Table of Contents
Preface for Instructors ix
Editors’ Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1Jane E. Goodman, Jennifer Meta Robinson, and Leila Monaghan
Part I: Ethnographer’s Toolkit 7
1 Body Ritual among the Nacirema 9Horace Miner
2 Culture Blends 12Michael Agar
3 Culture: Can You Take It Anywhere? 24Michael Agar
4 Five Principles 27Richard Bauman
5 Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture 29Clifford Geertz
6 Winking as Social Business 32Jane E. Goodman
7 Speaking of Ethnography 34Leila Monaghan
8 The Emergent Quality of Performance 38Richard Bauman
9 Poetics, Play, Process, and Power: The Performative Turn in Anthropology 41Dwight Conquergood
Part II: Applying the Ethnographer’s Toolkit 45
10 Greetings in the Desert 47Ibrahim Ag Youssouf, Allen D. Grimshaw, and Charles S. Bird
11 Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers 60Richard Bauman
12 “To Give Up on Words”: Silence in Western Apache Culture 73Keith Basso
13 Saying Hello in a Digital World: Emergent Performance and Social Competence 84Jennifer Meta Robinson
14 Writing Cousin Joe: Choice and Control Over Orthographic Representation in a Blues Singer’s Autobiography 93Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer
15 And Then She Texted Me: Entextualization and the End of Relationships 110Ilana Gershon
16 The License: Poetics, Power, and the Uncanny 120Susan Lepselter
Part III: Ethnography of Talk: From Language Form to Social Solidarity 133
17 The Triangle of Linguistic Structure 135Robin Tolmach Lakoff
18 The Grammar of Politics and the Politics of Grammar: From Bangladesh to the United States 141James Wilce
19 Conversations: The Link between Words and the World 152Leila Monaghan
20 Conversational Signals and Devices 157Deborah Tannen
21 A Cultural Approach to Male–Female Miscommunication 168Daniel N. Maltz and Ruth A. Borker
22 “Put Down that Paper and Talk to Me!”: Rapport-talk and Report-talk 186Deborah Tannen
23 Talking Text and Talking Back: “My BFF Jill” from Boob Tube to YouTube 199Graham M. Jones and Bambi B. Schieffelin
24 On the Uses of Obscenity in Live Stand-Up Comedy 220Susan Seizer
25 Swearing as a Function of Gender in the Language of Midwestern American College Students 233Thomas E. Murray
Part IV: Communication and Social Groups: The Work of Belonging 243
26 Ethnography of Communication 245Donal Carbaugh
27 Encounters 249Erving Goffman
28 Symbols of Category Membership 255Penelope Eckert
29 Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture 274Mary Bucholtz
30 Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls 298Rachel Simmons
31 Sporting Formulae in New Zealand English: Two Models of Male Solidarity 315Koenraad Kuiper
32 Inner-City Teens and Face-Work: Avoiding Violence and Maintaining Honor 324Robert Garot
33 From Websites to Wal-Mart: Youth, Identity Work, and the Queering of Boundary Publics in Small Town, USA 347Mary L. Gray
34 “If I’m Lyin, I’m Flyin”: The Game of Insult in Black Language 356Geneva Smitherman
Part V: Interpersonal Communication in Institutional Settings: Structure, Agency, and the Exercise of Power 365
35 Power and the Language of Men 367Scott Fabius Kiesling
36 Linguistic Ideology and Praxis in US Law School Classrooms 385Elizabeth Mertz
37 Participant Structures and Communicative Competence: Warm Springs Children in Community and Classroom 395Susan U. Philips
38 Footing 412Erving Goffman
39 “An Association for the 21st Century”: Performance and Social Change among Berbers in Paris 416Jane E. Goodman
40 Signing 429Leila Monaghan
41 Variation in Sign Languages 433Barbara LeMaster and Leila Monaghan
42 The Founding of Two Deaf Churches: The Interplay of Deaf and Christian Identities 438Leila Monaghan
Appendix I: Read This First: How to Read and Present on Complex Texts 455
Appendix II: Ethnography Assignments 462
Source Acknowledgments 468
Index 473