A joint workshop run by 

The Interculture Project

The LARA Project

‘Analysing cross-cultural encounter and developing intercultural competence’

London, 26th February 1999 

‘Analysing cross-cultural encounter
and developing intercultural competence’

Workshop

 Friday 26th February 1999

at

The Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges, London

Present

Celia Roberts, Shirley Jordan, Eva Eppler, Lara Lengel, Geneviève Zarate, Sylvie Toll, Simon Hall, Anne Banks, Derek Lee, Tim Lewis, Ursula Stickler, Irène Hill, Jacqueline Smith, Ricarda Zoellner, Sylvette Cormeraie, Linda Parker, Jim Coleman, Paul Davey, Philippa Wright, Jessica Abrahams (notes), Beth Callen, Robert Crawshaw (chair), Mike Kelly (part of meeting only), Anthony Howick (part of meeting only)

Apologies

Alice Tomić

Welcome

Robert Crawshaw welcomed the participants and expressed the hope that the day would result in an exchange of points of view and states of knowledge which arise out of the work which is being undertaken by the two projects being represented at the workshop.  

The morning session would look at the Interculture Project, one of three projects dealing with residence abroad, funded by Hefce/FDTL. The project was essentially involved in exploring and investigating students' accounts of experiences abroad.

The afternoon session would look at the ethnography course which had run at Thames Valley University and of which a modified version was being piloted at Southampton University by Celia Roberts and Shirley Jordan.

It was hoped that the two sessions would act as a stimulus for discussion which bring a level of theoretical investigation and an example of good practice together.

The Interculture Project

RHC introduced the five members of the Interculture Project consortium.

The project objectives were:

•	To compile, organise and investigate students' descriptions of intercultural encounter.

•	To review and identify examples of good practice in the development of intercultural competence, particularly amongst UK higher education students who are undertaking PRA (periods of residence abroad).

•	To develop, describe and disseminate good practice in the form of deliverables and to relate these to the outcomes of project-based investigations.

The project team had been

•	gathering data from students, including diaries, questionnaires, interviews and focus groups, involving between 200 and 300 students in the first 2 years of the project.

•	transcribing and storing the data on computer.

•	developing a taxonomy and coding the data using QSR NUDIST as a means of analysing the data and configuring it in different ways.

•	establishing a number of sub-projects in 3 main areas:

•	General review of current practice in the area of intercultural development (University of Central Lancashire & St Martin's College)
•	Review and analysis of the uses of the diary as an aid to the development of intercultural competence, including language development (Sheffield University)

•	A study of intercultural development amongst post-graduate students following the PGCE- Maitrîse course. (Homerton College).

For the purposes of the project, intercultural encounter was experienced and recounted by individuals in specific contexts.  There was no a priori position of what a given cultural system consisted of.

The project data allowed the inference of patterns or configurations based on limited sets of cultural features which have been identified in the students' accounts, limited by the profile of the participants, their own perceptions of their experiences and by the context of the situation in which the data has been gathered.

The project is not claiming to posit a model of intercultural competence, against which students' performance could be evaluated.  This issue may be considered by the sub-project which is being undertaken by the University of Central Lancashire and St Martin's College.

Students had been asked to highlight crises or incidents which they felt were "significant".  It might be possible to define competence empirically in terms of future students' ability to cope with the range of incidents identified by their predecessors.  The data could help define a set of intercultural contexts for which students could be better prepared.  The nature of the data suggested an approach to intercultural development which was integrative and experiential rather than instrumental and information based.

The highly personal nature of the responses could suggest that an approach which was centred on the person rather than on the target contexts might be the most appropriate way of developing intercultural competence.  Such an approach would seek to change the states of being or the assumptions which underpin learners' personal backgrounds and identities, to be questioned or redefined before the student undertook the experience itself.

In conclusion, a properly integrated programme of intercultural development should entail a combination of different elements - informational, instrumental, and experiential.  This would need to be predicated on a more widely accepted view of what intercultural competence was and of its proper position within the HE Modern Languages curriculum.  

