pronominal address in a Mexican organization

. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield.

Fitch, K. (1998).

Speaking relationally: Culture, communication, and interpersonal connection

. New

York: Guilford.

Gumperz, J., & Hymes, D. (eds.) (1972).

Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of

communication

. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Hymes, D. (1962). The ethnography of speaking. In T. Gladwin and W. Sturtevant (eds.),

Anthropo-

logy and human behavior

. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington, pp. 13–

53.

Hymes, D. (1972). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes

(eds.),

Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication

. New York: Holt, Rinehart

and Winston, pp. 35–71.

Katriel, T. (1986).

Talking straight: "Dugri" speech in Israeil Sabra culture

. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Katriel, T. (2004).

Dialogic moments: From soul talks to talk radio in Israeli culture

. Detroit, MI:

Wayne State University Press.

Philipsen, G. (1992).

Speaking culturally

. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Philipsen, G. (1997). A theory of speech codes. In G. Philipsen & T. Albrecht (eds.),

Developing

communication theories

. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 119–156.

Philipsen, G. (2002). Cultural communication. In W. Gudykunst & B. Mody (eds.),

Handbook of

international and intercultural communication

. London and New Delhi: Sage, pp. 51–67.

Philipsen, G., & Carbaugh, D. (1986). A bibliography of fieldwork in the ethnography of

communication.

Language in Society

, 15, 387–398.

Sherzer, J. (1987). A discourse-centered approach to language and culture.

American Anthropologist

,

89, 295– 309.

Urban, G. (1991).

A discourse-centered approach to culture

. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

... A languaging perspective is similar to (and builds upon) theoretical frameworks grounded in interactional sociolinguistics (e.g., Green & Wallat, 1981;Gumperz, 1982) and the ethnography of communication (e.g., Carbaugh, 2007;Hymes, 1974). A major difference though, simply stated, is that a languaging perspective refuses to separate social action from the use of language, while an interactional sociolinguistics perspective and an ethnography of communication perspective focus on how people use language to engage in social and cultural events. ...

... communication. The approach has been used to produce hundreds of research reports about locally patterned practices of communication [15], analysis of the idea that being able to speak one's native language without errors in terms of grammar does not mean that a person is competent in the language, but it should also be noted that having a good understanding of social norms is just as important [16], traditionally speaking in an indigenous language, how ethnography speaks can usefully illuminate traditional Indigenous ways of speaking [17], a study of the wisdom of Indonesian languages, and local wisdom in civilization which will become the identity of the Indonesian nation [18]. ...

... In [34], the authors stated that communication was a formative construct that was used for collaborating with the other people around them. Consequently, from the literature, it was observed that communication was considered as a formative [37] [38]. Whereas, the previous studies that measured the impact of communication in GSD considered it a reflective construct. ...

Global software development (GSD) practice has been increasingly emerging in the recent few decades in the field of business and software industry. On the one hand, many software development organizations get the benefits of GSD, including but not limited to reduced cost, cheap labor, round the clock working and skilled professionals. On the other hand, these organizations have to face several challenges because of GSD. These challenges pose serious threats to the stability of the GSD projects. Communication between distributed team members is one of the most crucial challenges in GSD. Therefore, the current study aims to identify the communication risk in GSD and also evaluate the impact of these communication risks in GSD environment. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been performed to identify all the communication-related issues in GSD. After that, a conceptual framework has been proposed for evaluating the impact of those issues on communication risk in GSD. An empirical evaluation has been performed on data collected from the software organizations of Pakistan working in GSD based environment. The finding of our study demonstrates that geographical distance, socio-temporal distance, socio-culture distance, team member's attitude, team issues, organizational & architectural issue and customer issue have a significant direct impact on communication risk in GSD. The study also shows that there is a significant correlation between findings of SLR and empirical investigation (r=0.460, P=0.005). Further, we believe that the results of our research can help to tackle the issues related to communication in GSD. Therefore, it will help to improve the performance of the development activities of GSD organizations.

... The interconnection between language and thought is a fundamental assertion of the ethnography of communication (Carbaugh and Boromiszha-Habashi 2015) that poses essential questions about 'the knowledge that speakers are acting upon when they communicate' (p. 540). ...

  • Katherine Richardson Bruna
  • Carla A. McNelly
  • Jane M. Rongerude Jane M. Rongerude

Linguists understand metaphors to be shortcuts to an individual's tacit knowledge about the world. As ethnographers and planners building a university-school partnership and seeking to understand residents' perceptions of their urban neighbourhood, attention to use of metaphor allowed us insight into an insider's mental model of who is in the community. In this article, we describe how, in our interview-based ethnographic needs assessment, one of our project participant's metaphors helped us discern the lived nature of social stratification as racialised economic inequality. This insight not only informs our partnership work but subverts some important assumptions about programme impact. Our experience suggests metaphor analysis contributes an important tool for ethnographic interpretation.

... De acuerdo con Carbaugh (2007), la EC es un marco teórico-metodológico en plena vigencia, útil para estudiar las más diversas prácticas comunicativas: ...

