Alexandra Jaffe
Department of Linguistics, California State University.
Standards of Evidence, Ethnographic Methods and Analysis
Abstract/Summary
Drawing on the author's own research on Corsican bilingual schools, this paper explores the relationship between ethnographic research practices and sound standards of evidence for analytical claims. The presentation will consider time, breadth, intensity, and systematicity. I hope to illustrate how sustained and systematic observations over time make it  possible for the ethnographer to assess behaviors/events at a specific moment in light of histories of interaction, particulars of relationships between people, histories of individual practice, explicitly expressed philosophies or ideals—not to mention histories that go beyond the ethnographic moment (for example, personal and professional trajectories and patterns of socialization or apprenticeship; intergroup relations etc.). Time depth also allows the ethnographer to make empirically grounded assessments of whether a particular utterance or event or interaction is widespread/habitual/representative vs. relatively unusual—either for an individual, or for a collectivity. Both the unusual and the habitual can be telling examples, but they are telling in different ways, and it is crucial to be able to make appropriate distinctions. The second them, breadth of ethnographic research, clearly relates to an ideal that can only ever be partially realized, particularly in complex societies: that the ethnographer's goal should be to try to come to a grasp of the wholeness of the lives of the people being studied. That means attempting to observe those people in multiple contexts, or to observe multiple aspects of a particular setting (for example, an institutional one). The impossibility of doing this fully is one of the constant frustrations of the ethnographic project, but it is one that should be an enduring reminder of the limits of any individual ethnographer's  understanding. Finally, I want to emphasize that though there are many emergent and contingent dimensions of ethnographic research, ethnographic observations, interviews and other data collection can be held to standards of rigorous, systematic research design.