Data Analysis:  Taxonomy Design and Implementation  (Eva Eppler)

Eva recapped briefly the type of data which was being collected by the project and the sequence of data collection, and indicated how many examples of each type of data had been collected so far.  (Appendix 1)

The material was then transcribed and tagged (coded) using QSR NUDIST.
All the data gathered are imported into the document system.  Each document contains general information about the data gathering process in a header.  For the project's purposes the documents were demarcated into text units at speaker turns in interviews and focus groups.  

The index system was created according to the structure of the taxonomy which had been designed by the project team.  

It was possible to investigate and browse the documents, search texts, and also investigate and browse the index system (taxonomy), therefore as data coding and analysis took place, new information could be fed back into the taxonomy.

Originally the taxonomy had been developed as a series of unstructured free nodes but it had become clear that this was not efficient for making data accessible for research, dissemination and preparation purposes.  
 
The principle of cognitive economy had then been applied:  "The purpose of designing a category system is to provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort." (Rosch 1987:28)

On the vertical dimension the taxonomy was a level of inclusiveness of categories.  Some categories were more central, others more marginal (based on Rosch).  On the horizontal dimension there was segmentation of categories on the level of inclusiveness.

The meeting was then invited to try out the coding process on a single text unit by allocating codes from the taxonomy.  (Appendix 2)

This led to a discussion of the level of interpretation that was taking place in the tagging process and the difficulties that had been encountered both in designing the taxonomy and in applying it during tagging.

To address the problem of interpretation and consistency of coding,  the project had several different people working as taggers of the data.  Each tagger could develop the taxonomy as required and it was then possible to merge tree structures (the taxonomies) and thus to incorporate the developmental work of different taggers.

It was also essential to have the coding checked independently for consistency.  The project was currently in need of suitable "coding checkers".  

Tim Lewis suggested that the students themselves could check that they agreed with the coding of data - but this was not very practicable as Cohort 1 students were no longer at the university.  For those who were currently in their final year it would be difficult to get them to commit themselves to doing this time-consuming task.

Sylvette Cormeraie commented that the structure of the category "states of mind" could usefully integrate work currently being undertaken in the discipline of social psychology.

Tim Lewis commented that the process as described was a classic case of building up a "grounded theory" of intercultural competence by gathering data and progressively amending the categories.

He questioned the relationship between introspective and retrospective data.

Pip Wright (CiLT) welcomed the depth of work that had been undertaken and hoped it would feed back into other mechanisms such as the work being undertaken on classification systems in multilingual thesauri for language teaching purposes.

The database could also be searched at specific nodes, which could be helpful for preparation purposes, and it was possible to make the searches more specific by placing various restrictions on the search.  This would probably be more useful for researchers and staff than for students.

Cross-referencing had been identified as an important issue for data analysis and this could easily be done using NUDIST, which had 27 different search mechanisms which could be applied to data.  It was envisaged that student preparation for the year abroad could be supported by simple text searches on the data.  It was also possible to link memos to the data, which could point to appropriate preparation material.

With reference to the need which had been expressed to involve more people in the tagging and cross-checking processes, it was asked whether the resources existed to support this and what the qualifications of such people would be to get involved in the work of the project.

RHC replied that the resources existed and that one of the purposes of the day had been to share the actual compilation and analysis of the material more widely and therefore if individuals wished to become involved it would be welcomed.

The essential qualifications would be to have had reasonable experience of dealing with students in intercultural situations, and possibly to have been through that experience themselves.

RHC pointed out that the quality of the material and the grounding of the theoretical base were both cumulative so that there was potential for project continuation.

Diaries (Beth Callen)

As the project was still at an early stage in data coding and analysis,  Beth would present quotes and examples of issues that seemed to be recurrent as tagging proceeded.  It was hoped through discussion to link this to preparation.

Most of the quotes presented were from diaries which were not learner diaries, but open diaries, which the students had written voluntarily.  Some quotes had been taken from interviews and focus groups but most of the data was written as near the time of the experience as possible, using these instruments.

It was however not possible to be sure how soon after the event an entry had been written.  EME commented that in some psychological research which had been carried out, it had been found that the units that were listed did not change in size or type with the recency or remoteness in time of the event.

This raised issues about the relationship between the experience and the narrative which were complex, and which needed to be addressed or accounted for in the analysis of the material, e.g. context in which it was written, audience, etc.

