Understanding Communication Research Methods

A Theoretical and Practical Approach

Stephen M. Croucher, Daniel Cronn-Mills

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000452648
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Edition: 3

Using an engaging how-to approach that draws from scholarship, real life, and popular culture, this textbook, now in its third edition, offers students practical reasons why they should care about research methods and offers a practical guide to actually conducting research themselves.

Examining quantitative, qualitative, and critical research methods, this new edition helps undergraduate students better grasp the theoretical and practical uses of method by clearly illustrating practical applications. The book features all the main research traditions within communication including online methods and provides level-appropriate applications of the methods through theoretical and practical examples and exercises, including sample student papers that demonstrate research methods in action. This third edition also includes additional chapters on experimental design and methods of performance, as well as brand new case studies throughout.

This textbook is perfect for students and scholars using critical, cultural, interpretive, qualitative, quantitative, and positivist research methods, as well as students of communication studies more generally.

It also offers dedicated student resources on the Routledge.com book page and instructor resources at https://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/instructor_downloads/. These include links, videos, outlines and activities, recommended readings, test questions, and more.

Section Three

Research Methods

8 Ethnography

DOI: 10.4324/9781003109129-11

Chapter Outline

• Ethnography Defined
• Approaches to Ethnography
• Ethnographic Claims
• Ethnographic Data
• Ethnographic Data Analysis
• Ethnographic Warrants
• Summary
• Key Steps and Questions to Consider
• Activities
• Discussion Questions
• Key Terms
• Undergraduate Ethnographic Paper

What Will I Learn About Ethnography?

The photo shows the outside of a typical Finnish sauna. The sauna is located in Jyväskylä, Finland. Saunas are an integral part of Finnish culture and a place to socialize as a family, conduct business, and relax. Saunas in Finland date back hundreds of years. The nation has roughly five million people and more than two million saunas, showing just how significant the sauna is for Finnish people. When Stephen first moved to Finland, he had to learn quickly about Finnish sauna culture. Stephen had to adapt culturally to Finnish life. Other scholars have commented on the need to understand and adapt to Finnish sauna life. Edelsward (1991) described how the sauna is an important part of becoming Finnish, learning about Finnish culture, and being accepted by many Finns. Scholars of cultural adaptation (Croucher, 2008; Kim, 2001; Kramer, 2003) have argued important elements of adapting to a new culture include learning about the culture and being accepted by the host culture. When considering the relationship between the Finnish sauna and adapting to Finnish culture, a researcher could ask various questions: 1) how does one learn culturally appropriate communication behaviors related to the Finnish sauna? 2) how does one truly experience a Finnish sauna? (a performance of communication question) 3) how does one experience Finnish culture through a Finnish sauna? Among the methods one could use to approach this research are: interviews, statistics, and content analysis. Ethnography is the method we explore in this chapter.

Ethnography Defined

Ethnography originally comes from cultural anthropology (Malinowski, 1922). Ethnography is the study of, writing about, and/or a description of (graphy) people or folk (ethno) (Berg, 1998; Spradley, 1979). Ethnography is, at its essence, attempting to describe a culture from the viewpoint of a cultural insider (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003). By using ethnography, the researcher describes individuals’ behaviors while inferring meaning from those behaviors. The researcher draws inferences from cultural knowledge they have. Cultural knowledge includes the explicit and implicit cultural knowledge we have about life. Explicit knowledge includes things we know and can easily talk about.

For example, Stephen used to live in Finland, where saunas are very popular; in fact, saunas are a national pastime. Before moving to Finland, he knew what a sauna was, and he could describe saunas (explicit knowledge). After spending more time in Finland, he learned cultural norms about Finnish saunas (implicit knowledge), including birch boughs to beat oneself for massage and stimulation and that swearing in a sauna is rude. Stephen learned that to be invited to someone’s sauna is an honor. The job of the ethnographer is to draw upon explicit and implicit knowledge to provide a thick description of sauna life.

Edelsward (1991) conducted an ethnographic analysis on Finnish saunas. Edelsward described how the sauna is a place for people to come together with nature and culture. Edelsward provided a thick description of sauna life and its relationship to Finnish culture. Geertz (1973) described thick description as a detailed explanation of a social setting and lives of the people. Thick description is integral to ethnography. The description is the foundation of an ethnography. The description shows culture in action. We discuss thick description and how to write an ethnography later in this chapter. One can take various ethnographic approaches. We outline three approaches: 1) ethnography of speaking, 2) ethnography of communication, and 3) autoethnography.

