Chapter 1 "Language, Culture, and Learning: Ethnographic Approaches" in On Ethnography

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this whole ethnography thing, so bare with me. I don't think I have a good grasp of it yet, which means there will be a lot of quoting, but I will do my best to discuss it.

The chapter begins by defining a few important terms in the field of ethnography:
Language is "any symbol system which grammar provide phonological, morphological, syntactical, and lexical structures and rules" (4). I found it a bit odd, then, that ASL wouldn't be considered a language based on this definition because it doesn't have phonology.

Litercay, in this book, only refers to the "written representations of oral (or gestural) language" (4)

Multimodal Literacies are "systems of presentation that include written forms that are combined with oral, visual, or gestural modes" (4).

Ethnographers look at how language and literacies function within the individual and within the organization, institution or culture. Ethnographers have to be aware of the cultural context of the languages and literacies they are studying. "Added to the multiples of languages and literacies that ethnographers encounter in any single setting is the challenge of recording how these work hand in hand with cultural patterns. From pronouncing vowels to shaping stories, every speaker reflects habits, loyalties, and ideologies of language forged from cultural patterns that existed before they were born" (6).

The authors argue that "Talking, gesturing, and waving artifacts about in locally acceptable patterns make up the glue for conversation" (6). The difficulty is that these patterns change across time, space, demographics, etc. These exchanges, however, are very important because often they determine the membership status of individuals and a group.

Heath and Street argue that the ethnographers greatest challenge is to "try to understand how cultural patterns support, deny, and change structures and uses of language an multimodal literacies," and the effects that that has on the individual, groups, and institutions.

The authors then move on to talk about the importance of understanding culture in ethnogrpahy. They argue that culture shouldn't be regarded as something fixed but something alive, growing, changing, adapting, etc. So often culture is thought of as "prescriptive norms," but it is the ethnographer's job to report on culture in descriptive terms (9).

People typically think of culture as being fixed and language as a "model and vehicle of cultural processes that surround learning" but the authors argue that "As a model, language is taken as our primary representation of cultural knowledge. As a vehicle, language is considered the means by which we transmit what we know and think. Neither conveys the integrative complexities of language and interplay with culture, and most especially, with our ways of knowing and learning" (10). We learn in many ways that don't necessarily involve what we think as traditional language, and when we do use language, we have to remember that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is dependent on culture, context, etc. The ethnographer has to be aware of this when studying different situations.

This chapter focuses on three "situations of learning that ethnographers studying language and literacy enter:" (3)

1) "Individuals stiving to become and expert in something" [Think someone learning to play the guitar] Basically the ethonographer is looking at how the "uses of verbal language and other modalities related to how [the individual] learned his skill and sense of identity" (13).

2) "Groups in identity-making." "Members see themselves as 'belonging' to a group of definable characteristics they refer to as 'our culture.' Members sustain themselves through learning to be and to work together, knowing that their representation to the outside world depends on how effectively they create and maintain their identity" (14). There are many challenges facing ethnographers in this field because often times groups change without realizing that they have changed, groups portray one image of themselves to the public or to outsiders that is very different than how they really are.

3) Institutions of formal education" The important thing for ethnographers to know in this category is to not take things for face value. It is the ethnographer's job to see how the historical, political, and economical environments influence the language and norms of institutions.

The authors then move on to describe multimodalities. They state that "A primary job of ethnographers is to track, describe, and enumerate multimodaliteis as semiotic resources for their combinations-linguistic, gestural, kinestheic and visual" (21). Ethnographers basically look at how language is "embedded in other modes" (22). The way we communicate, the way we transmit information isn't only through written and verbal language; it is through our actions, our behaviors, and how we present ourselves to the world, and all of this, of course, is influenced by the historical, social, political, and economic environments in which we live.