It was suggested that one way of dealing with the issue of time was to try to get the students to write the diaries electronically, which would provide a way of monitoring whether entries were being written with the required promptness and regularity.  However this depended on students having access to email facilities, which was not always the case.

Sheffield was currently trialing a system of email access to students but students' time of writing was not being monitored although a record did exist of this information.

At Lancaster the writing of diaries was not part of an assessment so that there was less concern with whether entries were written as required, nevertheless all other issues about representation remained open.  The key thing was that the diaries were representation, not the event itself.

One particular area which seemed to be recurrent had to do with expectations which students had or were given and which were not fulfilled.  This seemed to be a central part of the experience.  In the taxonomy this was categorised under "states of mind" but this was considered a compromise. 

Instead of a content-driven analysis of large text units it was possible to look in more detail at the language with which these expectations were talked about, which could give insights into students' attitudes.   (Appendix 3.1)

Intercultural experience and reactions thereto, was often related to unfulfilled expectations ("disconfirmed expectancies" - Brislin et al)  (Appendix 3.2) It was not the actual difficulty which was reacted to, but the contrast between the expectation and the reality.  This could cause major negative emotional reactions, taking the form of frustration or negative behaviour towards host culture members.

A more detailed, longitudinal study had been done by Judith Martin at the University of Arizona and colleagues, in which, using a questionnaire, US students' expectations were compared with post-stay evaluation of the experience, to investigate whether a link existed between evaluation and expectations.  Because their expectations had been violated, often the reaction they had was exaggerated in a negative sense.  (Appendix 3.3)

Similar examples arose in the project's data with students who had expectations that the experience would be made easier by their own prior experience of living abroad in other countries.  (Appendix 3.4)

From impressions of the data coded so far, there appeared to be a link between violations of expectations and a negative reaction in the representation of what happened to the individuals. From a linguistic point of view it was interesting to look at the use of negatives and the choice of verbs.  (Appendices 3.5, 3.6, 3.7)

More complex issues arose in connection with students' expectations about their own roles in the foreign culture, with the difficulty in establishing contacts and making friends.  Many negative reactions were described which were linked to the absence of friends or people to confide in.  (Appendix 8)

In a paper on social support training, Fontaine said that it was necessary to give people realistic expectations of how their social networks would change when they were abroad.  Preparation work could address this by getting them to identify beforehand how their social networks and support systems operated in their own country, and to identify the potential loss of support, and to consider strategies they could use to replace the missing bits.

Comments about language often expressed unfulfilled expectations that the members of the host culture would make special allowances for the non-native speaker e.g. by speaking more slowly and carefully.  This raised the issue of taking responsibility for what happened, and who should be making the effort in intercultural communication.  If the expectation of linguistic allowances was unfulfilled, that could lead to frustration with the target culture members.

Preparation issues that had arisen out of the data so far included helping students to develop realistic expectations, whether it was possible to avoid transmitting fixed notions of culture, and whether there was a danger of creating overly negative expectations. 

General discussion of the Interculture Project presentations

•	Might recording difficulties in a diary exacerbate the negative feelings?  It was noted that there were also arguments for the process being cathartic.

•	An outcome of the process could be to "legitimise" the individual's story.  One particular individual's data was very interesting because it presented the same content or "story" in very different ways in a diary, a one-to-one interview and a focus group.

•	Was it possible to structure the diaries in a more reflexive way, e.g. in addition to the narrative of the event, the diarist could be required at a certain point to record  how he/she felt at the time, whether the feelings had changed looking back, and whether the diarist thought he or she would have dealt differently with the situation looking back?

•	It was important to maintain the critical distance in the diary writing, if the diary were too free-form it would allow negative feelings to reinforce themselves in a "free-floating spiral".  The critical distance would allow for a dialogue.

•	Who is the ultimate owner of the diary material, the writer or the university?  The physical diaries were returned to the students but a photocopy and an electronic copy were kept.  

•	Was it possible for the students to review their own diaries?  If possible diary material was used as a basis for discussion in interviews and focus groups.

•	Did the students receive any feedback?  This could be possible if the students sent their diaries by email but this had not happened to date.  The students from Lancaster were not given any expectations of feedback. It had been made clear that the diaries were being produced for the project's research.  It was not possible within the scope of the project for this to become a dialogue with the researcher becoming a counsellor.

