[Ethnocomm] e-seminar

Mon Feb 8 18:44:27 UTC 2016

Just this past week, I participated in an annually occurring episode that many of you are likely familiar with, the reading and discussion of Philipsen and Katriel’s pieces on “Nacirema” ways of speaking in an American university. I am always curious whether and to what degree the exposited “code of dignity" resonates with the students as something familiar, articulates for them an aspect of their notions of self that they have or do take for granted, and leads to new conversations about how the code is manifest for them several decades after it was written about. I do not presume this code if familiar to all students, but 19 years of teaching has suggested to me it will strike a nerve to many if not most.

Regarding the latter of these, and timely given this e-seminar, the students dug deep into a discussion of the relational-communicative meanings of “the snapchat streak.” For those unfamiliar, snapchat replies back and forth from users are accompanied by a number that tells the participants how many days their streak has been going. One student reported that his romantic relationship with another man seems to be off to a good start because their streak is up to "17 days." Others reported their unwillingness to say someone was a “really good friend” because they have not had a "long streak.” Finally, students expressed that they feel pressure to keep streaks going, and told of the social consequences paid if you are the one who breaks the streak. Their talk was accompanied by terms articulated in the code that would describe strong or poor interpersonal relationships as “close,” “open” and so on.

This episode and the concurrent reading of the e-seminar leads me to these thoughts in no particular hierarchy of significance:

The notion of “encoding” does seem to both strengthen sensitivity to material structures (including hardware and software) that in and of themselves provide affordances and constraints for communicative activity. Taking the examples above, I’m not sure it would change my interpretation of the snap chat streak as a particular phenomenon, but it might commit me sooner to trying to understand how snapchat itself plays a role in the communicative activities of interpersonal life for these students. This, I take it, is what Trudy points about about Hart’s work in Communicating User Experience. The technology itself plays a role in the communicative choice-making of those who employ that technology. Encoding also raises awareness about agency in selection of modalities. If we take for granted the “plurality of ways” pillar in EC research, then the notion of selecting one mode (or code) over another should be a strong part of our inquiry. Saskia’s examples about choices among email, chat, text, call, etc. illustrate the point.

I am not making a strong argument here about the necessity to include “encoding” in our "descriptive-theoretical frameworks” (Philpesen, 1977). Perhaps EC and all subsequent and related frameworks are not undertheorized, but rather underutilized. This seems to be a theme in Wendy’s contribution (and now Donal’s which has appeared while I type). The term I quote from Philipsen comes from his piece on “linearity” which, if I may read historically, was written as a defense of high-quality, naturalistic inquiry, particularly ethnography of speaking research. Taken more prescriptively, a prescription that underlies Katriel’s piece, Philipsen points out what a ethnographer of speaking must do in order to achieve “linearity,” and, thus, high-quality research. Part of our burden is to interrogate “the adequacies of the descriptive framework used.” For me, this discussion points out both truths. The kinds of things “encoding” asks us to attend to are indeed in the frameworks. Others in this e-seminar have pointed out many theoretical and methodological concepts as well as contemporary studies. But new data and comparative studies also suggest that the relative attention we are giving to digital technologies, their material forms, and the consequences of their use, should be a central, active and early component in our inquiry…. when and if such technologies are present. Hardwares and softwares are not inconsequential and EC (as is demonstrated in the applied special issue and in Trudy’s communicating user experience) has much to say about the consequences.

Returning to descriptive-theoretical frameworks, I agree with Trudy that we are in an interesting moment when the justification and selection of LSR, CuDA, EC, SCT for any particular study is not always clear. I teach them as unique descriptive-theoretical frameworks, each one shifting focus for the researcher in any given case. But I’d be interested in others talking through those moments when we move among and between them in our inquiries, whether these are justifiable choices or choices of convenience, and what such movement supplies or detracts from our cultural interpretations. Perhaps that’s a different e-seminar.

The notion of “encoding” might add something important and powerful to our descriptions and interpretations. To me, EC researchers often soften agency by suggesting participants “call forth,” “employ,” or “deploy” one code over another. Donal’s simultaneous post helps bring attention to the peril of “encode” as another verb for description. But had I read Katriel’s piece last year, I might have written that Sarah, in a public meeting on inadequate Seattle in-stream flow levels for salmon, encoded her speech and, thus, the political scene she was participating in and the relationships with others she was expressing, by labeling herself as “an average citizen” (Leighter, 2015). Instead, I said something like she used or deployed a code… I always believed (based on data) she did something much more strategic, intentional, purposeful and rhetorical and I might have used “encoded” to strengthen that argument. Thus, Saskia’s example about mode choice in mediated communication as encoding is analogous to my example of labeling persons in face-to-face communication. “Encoding” highlights the observation and interpretation of choice-making.