Approaches to Ethnography

Ethnography of Speaking

Hymes’ (1962) ethnography of speaking (EOS) is a method for studying culturally specific communication practices and patterns. EOS is the analysis of factors relevant to understanding how a communication event accomplishes its goals. Philipsen (1992) stated that EOS consists of “hearing and representing distinctive ways of speaking in particular speech communities” (p. 9). Two assumptions are key to the EOS approach. First, speaking differs across cultures. Second, speaking represents social life and, thus, tells us something distinct about the group. Therefore, observing and describing the speech behaviors of a group can tell us a lot about a group. Numerous scholars following an EOS approach have found that our speaking informs us about cultures (Basso, 1970; Croucher, 2008; Engstrom, 2012; Leitner, 1983; Philipsen, 1975; Pratt & Weider, 1993; Zenk, 1988). The acronym SPEAKING was developed by Hymes (1962/1974) to explain how to conduct an EOS analysis within a speech community. A speech community is a group of individuals who share a common set of norms/rules for interpreting and using speech (Carbaugh, 2005; Philipsen, 1992). The SPEAKING framework is a list of key questions to ask when conducting an EOS analysis. See Figure 8.1 for a description of the SPEAKING framework.

Figure 8.1 Hymes (1974) SPEAKING Framework

Ethnography of Communication

Closely linked to Hymes’ (1962, 1964, 1974) ethnography of speaking is ethnography of communication. Scholars who conduct ethnography of communication (EOC) research focus on the speech acts/events within communities but are more interested in learning and comparing the shared and varied codes of communication among and between groups (Cameron, 2001; Lindlof & Taylor, 2002). Ethnographers recognize that not every social group communicates the same way and are interested in how “shared meaning and coordinated action vary across social groups” (Philipsen, 1989, p. 258). EOC scholars combine linguistic and anthropological approaches to research. Various scholars have approached ethnography from the EOC approach and/or combined the EOC with the EOS approach (Carbaugh, 2005; Croucher, 2006; Croucher & Cronn-Mills, 2011; Katriel, 1990; Katriel & Philipsen, 1981; Philipsen, 1975; Sherzer, 1983).

Here is an example of how Stephen’s encounters with Finnish sauna life could be analyzed using SPEAKING (EOS) and the EOC approach:

• S—While visiting Oulu, a city 300 miles north of Helsinki, the capital of Finland, Stephen stayed at a hotel in the city center. The event took place in the late summer of 2012. He was still learning about Finland. He decided one night to go to the sauna.
• P—Stephen sat in the sauna for about 5 minutes and was joined by a man (mid-30s, like Stephen) and the man’s two sons, who were 8 and 10 years old. Nobody else was in the sauna.
• E—The father began to speak to Stephen in Finnish (Stephen knew very little Finnish at the time). When Stephen told him in Finnish that he spoke English or French, the man spoke English to him and asked why there was no steam in the sauna. Stephen did not know why. The man explained and showed Stephen how to properly use the empty metal bucket and ladle by their feet to throw water on the hot stones in the corner.
• A—He went out of the sauna, filled the bucket with water, and tossed multiple ladles full of water on the hot stones, and, with each ladle, steam arose and filled the sauna. Every few minutes water is thrown on the stones by different individuals (the children included). The sauna participants began to sweat profusely. After 10 minutes, the father instructed his children and Stephen to get out and take a cold shower, then return to the sauna; the shower, he said, helped cleanse and refresh the skin.
• K—During the whole process, the children chuckled at how Stephen did not know about Finnish saunas. The father smiled and was happy to help and asked a lot about American culture.
• I—The interaction took place in English, and some broken Suomi (Finnish) was thrown in by Stephen to practice the Suomi he learned at school.
• N—The four males were nude; in the United States, public saunas generally require bathing suits. You will rarely find a situation in the United States where children are brought to a sauna. Furthermore, if they are brought to a sauna, we doubt you will find them enjoying it to the same level as these 8- and 10-year-olds. To the Finnish, the sauna is a way of life. Stephen also learned norms about throwing water on the stones. There are saunas in the United States that require water in the same way, but here all four people took turns, and there was an unwritten rule as to when water was thrown, something that the father said you just learn as you become one with the Finnish sauna.
• G—This was a lesson on Finnish sauna protocol. The experience demonstrated differences between saunas in Finland and the United States.

The job of EOS and EOC scholars is to provide thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the community they are studying. Whether using the SPEAKING framework (EOS) or focusing less specifically on language use (EOC), your study should provide a clear understanding of the phenomena you set out to explore. You need to provide and analyze specific examples to back up your claims (we talk more about this in the Claims section later in the chapter). Examples are your data and can come from a variety of sources (e.g., interviews, observation, media, documents, artifacts), which we outline in detail later. Ethnographies from the EOS and EOC approaches are typically written in the first perso...