•	At Sheffield the diary was an optional assessment module, in which case feedback would be received but the immediacy would vary.  It was not envisaged that this would include personal advice to deal with problems arising.  Sheffield diaries were structured more like learning instruments, recording week by week language encounters - difficulties or successes.  Similarly on a cultural level, successes and difficulties would be recorded.  There was also a retrospective part to the diaries.

•	There was a tension between preparing students by giving them strategies to cope with specific contexts and giving students a much more person-centred generic cultural preparation, rooted in personal psychologies and their interactions with any kind of group.  The main tension was between giving students practical information and developing them as open-minded individuals.  

•	If the personal or individual experience of students were emphasized, at the same time, a constructivist approach to their own culture might help them see the filter through which they were going to handle the encounters.  

•	How did one integrate that kind of element of intercultural development into an HE curriculum?  Perhaps it should be a preparation to change, to be open to diversity and difference rather than providing a fixed idea of what the target culture would be like.  

•	National cultural dimensions did however have an impact, so it would be desirable to integrate into the curriculum some of the tendencies that these national cultures could exhibit.  It was the manner in which these things were introduced that was important.

•	The danger of stereotyping was recognised.  The ideal of managing expectations was to direct them into a neutral zone where the expectations were neither strongly positive nor negative but gave the students expectations of differing and new experiences.

•	Students might need very different preparations depending on which countries they were going on, and which parts of the countries.  The data collected so far might give an indication of the level and main aspects of preparation needed by students according to the target area.

•	Many students seemed to go abroad without having an identity in terms of their own role, which made it difficult for them to have a notion of their identity in relation to the people around them.  

•	In order for the exercise of writing a diary to be useful it was necessary for the students to have had some intellectual and conceptual training, e.g. in being reflexive.

•	It would be useful to note whether the students were language specialists.  At Sheffield they were engineers and it was not possible to give them training as cultural diary writers.

•	The possibilities of personal preparation were limited - example cited of two sisters going on almost identical placements, in two consecutive years.  One had a very successful and enjoyable placement, the other was very unhappy and did not complete the year abroad.

•	The possibility of mentoring, tutor to student or peer to peer, could be helpful.

•	Empirical / theoretical purpose - it was necessary to take into account the national differences of tradition in connection with universities and their organisation, and the difference in importance that would be attached to theoretical vs. practical information.

•	It was proposed that it could reduce the enjoyment of discovery by the students if they knew exactly what to expect.

•	The experience was valuable as long as it was not left in its frozen state which reinforced fear and xenophobia, as long as there was a format for processing the "shock" - what needed identifying was when and how so that the process led to learning.  Feedback from this year's intercultural seminars at Sussex suggested that students felt better able to cope because they had gone with the notion that things might be difficult, or different from what they expected.

•	It was suggested that the "who, what, why" (ethnographic) approach could be built into a structured diary.

•	Contrast between focussing on contextual realities vs. individual psychologies would arise again in the afternoon's presentation.

BREAK FOR LUNCH

Introduction to the Ethnographic Course at Southampton

Celia Roberts gave a brief historical background to the development of the current sub-theme of the LARA project on which she and Shirley Jordan were working.

Their main aim was to find a way of conducting cultural studies which would enable students to have an experience and an understanding of what it meant to be ……[someone else].  It was first necessary to help students unlearn that there is a natural link between language, nation and culture.  

This involved critiquing generalisations, which were common but inaccurate and sometimes dangerous ideological formations, so there was a critical and political element to the work.

Critiquing generalisations was done by looking at what was small, local and particular, and then finding the larger patterns or structures contained in the small.

Brian Street, consultant on the project, said that culture was about doing, about practice;  not about objects, facts or abstractions.

The aim was to teach students "how……" rather than "that……"

This included not just how to observe and describe , but also how to find out the meanings, symbolic significance, beliefs and values which made sense of the routines, rituals, and norms of behaviour which made up the "lived experience" of groups in the host community.

The year abroad was like an anthropological field trip which gave students a unique opportunity to act as "toddler ethnographers".  This could give the students an identity, a role, a purpose and a reason for establishing social networks.  This gave students a responsibility to go out and find informants and communicate with them in such a way that those informants would be useful for them.  

