Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication

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.

“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)

• Preface for Instructors ixEditors’ Acknowledgments xiIntroduction 1Jane E. Goodman, Jennifer Meta Robinson, and Leila MonaghanPart I: Ethnographer’s Toolkit 71 Body Ritual among the Nacirema 9Horace Miner2 Culture Blends 12Michael Agar3 Culture: Can You Take It Anywhere? 24Michael Agar4 Five Principles 27Richard Bauman5 Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture 29Clifford Geertz6 Winking as Social Business 32Jane E. Goodman7 Speaking of Ethnography 34Leila Monaghan8 The Emergent Quality of Performance 38Richard Bauman9 Poetics, Play, Process, and Power: The Performative Turn in Anthropology 41Dwight ConquergoodPart II: Applying the Ethnographer’s Toolkit 4510 Greetings in the Desert 47Ibrahim Ag Youssouf, Allen D. Grimshaw, and Charles S. Bird11 Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers 60Richard Bauman12 “To Give Up on Words”: Silence in Western Apache Culture 73Keith Basso13 Saying Hello in a Digital World: Emergent Performance and Social Competence 84Jennifer Meta Robinson14 Writing Cousin Joe: Choice and Control Over Orthographic Representation in a Blues Singer’s Autobiography 93Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer15 And Then She Texted Me: Entextualization and the End of Relationships 110Ilana Gershon16 The License: Poetics, Power, and the Uncanny 120Susan LepselterPart III: Ethnography of Talk: From Language Form to Social Solidarity 13317 The Triangle of Linguistic Structure 135Robin Tolmach Lakoff18 The Grammar of Politics and the Politics of Grammar: From Bangladesh to the United States 141James Wilce19 Conversations: The Link between Words and the World 152Leila Monaghan20 Conversational Signals and Devices 157Deborah Tannen21 A Cultural Approach to Male–Female Miscommunication 168Daniel N. Maltz and Ruth A. Borker22 “Put Down that Paper and Talk to Me!”: Rapport-talk and Report-talk 186Deborah Tannen23 Talking Text and Talking Back: “My BFF Jill” from Boob Tube to YouTube 199Graham M. Jones and Bambi B. Schieffelin24 On the Uses of Obscenity in Live Stand-Up Comedy 220Susan Seizer25 Swearing as a Function of Gender in the Language of Midwestern American College Students 233Thomas E. MurrayPart IV: Communication and Social Groups: The Work of Belonging 24326 Ethnography of Communication 245Donal Carbaugh27 Encounters 249Erving Goffman28 Symbols of Category Membership 255Penelope Eckert29 Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture 274Mary Bucholtz30 Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls 298Rachel Simmons31 Sporting Formulae in New Zealand English: Two Models of Male Solidarity 315Koenraad Kuiper32 Inner-City Teens and Face-Work: Avoiding Violence and Maintaining Honor 324Robert Garot33 From Websites to Wal-Mart: Youth, Identity Work, and the Queering of Boundary Publics in Small Town, USA 347Mary L. Gray34 “If I’m Lyin, I’m Flyin”: The Game of Insult in Black Language 356Geneva SmithermanPart V: Interpersonal Communication in Institutional Settings: Structure, Agency, and the Exercise of Power 36535 Power and the Language of Men 367Scott Fabius Kiesling36 Linguistic Ideology and Praxis in US Law School Classrooms 385Elizabeth Mertz37 Participant Structures and Communicative Competence: Warm Springs Children in Community and Classroom 395Susan U. Philips38 Footing 412Erving Goffman39 “An Association for the 21st Century”: Performance and Social Change among Berbers in Paris 416Jane E. Goodman40 Signing 429Leila Monaghan41 Variation in Sign Languages 433Barbara LeMaster and Leila Monaghan42 The Founding of Two Deaf Churches: The Interplay of Deaf and Christian Identities 438Leila MonaghanAppendix I: Read This First: How to Read and Present on Complex Texts 455Appendix II: Ethnography Assignments 462Source Acknowledgments 468Index 473