  • Carla Victoria Jara Murillo

El objetivo de este artículo es describir un acto comunicativo particular, a saber, el último mensaje del presidente de la República, presentado el 1° de mayo ante la asamblea de los diputados. Se trata de una descripción etnográfica del acto a partir de la metodología planteada inicialmente por Dell Hymes, y aplicando también desarrollos posteriores de la etnografía de la comunicación.

  • Kellie Brownlee

Applied communication interventions call for detailed knowledge of the scene and the cultural assumptions that inform the communication taking place. This paper shows how Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA) was used to study the practice of 'conversation' in English language learners (ELLs) groups at a public library in the Western United States. The analysis demonstrated that 'conversation' is a culturally specific practice requiring elucidation. This led to the design of storytelling workshops that helped participants improve their language skills and cultural knowledge. Data were collected in a three-phase project: (1) a preliminary ethnography(2) a design phase to create a strategic plan for addressing concerns, and (3) an applied communication intervention consisting of storytelling workshops for ELLs. The paper provides a model for conducting applied communication research using an ethnographic, culture-centered approach, and demonstrates the value of storytelling as a practice for improving English language education.

  • Rebecca Townsend Rebecca Townsend

Planners often use the phrase 'hard-to-reach' to describe youth, people of color, and people with low incomes, people from whom they need information but are unsuccessful in reaching. Consideration of cultural premises for communicating can help explain why some people are 'under-heard' rather than 'hard-to-reach.' This study uses cultural discourse analysis to study under-represented community group deliberations about transportation, convened through a model of public engagement for environmental justice. Data include transcripts of 29 group deliberations and fieldnotes. Analysis and interpretation of cultural discourses about public participation processes focuses on three radiants of meaning: (1) respect for users and sociability, (2) being involved and efficacy, and (3) having a voice and feeling worthwhile. The model of engagement in deliberative processes allows for a reconfiguration of notions of being, acting, relating, and feeling in which participants give themselves amplified voice and agency. It contributes to literature on public engagement and how culture is conceived.

This chapter looks at business communication theories about processes that we use to better understand ourselves and our purpose at work. Unlike most business communication theories, those in this chapter examine what communication processes shape views of ourselves and our environment. As such, the phenomena these theories examine can influence a person's core being and understanding. These theories give us powerful insights into how communication changes and even creates personalities and social dynamics.

This chapter looks at the various disciplines that business communication has drawn from to collectively construct its unique identity. Understanding these traditions helps stakeholders in the field to better access the underlying assumptions that our theories incorporate. This knowledge also guides our awareness of where and why various theories may fall short, and signals directions that we can pursue to extend and refine the theories in business communication.

  • Ruth Edmonds

The concept of 'agency' is regularly put forward as an analytic tool to help understand, evaluate and act upon places around the world, through social development policies and programmes ostensibly designed to support or increase children's agency. This article reflects on empirical research into children's agency spanning a range of international contexts over two decades and offers new insights through critical engagement with a growing body of work on the 'localisation' of social development and humanitarian responses in international settings. It suggests that the largely normative ways in which the concept of agency is invoked as an analytic tool for understanding human experience universally effectively renders children's agency invisible to us. This is because it is more a description of a particular discourse than something which actually helps us to understand and make visible children's socio-culturally grounded 'agentic practice' from place to place. This article argues for new directions in research and practice to localise agency that are critical to the central commitments of interpretive social science. These new directions include (a) a new research agenda which can go beyond children's 'own perspectives' to the discovery, description and analysis of agency in socio-cultural terms, to ensure it can function as an analytic tool for learning about socio-cultural phenomena which help animate local concepts of agency; and (b) the development of agency-related policies and programmes that are grounded in such locally situated concepts of agency developed through understanding local socio-cultural systems rather than externally derived socio-cultural assumptions about childhood and children's agency.

"Communication" is examined as a cultural term whose meaning is problematic in selected instances of American speech about interpersonal life. An ethnographic study, focusing on analysis of several cultural "texts," reveals that in the discourse examined here, "communication" refers, to close, supportive, flexible speech, which functions as the "work" necessary to self‐definition and interpersonal bonding. "Communication," thus defined, is shown to find its place in a "communication" ritual, the structure of which is delineated. The use of the definition formulated, and of the ideational context which surrounds it, is illustrated in an analysis of a recurring public drama, the "communication" theme shows on the Phil Donahue television program. Implications of the study are drawn for ethnography as a form of communication inquiry.

  • Tamar Katriel Tamar Katriel

The vision of communication as authentic dialogue, as the mutual communion of souls, has animated a great many twentieth century discussions of language and communication, both in scholarly writings and in various forms and contexts of popular culture. In its various manifestations, this communicative utopia has identified dialogue or conversation as a locus of authenticity of both individuals and groups. This study traces the ways in which this utopian vision of communication has played itself out in the particular context of Israeli society through the twentieth century, encapsulating central trends in the evolving Israeli cultural conversation over the years. In this sense, it is a historically-situated study of the cultural fluctuations of a given society in all its particularity. In another sense, however, it seeks to offer a more general statement about the culturally constructed nature of the quest for authenticity as a project of modernity by focusing on conceptions of communication and language as its quintessential loci." -From the Introduction by Tamar Katriel. Copyright

  • Cheleen Mahar

Review of Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache / Review of Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache By Keith H. Basso University of New Mexico Press 1996