The moment of finding informants was a critical intercultural moment, making contact with people for the first time, for a particular purpose, and asking them to present themselves as cultural beings - a way of synthesising intercultural moments which might not otherwise have taken place.

The reflexive element of observation, analysis and then relating experiences to one's own persona, was one of the most important cultural experiences one could have.  Students were therefore encouraged to write a kind of anthropological diary as well as doing their ethnographic project.

The aim of the course was to develop an anthropological sensibility, a way of looking at the world differently.  The experience of becoming a "toddler ethnographer " was the way in which one's personal anthropology interacted with the personal anthropologies of others.

The interactions took place between individuals but each individual was part of a group and part of a set of social and cultural constraints, bringing that personal anthropology into contact with others.  Understanding what that contact was and making sense of it could develop anthropological sensibility.

The outcome hoped for would be that students stop taking things for granted, stop assuming that they were the norm, the centre of the universe and realise that they were themselves socially and culturally constructed beings.

This required initiative (going out into the field); skills in observation, eliciting and recording; a range of analytic skills e.g. comparison; an ethnographic imagination (ability to see things but also step back and look for the patterns in things); and a reflexive element (ability to see onesself as part of the world one was studying and being aware of the difference it made that one was there doing the studying).

All this was combined with emotional and psychological characteristics needed to do this effectively, e.g. managing risk, uncertainty, empathy, etc.

Semester module currently offered at Thames Valley and Southampton universities

This was provided in the 2nd year, involving work around concepts from social anthropology and sociolinguistics, and ethnographic methods.  In the 3rd year students were abroad, collecting and analysing data, worked with their supervisors on how they would write about it.  In the 4th year they would write up the project, and if the curriculum allowed there might be some seminar/ discussion support of the experiences they had had.

A long period was needed to introduce the students to the ethnographic methods - it was not possible to accomplish this in a short seminar as part of a year abroad preparatory course.  The students needed to feel that this was an intellectual experience with many skills tied into it, so that they could go into the "field" knowing how to go about setting up their project and knowing that they would learn from the experience.  

It would not be possible to describe all the units so a representative sample would be discussed.  (Appendix 4.1)

The course started with introductions to what ethnography might mean, and why it was useful for students to become ethnographers, introducing the idea that reality was socially constructed, not just a set of facts. 

In Unit 3 students began to get practice in doing some ethnographic tasks involving observation and analysis.  With every unit there was a task, e.g. going out and collecting data. The module led up to a "home ethnography", a mini-ethnographic project on the students'  own socially constructed worlds.  This was a "dress rehearsal" for the PRA., and also addressed the assumption that one could not understand other cultural practices if one had not attempted to understand one's own, and it helped with the comparative basis on which ethnography is founded.  The final project was much harder because it was in the target language

Other units address notions of how students could look at family, gender relations, local level politics, language and social identity, etc.

Modern language students (not engineering students!) might be undertaking literary and cultural studies which brought them into contact with this theory but it was often left as theory - the aim of the course was to ground some of the theoretical concepts in some real interactional data that could be collated and analysed.

Modules 8 - 12 were all method modules.  By this time several tasks would have been done and it would begin to become apparent that many skills were needed for this work, e.g. ethnographic interviewing.

At the end of the course there was a unit on writing, both how to cope with writing an ethnographic text and also thinking about the process of writing, the notion that the text was itself a construction, a discourse or representation, and the notion of being "between" as a cultural learner, which was important when writing the ethnographic study, because the writer had to move between the raw data, the analysis of it and writer's own analytic categories which themselves were formed by personal cultural practices and also being reflexive about the whole process of doing the project.

A current problem was that much of what was learned on the course was done through American and English texts, which constituted by far the greatest amount of ethnographic material.  Many of the concepts learned by the students were in English but then had to be dealt with when writing the project in the target language.  Not a great deal of suitable material existed in the target languages.

Students felt very uncertain and insecure in the early part of the course, writing weekly diaries to get into the habit of diary writing.  Often they said that they did not know what was going on or why they were doing this.  The course tutors turned this to advantage by explaining that this was a preview of what they might experience on the PRA.  By the time the students had completed the 2.5 years (half a year on the course in 2nd year, PRA in 3rd year, writing up the project in 4th year) it was hoped that they would have achieved some of the aims of the course as set out in the handout   (Appendix 4.2).

