Visual-Linguistic Ethnography

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to theories and methods of field-based linguistic data collection utilizing a visual ethnographic approach. The emphasis of this class will be on the collection and analysis of language in use, with a special focus on video-taping naturally-occurring speech events and on analyzing the phenomena occurring within these interactions. This course is geared toward students and scholars who are interested in work that engages videographic, ethnographic and discourse/conversation analytic approaches. We will cover topics ranging from equipment setup and use, data collection  approaches and project production.

The format of the course is a combination of technical training sessions and a seminar/workshop. It provides reading and discussion of, and practice in hands-on filming and data collection along with avariety of approaches to the analysis of conversational discourse. The theoretical focus of the course is interactional sociolinguistics, combined with some aspects of ethnomethodology and visual ethnography. Topics in the course include topical analysis; structure and mechanics of conversation; conversation as an interactional achievement, and strategies of conversational involvement.