Synopses & Reviews
Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture 29
Clifford Geertz
6 Winking as Social Business 32
Jane E. Goodman
7 Speaking of Ethnography 34
Leila Monaghan
8 The Emergent Quality of Performance 38
Richard Bauman
9 Poetics, Play, Process, and Power: The Performative Turn in Anthropology 41
Dwight Conquergood
Part II: Applying the Ethnographer’s Toolkit 45
10 Greetings in the Desert 47
Ibrahim Ag Youssouf, Allen D. Grimshaw, and Charles S. Bird
11 Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers 60
Richard Bauman
12 “To Give Up on Words”: Silence in Western Apache Culture 73
Keith Basso
13 Saying Hello in a Digital World: Emergent Performance and Social Competence 84
Jennifer Meta Robinson
14 Writing Cousin Joe: Choice and Control Over Orthographic Representation in a Blues Singer’s Autobiography 93
Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer
15 And Then She Texted Me: Entextualization and the End of Relationships 110
Ilana Gershon
16 The License: Poetics, Power, and the Uncanny 120
Susan Lepselter
Part III: Ethnography of Talk: From Language Form to Social Solidarity 133
17 The Triangle of Linguistic Structure 135
Robin Tolmach Lakoff
18 The Grammar of Politics and the Politics of Grammar: From Bangladesh to the United States 141
James Wilce
19 Conversations: The Link between Words and the World 152
Leila Monaghan
20 Conversational Signals and Devices 157
Deborah Tannen
21 A Cultural Approach to Male–Female Miscommunication 168
Daniel N. Maltz and Ruth A. Borker
22 “Put Down that Paper and Talk to Me!”: Rapport-talk and Report-talk 186
Deborah Tannen
23 Talking Text and Talking Back: “My BFF Jill” from Boob Tube to YouTube 199
Graham M. Jones and Bambi B. Schieffelin
24 On the Uses of Obscenity in Live Stand-Up Comedy 220
Susan Seizer
25 Swearing as a Function of Gender in the Language of Midwestern American College Students 233
Thomas E. Murray
Part IV: Communication and Social Groups: The Work of Belonging 243
26 Ethnography of Communication 245
Donal Carbaugh
27 Encounters 249
Erving Goffman
28 Symbols of Category Membership 255
Penelope Eckert
29 Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture 274
Mary Bucholtz
30 Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls 298
Rachel Simmons
31 Sporting Formulae in New Zealand English: Two Models of Male Solidarity 315
Koenraad Kuiper
32 Inner-City Teens and Face-Work: Avoiding Violence and Maintaining Honor 324
Robert Garot
33 From Websites to Wal-Mart: Youth, Identity Work, and the Queering of Boundary Publics in Small Town, USA 347
Mary L. Gray
34 “If I’m Lyin, I’m Flyin”: The Game of Insult in Black Language 356
Geneva Smitherman
Part V: Interpersonal Communication in Institutional Settings: Structure, Agency, and the Exercise of Power 365
35 Power and the Language of Men 367
Scott Fabius Kiesling
36 Linguistic Ideology and Praxis in US Law School Classrooms 385
Elizabeth Mertz
37 Participant Structures and Communicative Competence: Warm Springs Children in Community and Classroom 395
Susan U. Philips
38 Footing 412
Erving Goffman
39 “An Association for the 21st Century”: Performance and Social Change among Berbers in Paris 416
Jane E. Goodman
40 Signing 429
Leila Monaghan
41 Variation in Sign Languages 433
Barbara LeMaster and Leila Monaghan
42 The Founding of Two Deaf Churches: The Interplay of Deaf and Christian Identities 438
Leila 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
Review
“A splendid collection of classics and contemporary analyses. Theory, case studies, ethnographic assignments and advice on reading work together to enable students to analyze their own communicative lives.”
-
Kathryn A. Woolard, University of California, San Diego“Monaghan and Goodman have assembled a treasure trove in this Second Edition – a rich source of insight into the key role of culture in understanding interpersonal communication.”
- Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University
Review
“This style, and the wide-ranging subject matter, should encourage both student and academic readers to follow the editors’ suggestion to see the material as a stepping stone towards their own research, rather than ‘the final word’ (p. 5). The reference lists at the end of the chapters could be another of these stones.” (
Discourse Studies, 16 January 2014)
Synopsis
Featuring several all-new chapters, revisions, and updates, the Second Edition of
A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication presents an interdisciplinary collection of key readings that explore how interpersonal communication is socially and culturally mediated.
- Includes key readings from the fields of cultural and linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and communication studies
- Features new chapters that focus on digital media
- Offers new introductory chapters and an expanded toolkit of concepts that students may draw on to link culture, communication, and community
- Expands the Ethnographer’s Toolkit to include an introduction to basic concepts followed by a range of ethnographic case studies
Synopsis
A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication presents key readings from the fields of cultural and linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and communication studies that explore the ways in which interpersonal communication is socially and culturally mediated. Starting from the premise that interpersonal communication is inseparable from culture, the readings reveal the rich diversity of communicative practices of social communities within the U.S. and around the world.
This fully revised second edition features several new chapters that highlight interpersonal communication in a digital world, covering such topics as situated engagements with social media, text messaging, digitally simulated spaces, television, and public video-sharing sites. Other readings explore interpersonal interactions in wide-ranging settings that include high school slang in California, sports talk in New Zealand, Tuareg greetings in the Sahara Desert, avatar-mediated conversations in Second Life, frat talk at a Midwest college, whispered rumors about Nevada's top-secret Area 51, and many more. In addition, a variety of ethnographic case studies serve to heighten awareness of the reader's own interpersonal language practices. A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication provides rich insights into the crucial role of culture in shaping our understanding of interpersonal communication.
About the Author
Leila Monaghan currently teaches anthropology and disability studies at the University of Wyoming and the University of Maryland University College. She served as course director of Interpersonal Communication in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University for four years. Her publications include the co-edited volumes
Many Ways to be Deaf and
HIV/AIDS and Deaf Communities.Jane E. Goodman is an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. She is the author of Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video, and editor of Bourdieu in Algeria: Colonial Politics, Ethnographic Practices, Theoretical Developments. She served as course director of Interpersonal Communication in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University for three years.
Jennifer Meta Robinson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. She is author of The Farmers' Market Book: Growing Food, Cultivating Community, editor of Teaching Environmental Literacy: Across Campus and Across the Curriculum, and editor of the Indiana University Press book series Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She has served as course director of Interpersonal Communication in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University since 2006.
Table of Contents
Preface for Instructors
Editors' Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements to Sources
Introduction: Jane E. Goodman and Leila Monaghan
Part I: Ethnographer's Toolkit
Part II: Applying the Ethnographer's Toolkit
Part III: Ethnography of Talk: From Language Form to Social Solidarity
Part IV: Communication and Social Groups: The Work of Belonging
Part V: Interpersonal Communication in Institutional Settings: Structure, Agency, and the Exercise of Power
Appendix I: Read This First: How to Read and Present on Complex Texts
Appendix