Example 1 - "Belief and Action" - Shirley Jordan  (Appendix 4.3)

This unit was a more in-depth approach to some of the anthropological material,  on the meanings people construct and their symbolic classification systems.  Various approaches were used, e.g exploring attitudes to the body, clothes and the meaning that clothes might signal.  

It also looked at categorisation and rituals applied to eating habits, as a way into starting to explore symbolic meanings.

•	What people eat

•	Behaviour around food

•	Discourses around food

•	Organisation of mealtime rituals

Levi-Strauss:  "Animals are not only good to eat, they are also good to think with"

Food and eating provided very good examples of habits that were firmly entrenched and had such normative value that they were rarely questioned by insiders.   One aim was to get students to interrogate their own eating habits and practices.

When abroad, food was a very immediate and palpable marker of difference.  Food established boundaries between inclusion and exclusion.  Eating communities and food were an important expression of cultural identity.  This was highlighted if one was expected to ingest something that contravened one's norms - what is considered dirty or polluted depended as much on symbolic significance as on anything functional.  Mary Douglas defined dirt or pollution as "matter out of place" - something that contravened our classification system.

The aim was to take students beyond the immediate basic reaction to food as a vehicle for expressing otherness and to start analysing the meanings associated with eating. 

The assignment asked students to reflect on their own eating habits and talk to family and friends about the kind of things they would and would not eat and what their reasons were, giving a few concepts at the bottom of sheet to help them go beyond the descriptive.  There was an associated reading:  "Taking the Biscuit" by Mary Douglas. )

In the sessions the students prepared their own classification system, then pooled their data and try to reach some conclusions about why people would not eat certain things.  A lot of the discourse tended to be around meat and what parts of animals were not acceptable.  Another reading asked the question why steak should be more expensive than liver or tongue, when proportionately there was less liver and tongue in an animal.

Students were also asked to account for their own norms in terms of  when they ate, what they ate, and how they organised the ritual of the mealtime.  

One student used these ideas in a project looking at how home and foreign students used the kitchen in their student hostel, and these issues were written about not in terms of stereotyped differences but as part of a much wider set of concepts to do with pollution and otherness and bringing in related discourses of family, familial relations, connections with the ideas of nation and foreigner, etc.

Methods - Celia Roberts

The course did not only teach methods - the students needed to have some ways of thinking, as well as some very specific skills in data collection 

By the time they got to the unit on participant observation they would already have done quite a few tasks in which they had to observe and take notes in the field, including a small task observing themselves; a task in a pub or equivalent; and collecting data, possibly tape recorded, of a female-male interaction.  At this stage they were asked to take stock of the different kinds of observations they had done, and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of participant observation.  By the end of the unit they should feel able to be both an observer and a participant, to "lurk and soak" with a purpose.

The unit also asked the students to look at other student ethnographies and discuss what kind of participant observation would have had to be done in order for this kind of project to be written.  The students also critiqued the projects, which set up the following units covering interviewing, engaging people in conversation or more formal interviews.  (Appendix 4.4)

Following this was more conceptual material.  

Example of Unit:  Local Level Politics - Shirley Jordan

Students were asked to think about politics on a micro-level, as they operate in day-to-day lives.  Students who had studied politics of the target culture as part of a more traditional area studies course would usually be accustomed to a more macro approach and more top-down, factual delivery of a body of knowledge about political institutions, parties, national and local elections, etc.  Here the focus was primarily on small politics such as office politics, sexual politics, the kind of politics involved in any interaction with almost anybody or any group of people on a day-to-day basis.  

The way of looking at this was through the idea of gift exchange - the symbolic aspect and interpretation of messages carried by gifts, which involved the idea of rights, obligations, reciprocity, etc.  This could lead to an understanding of the cultural patterning of local level politics.  Two main concepts underpinned this session, both from anthropologist F.G. Bailey:

•	Gifts are the channels along which social relations run

•	Gifts are also a type of poison because of the burden of obligation which comes with them.

