[Interpretationandmethods] ethnography of communication

[Patrick Jackson]

Note that Jonathan Rieder is a sociologist. The disciplinary context  
is different there than it is in polisci; I think it's easier to do  
this kind of thing there then it is in a discipline as infatuated with  
linear causation and dualistic hypothesis-testing as ours is. What we  
need to really affect a rhetorical turn in polisci is a disciplinary  
opening to modes of analysis that take a different tack, so we can  
stop having to (futilely) justify interpretive and relational work in  
terms that are largely alien to it. That's why "qualitative methods"  
is a trojan horse -- an apparent opening that, upon closer  
examination, is just an extension of the same basic methodological  
standpoint as the rest of the neopositivist mainstream, featuring  
variables, hypotheses, and the like.

I would very much like to see that disciplinary opening, but I'm not  
optimistic about the short-term prospects. But maybe small moves can  
concatenate over time -- that's where I place my hope.

PTJ

PS the journal I now edit -- the Journal of International Relations  
and Development -- is certainly open to interpretive and relational  
work! And there are certainly others. So there are islands of  
acceptance scattered throughout the disciplinary landscape.

On Apr 26, 2008, at 4:27 AM, Dvora Yanow wrote:

> Colleagues:
>
> An interesting passage from John McWhorter's NY Times Book Review  
> April 27, 2008 review of Jonathan Rieder's book THE WORD OF THE LORD  
> IS UPON ME:  The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr. --
>
> "...this is common practice in the ethnography of communication, the  
> scholarly framework Rieder is working in, long established in  
> linguistics and anthropology. This method applies a laser-beam focus  
> to forms of speech, stressing that, as its founder, Dell Hymes,  
> warned, it is dangerous to assume that words simply mean what they  
> say and say what they mean. Not just because people can lie, but  
> because language is much more than descriptive statements like “The  
> cat is on the windowsill.”
>
> "As often as not, a statement is actually a request, as when one  
> says, “It’s sure hot in here,” to somebody standing by a closed  
> window. Or take the tradition in which a person speaks to a paying  
> audience with the intention of eliciting serial spells of laughter —  
> i.e., stand-up comedy. It’s as peculiar and coded a ritual as any  
> exotic tribal one we see on the Discovery Channel, based on a web of  
> expectations involving speech style, response and performance."
>
>
> Might 'the rhetorical turn' return to political science?
>
> Dvora Yanow
>
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===
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com


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