Dialogues with Ethnography
ENCOUNTERS
Series Editors: Jan Blommaert, Tilburg University , The Netherlands , Ben Rampton, Kings College London , UK , Anna De Fina, Georgetown University , USA , Sirpa Leppnen, University of Jyvskyl , Finland and James Collins, University at Albany/SUNY, USA
The Encounters series sets out to explore diversity in language from a theoretical and an applied perspective. So the focus is both on the linguistic encounters, inequalities and struggles that characterise post-modern societies and on the development, within sociocultural linguistics, of theoretical instruments to explain them. The series welcomes work dealing with such topics as heterogeneity, mixing, creolization, bricolage, cross-over phenomena, polylingual and polycultural practices. Another high-priority area of study is the investigation of processes through which linguistic resources are negotiated, appropriated and controlled, and the mechanisms leading to the creation and maintenance of sociocultural differences. The series welcomes ethnographically oriented work in which contexts of communication are investigated rather than assumed, as well as research that shows a clear commitment to close analysis of local meaning making processes and the semiotic organisation of texts.
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ENCOUNTERS: 10
Dialogues with Ethnography
Notes on Classics, and How I Read Them
Jan Blommaert
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS
Bristol Blue Ridge Summit
For Aaron Cicourel and Johannes Fabian
DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/BLOMMA9504
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Names: Blommaert, Jan, author. | Hymes, Dell H., honouree.
Title: Dialogues with Ethnography: Notes on Classics, and How I Read Them / Jan Blommaert.
Description: Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters, [2018] |
Series: Encounters: 10 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017038807| ISBN 9781783099498 (softcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783099504 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783099511 (pdf) | ISBN 9781783099528 (epub) | ISBN 9781783099535 (kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: EthnographySocial aspects. | Language and culture. | Sociolinguistics.
Classification: LCC P40 .B46 2018 | DDC 306.44dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038807
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-950-4 (hbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-949-8 (pbk)
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Copyright 2018 Jan Blommaert.
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Contents
With one or two exceptions, the material collected in this volume has been published in the period between 1997 and the present. Most versions presented here, however, are earlier drafts or abridged and revised versions of the final published texts:
was published as Obituary: Dell Hymes (19272009). Journal of Sociolinguistics 14 (5): 682686, 2010. I am grateful to Wiley for permission to use this publication.
was published as Ethnography and democracy: Hymes political theory of language. Text and Talk 29 (3): 257276, 2009. I am grateful to de Gruyter for permission to use this publication.
was published as Ethnopoetics as functional reconstruction: Dell Hymes narrative view of the world. Review article. Functions of Language 13 (2): 229249, 2006. I am grateful to John Benjamins for permission to use this publication.
was published as Grassroots historiography and the problem of voice: Tshibumbas Histoire du Zaire. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14 (1): 623, 2004. I am grateful to Wiley for permission to use this publication.
of my Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity . Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2013.
was published as Pierre Bourdieu: Perspectives on language in society. In Jan-Ola stman & Jef Verschueren (eds) Handbook of Pragmatics , 2015 (pp. 116). I am grateful to John Benjamins for permission to use this publication.
in my Workshopping: Professional Vision, Practices and Critique in Discourse Analysis . Ghent: Academia Press, 2004. I am grateful to Academia Press for permission to use this publication.
was published as Chronotopes, scales and complexity in the study of language in society. Annual Review of Anthropology 44: 105116, 2015. I am grateful to Annual Reviews Inc. for permission to use this publication.
was published as Commentary: On scope and depth in linguistic ethnography. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (5): 682688, 2007. I am grateful to Wiley for permission to use this publication.
were originally co-authored by colleagues April Huang and Fons van de Vijver, respectively; I gratefully acknowledge their input and contribution here. The individual texts will offer further acknowledgments of the support and contributions of the numerous colleagues and friends with whom I have shared and debated many of these thoughts over the years.
However, I must emphatically thank a number of people for pushing me toward completion of this particular book, and for taking me seriously whenever I discussed ethnographic theory with them: Rob Moore, Michael Silverstein, Asif Agha, Gunther Kress, Karel Arnaut, David Parkin, Jim Collins, Jeff Bezemer, Charles Briggs and Aaron Cicourel. Ben Rampton deserves my deep gratitude in a great variety of roles: as my preferred sparring partner for debates on ethnography, as a member of the superb InCoLaS team where so many fundamental discussions were held over the past number of years, as a good and caring friend, and as the one who got the idea for this book. Karin Berkhout, finally, made this bunch of papers and scribbles into a manuscript, and I have come to increasingly appreciate such assistance over the years. Karin: bedankt!
Tilburg and Antwerp
March 2017
Academics read, and reading defines a very large part of their professional habitus and ethos it is through reading that we establish intertextual intellectual lineages connecting our own empirical work with that of previous generations of scholars or contemporary peers, all of this in search of a potential for adequate generalization or, as some prefer, theoretical validity for our own findings. We read, thus, instrumentally, but to actually put our finger on this instrumental value is far from easy we read in search of a broad and not too precise thing called inspiration, often also in search of a less focused form of intellectual fellowship, and quite often also just for pleasure, because reading is fun. Subjective filters occur at every moment of reading: every reading of someone elses text reflects our own concerns, priorities, curiosities or frustrations. This is a truism, but it is this truism that encourages me to publish my own readings of texts and oeuvres written by others.