The session compared raw data about the students' own lives with what happened in a wide range of other cultural environments, e.g. video clip of a pig exchanging ceremony in Papua New Guinea, or buying a round of drinks in a student bar.

The aim was to look at the processes at work in both of these exchange activities.  Both of them involved things like obligation, reciprocity, reputation, power and influence - the essential elements of micro-politics.  

The pre-session assignment included reading:  Beattie - "Tis the season to be jolly - why?" (New Society)  and a chart to complete with students' own data, looking back over previous week and noting exchanges in which they had been involved (gift exchange, favour), analysing what relationship was symbolised, what obligations were implied and what the wider implications of this exchange act might be.  

The members of the meeting then completed the "gift exchange" chart.  (Appendix 4.5)  Some examples raised were:

•	Gifts given to acknowledge professional colleagues' length of service, in return for which the recipients were expected to make a public speech

•	Gifts of equivalent value given to several colleagues (ties) but chosen to personalise the gift according to the recipient 

•	Valentine cards given to family members

Students were also asked to look at "negative reciprocity" e.g. theft, prostitution; the idea of altruism, the workings of local patronage systems, and ideas of role and reputation in different kinds of communities.  The underlying theory was that exchange took place because people wanted to be indebted to each other. 

When students went abroad, they didn't just look at the norms and appropriacy of when to take gifts to somebody, what kind of gift to take, and how to enter into exchanges with people - they also looked at some of the symbolic meanings underneath that, and were more able to analyse it.

Student Projects

There were two types:  

1.	Home project - pilot for the year abroad 

2.	Project during the period abroad.

The case study was described of a student project on the Carnaval de Nice.

Evaluation of project work by the students

•	Ethnography created opportunities for contact and legitimised "nosiness".
•	Ethnographic conversations and interviews demanded concentration, analysis, transcription and active listening.  Students tended to pursue this because there was a point and purpose to the conversation.
•	"Rich words" - words that had associations and meanings that had to be "unpacked".
•	Enhanced self-awareness, learning reflexivity, being open to difference, being a good "intercultural communicator".
•	Issues investigated were found by students - generated according to context, grounded in interactional data collected by students in unrepeatable circumstances.  This gave a sense of achievement, to do with the capacity for innovation, to use the "ethnographic imagination", to collect and understand data from people rather than from texts.  

Transferring the idea to other institutions

The project  was currently being piloted at Southampton University, where this year it was being run as a one-hour, voluntary, lunchtime course for students who were most concerned about their ethnographic projects during the PRA.  60 students had applied and 20 had been accepted.  

It had been necessary to produce something less extensive and less deep than the Thames Valley course.  The 20 units had been reduced, but were still a mixture of introductory, conceptual and methodological units (slightly more methodological). The teaching staff might not have anthropological backgrounds and had not originated the material so the effectiveness of the material needed careful monitoring, with evaluation sheets being returned by staff after every unit.

Southampton had just passed through their Academic Board an option module within the course for next year which would be accredited.

At Oxford Brookes the French dept. planned to make the course a compulsory part of the first year foundation course, involving a lot of the methodology and concepts.  Students spending their year abroad would be expected to undertake ethnographic research.  On their return they would have a full accredited module for the writing of the ethnographic project.  The main differences from Thames Valley and Southampton were that it was compulsory, and also Brookes students went abroad in 2nd year, so they were less mature and there was less time to prepare them.

Through a combination of ethnographic methodology and concepts,  with some knowledge-feeding about selected aspects of contemporary France, the aim was to start comparing different ways of knowing, different sources or material that would be encountered, some literature, film;  with the experiential.  This could take place over the entire 1st year and had been divided into basic themes of socialisation, identities, politics and language.

Discussion

•	Was it possible to run this training programme on a more piecemeal basis, with the aid of CR and SJ as animatrices?  How much expertise was necessary?  

It was not certain how far the programme could be diluted and still function.  Southampton course was already "sailing close to the wind".  It would be possible to judge this better at the end of the course.  For expertise it might be possible to draw on people already in the institution, e.g. in sociolinguistics.  

•	Perhaps RAM group could jointly arrange more workshops in other institutions. 

It would help when the units were actually published.  This would be done by Oxford Brookes shortly, and then hopefully interested staff would be able to devise and run a course based on the publication, with some extra reading.  The units contained many ideas for how to exploit the material.