Which leads to my final observation that ties together fieldwork in Local Strategies Research and that overlaps with communication design (face-to-face and digital) and deliberative democracy. That is, in communicative moments where intentional intervention is the aim on the part of some participants, “encoding,” as Katriel states, heightens sensitivity to the “temporality, performativity, and materiality of communication.” In interventions (LSR, design and deliberation), the active and often explicitly stated social construction of communication as an end in and of itself desperately calls for systematic attention to these dimensions of communicative activity. “Encoding” in these circumstances foregrounds movement, shaping, modifying, prescribing and so forth in many of the ways Lydia, Saskia and Donal have addressed these concepts in their posts.

What a treat that this has been organized. Thanks to David, Tamar and Wendy particularly, and to all the e-seminar participants. I am pleased to be part of the discussion.

Leighter, J. (2015). What is an “average citizen”?: Citizen speech codes as rhetorical resources in public meetings. In R. Marback & M. Kruman (Eds.),The Meaning of Citizenship. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Philipsen, G. (1977). Linearity of research design in ethnographic studies of speaking. Communication Quarterly, 25(3), 42-50.

[cid:B4212933-7520-4DDC-AF27-219E4E702672 at creighton.edu]Jay Leighter, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, COMMUNICATION STUDIES | http://www.creighton.edu/ccas/communicationstudies/
Director, SUSTAINABILITY STUDIES |www.creighton.edu/program/Sustainability-BA<http://www.creighton.edu/program/Sustainability-BA>
Creighton University | www.creighton.edu<http://www.creighton.edu> | College of Arts and Sciences | www.ccas.creighton.edu<http://www.ccas.creighton.edu>
phone: 402.280.2196 |  email: leighter at creighton.edu<mailto:leighter at creighton.edu> | 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, Nebraska 68178

On Feb 7, 2016, at 10:26 PM, David Boromisza-Habashi <david.boromisza at colorado.edu<mailto:david.boromisza at colorado.edu>> wrote:

If I may switch hats for a moment and participate in the conversation, I would like to join those who have expressed an appreciation for Wendy’s emphasis on process as a theoretical upshot of Tamar’s essay. Indeed, if we take Tamar’s call for the study of “situated improvisational practice” seriously we cannot not shift our analytic attention from what Leeds-Hurwitz et al (1995) call programs (well-established, widely recognized, historically transmitted ideals of meaningful communicative practice endowed with moral force) to performance (the situated, and often partial and unpredictable, enactments of programs). Following the lead of these scholars we will find our attention shift from competence to performance, from structure to agency, from (meaning) systems to (speech) events, and from stability to transformation.

In my view, both essays bring into relief the emergent quality of culture. This quality is also present in Lydia’s description of the improvisational character of conversations among three members of small farming communities, and in Saskia’s traveling codes that take root in various speech communities, although sometimes their capacity to take root is questionable (Witteborn, 2010). Emergence implies the gradual appearance of coherence or meaning. What Tamar and Wendy are teaching me is that a focus on process and emergence necessitates “listening to” (to borrow a phrase from Gerry) not only coherence but incoherence as well.

The study of incoherence does not mean seeking out social moments marked by the lack of shared understanding; rather it prompts us to appreciate that both coherence and incoherence can be detected at various levels of analysis. Take Deborah Cameron’s (2004) description of what she calls communication culture, a system of beliefs about the importance of communication, its relation to social problems, and the possibility of distinguishing right from wrong ways of communicating. The beliefs (or premises) she is able to distill from British communication training manuals and skills assessments are perfectly coherent, however, their translation into standards and actual evaluations of performance are vague, almost meaningless. I have seen something similar in my study of Hungarian citizens’ assessments of political communication: a co-existence of coherent premises, an only partially coherent ideal of “communication,” partially coherent standards derived from the ideal, and coherent assessments.

The study of improvisation and process means capturing culture at various stages of emergence, which entails describing and analyzing coherence, or the lack thereof, at various levels of analysis (interaction, symbols, standards, ideals, premises). Culture does not emerge as a solid block, rather its emergence begins with certain “harbingers” – a shift in everyday conversational patterns here, the growing popularity of a set of beliefs there – signaling the possibility of a coming shift in local ways of speaking and attendant ways of experiencing the world.

References

Cameron, D. (2004). Communication culture: Issues for health and social care. In S. Barett, C. Komaromy, M. Robb, & A. Rogers (Eds.), Communication, relationships and care: A reader (pp. 63-73). London: Routledge.

Leeds-Hurwitz, W., Sigman, S. J., & Sullivan, S. J. (1995). Social communication theory: Communication structures and performed invocations, a revision of Scheflen’s notion of programs. In S. J. Sigman (Ed.), The consequentiality of communication (pp. 163-204). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Witteborn, S. (2010). The role of transnational NGOs in promoting global citizenship and globalizing communication practices. Language and Intercultural Communication, 10(4), 358-372. doi:10.1080/14708477.2010.497556

--
David Boromisza-Habashi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication
College of Media, Communication and Information, University of Colorado Boulder
http://colorado.academia.edu/DavidBoromiszaHabashi

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