Overview+of+Questions

__A quick and dirty overview of the reading material (EI):__


 * __The Ethnographic Interview__**

__Step 4: Descriptive ?’s:__

Ethnographic interviewing – 2 processes: Developing rapport and Eliciting information

Rapport process: Apprehension, Exploration, Cooperation, Participation

Usually one will also be doing participant observation at the same time.

Apprehension: Most impt, get the person talking Descriptive ?’s especially helpful to get things started

Exploration Make repeated explanations re: process Restate what the informant says (Do not reinterpret) Don’t ask for meaning; ask for use

Cooperation Both interviewer and interviewee share in the def’n of the interview Mutual trust

Participation Doesn’t always occur Informant takes on role of teacher and analyzes own culture from that frame of reference

In ethnographic interviewing, both questions and answers must be discovered from the informant. There are three main ways to uncover these questions: Record the ?’s people ask in everyday life Inquire directly about the ?’s used by participants in a cultural scene Use descriptive ?’s to get them to talk about a particular cultural scene

Descriptive ?’s Expanding the question tends to expand the length of the response

Grand Tour ?’s Uses space, time, events, people, activities, or objects to construct a tour Mini-tour ?’s Same as above but deal with smaller units of experience Example ?’s Even more specific Experience ?’s Asks for experience in a particular setting Native-language ?’s Learning the language of the culture

Direct-language Hypothetical interaction Typical sentence

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__Step 7: Structural ?’s__

Need to be adapted to individuals Used skillfully along with other ?’s Repeated over and over

Concurrent principle Use concurrently with descriptive ?’s Explanation principle Often these require an explanation Good for better understanding native language, but remind informant that you want to understand better – try to include their terms Repetition principle Repeat the question in various ways to explore from several directions Context principle Helps provide a context for how you understand something – good for checking out understanding and for helping informant feel comfortable Cultural framework principle Try to re-phrase ?’s in cultural terms

Verification ?’s Confirm or dis-confirm a hypothesis about a folk domain Cover term ?’s These are most common Included term ?’s Best when you have several terms that you want to be sure tie together Substitution frame ?’s Can another term be used in the same way? Card sorting structural ?’s __Step 9: Contrast ?’s:__

Basic capacity of humans to discover meaning

Informant has more tacit knowledge about the culture Interviewer often has more explicit knowledge about the culture

Relational principle Meaning of a symbol can be discovered by finding out how it is related to all other symbols.

Use principle Meaning of a symbol can be discovered by asking how it is used rather than what it means

Similarity principle Meaning of a symbol can be discovered by finding out how it is similar to other symbols

Contrast principle Meaning of a symbol can be discovered by finding out how it is different from other symbols

Restricted and unrestricted

7 types of contrast ?’s: Use cards to help sort through info Apply same principles as for structural ?’s

Contrast verification ?’s Confirm of disconfirm differences Directed contrast ?’s Use one term to inquire whether another term applies Be sure you are asking about contrast within the same contrast set Dyadic contrast ?’s Asked without suggesting any differences to the informant Triadic contrast Which two are alike, and which one different? Be careful not to give into //test ? response// Contrast set sorting ?’s Use cards 20 ?’s game Yes/no answers to zero in Rating ?’s Seeks to find out values placed on sets of data