Transcript Language and identity 2009

LANGUAGE, ACTION,
BEWILDERMENT!
PROBLEMS OF IDENTITY
AND RESEARCH
STRATEGY
Martyn Hammersley
The Open University
Linguistic Ethnography
Ethnolinguistics
Linguistic Anthropology
Discourse Analysis
Sociology of Language
Ethnography of Language
Critical Discursive Psychology
Linguistic Sociology
Critical Discourse Analysis
Anthropological Linguistics
Pragmatics
The Case of Linguistic Ethnography
Linguistic versus what?
Ethnography versus what?
• Linguistic ethnography versus a Vygotskian
sociocultural approach?
• Linguistic ethnography versus discursive
psychology?
• Linguistic ethnography versus conversation
analysis?
• Linguistic ethnography versus critical
discourse analysis?
Obscure Language: Garfinkel
‘Chapters One to Nine […] bring out from a
background of textual foliage that is their source
in tub files of documents, central practices of
EM’s program as the program’s incessant
concerns with a recurrent figure in that foliage,
namely, procedures of order production
specified as members’ methods. Members’
methods in accountable specifics of instructed
actions display a fourth orderliness.’
(Ethnomethodology’s Program, 2002,p69)
Obscure Language: Foucault
‘Of course, discourses are composed of signs;
but what they do is more than use these signs to
designate things. It is this more that renders them
irreducible to the language (langue) and to
speech. It is this “more” that we must reveal and
describe’ (The Archaeology of Knowledge, p49)
Identity as substantial self
In Social Identity, the anthropologist Richard
Jenkins defines ‘self ’ or 'identity' as: ‘each
individual’s reflexive sense of her or his own
particular identity, constituted vis-a-vis
others in terms of similarity and difference,
without which we would not know who we
are and hence would not be able to act’
(Jenkins, 1996: 29–30)
Identity as discursively formulated
‘Sacks’ general concern was with how
conversational participants use descriptive
categories of this kind [identity categories], and
apply membership criteria, as a way of
performing various kinds of discursive actions.
His approach contrasts with how such categories
figure in other kinds of social science, as
analysts’ categories of people, according to
which the analyst offers explanations of what
they do, of what they say, and how they think’
(Edwards in Antaki and Widdicombe 1998, p15)
Two Conflicting Proposals and
Two Dilemmas
The paradigmatic attitude: stick to your
principles!

The pragmatic attitude: do what’s fit for
purpose!

»Dogmatism Versus Scepticism.
»Purism Versus Expediency.
Some questions
1. Can fieldnotes be a legitimate form of
data?
2. Can interviews be an acceptable source of
data?
3. What is context?
4. Should the focus of analysis be on
discursive practices, social strategies, or
institutional facts?
5. Should analysts attribute identities,
intentions, etc?
6. How self conscious must we be about our
own language use as analysts?
Fieldnotes and Transcripts
• Must we always have electronic recordings, or
can we rely upon fieldnotes?
• What sort of recordings do we need: an audio
recording machine placed in the corner of the
room or all the participants miked up?
• Should we use video recordings?
• Do we always have to transcribe recordings?
• And, if we do, must these transcriptions include
the sort of detail that is to be found in the
transcripts used by many linguists and
conversation analysts?
A View from Ethnomethodological
Conversation Analysis
‘Of course, visual data has various analytic
affordances and limitations, but
ethnomethodological studies of situated action
now regularly, though not necessarily, use
these forms of data capture. One reason for this
is that reliance on purely audio accounts is of
limited use for the multi-modal description of
interaction in face-to-face interactions and/or [to
study] the use of technologies and artefacts’
(Jenkings 2009, pp778-9)
Beware of Angry Sociologist!
References
Edwards,D. (1998) ‘The relevant thing about her: Social identity categories in use’, in Antaki C. and
Widdicombe, S. (eds.) Identities in Interaction, London, Sage.
Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge, London, Tavistock.
Garfinkel, H. (2002) Ethnomethodology’s Program, Lanham MD, Rowman and Littlefield.
Hammersley, M (1980) 'Putting Competence into Action' in MacLure, M. and French P. (eds.) Adult-Child
Conversation, Croom Helm, pp47-58. [Reprinted in Hammersley (ed.) (1986) Controversies in
Classroom Research, Buckingham, Open University Press.]
Hammersley, M. (2003) ‘Conversation analysis and discourse analysis: methods or paradigms?’, Discourse
and Society, 14, 6, pp751-81.
Hammersley, M. and Gomm, R. (2005) ‘Recent radical criticism of the interview in qualitative inquiry’. In
Holborn, M. and Haralambos, M. (eds.) Developments in Sociology, Volume 20, Ormskirk, Causeway
Press/Edinburgh, Pearson Education, 2005. [Reprinted in Hammersley, (2008) Questioning Qualitative
Inquiry, London, Sage.]
Hammersley, M. and Treseder,P. (2007) ‘Identity as an analytic problem: who’s who in “pro-ana” websites?’, Qualitative Research, 7, 3, pp283-300.
Jenkings N. (2009) ‘Studies in and as ethnomethodology: Garfinkel and his ethnomethodological “bastards”
part 2’, Sociology, 43, 4, pp775-81.
Jenkins, R. (1996) Social Identity, London, Routledge.
Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (2005) ‘Qualitative interviews in psychology: problems and possibilities’,
Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2, 281-307.