•	What happened if a student completed the module but was still unable to produce a satisfactory enthnographic project?

At Thames Valley University it was voluntary so that a student might perhaps waste a module.  At Oxford Brookes it would be compulsory so it would be necessary to take it on a case by case basis, e.g. alternatives for students who come back without adequate data, also the question of supervision while abroad.  It might be possible to get students to write critiques of other ethnographic work.  Also for cases of students with exemption for PRA.

•	Might there be responses from students who thought this was inappropriate in a course on e.g. French?

The approach used texts from literature studied on the course, and was structured to cover certain sections in English and certain sections in the target language.  

•	Was it possible to build mixed cultural groups on campus, with native speakers of the target language who were perhaps studying other subjects?

At TVU it was a multilingual, multicultural group.  The course was student-centred and drew on student experiences.  Those who had come from overseas would be doing their Residence Abroad ethnographic study as a home ethnography, dealing with both aspects together, which greatly enriched the course.

•	Some students reported that on their return they were constantly aware of adopting a functional approach and having ethnographic conversations with people.  

There were some problems between students and informants, e.g. one student who wrote a project without fully informing one of his key informants.  

•	Had there been problems with students going into difficult or dangerous situations?

Students would not be encouraged to choose projects which would take them into dangerous situations.  Although some of them did choose such subjects, the majority would choose mundane and innocuous subjects.  Issues such as "Am I spying?" needed to be dealt with on the course before the students left.  The question of student safety and legal responsibility had been under consideration recently.  

•	Were there activities presently ongoing at institutions which attempted to make people more aware of other cultures in a more generic way than giving students key information - e.g. making students live out situations within the curriculum?  How did other institutions manage to fit those kinds of activities into their curricula?

The teacher training course in France already had a curriculum section earmarked for cultural anthropology - a national legal requirement for this provision.

•	Was it possible to compare the attitudes and quality of experience abroad of students who had done the ethnographic projects with ones who hadn't, perhaps within the same institution?  Was there a higher degree of positivity towards the experience as a result?  

There was no large bank of data about what students thought about their year abroad, although there was a large amount of anecdotal material.  The students who had done the projects would tend to say that they felt they had had a purpose for going out and making contacts.  It was felt that they were also less ready to accept cultural stereotypes.

It was suggested that a questionnaire could be devised to compare the Oxford Brookes and Portsmouth students on these issues.  

The quality of the projects was taken as evidence of cultural learning.
There was a problem with explaining to external examiners what the aims and objectives of the projects were and how to judge the quality of the result.

At Sussex, part of the feedback after PRA used to be through structured oral examinations.  It was noticeable that students who had attended the cross-cultural training course (about 20% of the total)  had less of a tendency to oversimplify, stereotype and complain!  Unfortunately this year orals on return had been abolished, which would cause a loss of feedback opportunities.

•	How many credits within the 3 year degree course were taken up by the ethnographic module?  

In the first year it was 2 credits out of a total of 8.  
Out of Part II of the degree it would be 1/16, consisting of the dissertation, which is written in the year after the PRA.  
In the Year Abroad it would be 4 credits out of 8.

•	How did the work being done at Portsmouth by way of preparation tie in with the ethnographic approach?

Two main sections were currently being built into the website - advice to staff and advice to students.  Advice to staff would include curriculum and lesson plans.  It would not be as detailed as the ethnographic approach but there were elements that were indispensible for RA preparation.  To try to embed in every institution in the country a large new unit, particularly where students were not specialist linguists, would not be possible.  The aim should be to recommend the important basic elements:  the intelligent observer, the student who had an awareness of the relativity of culture, norms and their own social identities.  One of the functions of project work would be to get into the community. Any project should contain some first hand research, on the local area.  This should ideally develop observation and self-awareness before students could start to become aware of others.  At Portsmouth this took place in the second semester of the second year.  It had been built into the language program because there was no other space in the curriculum.  Therefore the language learning, cultural learning and intercultural learning all took place in the language classes.  

•	How was the self-awareness component assessed?  What accreditation could be given for this?

At Portsmouth this was built into the language assessment for level 2, in the form of a project or dossier, "Séjour à l'étranger" which was an individual piece of work, also a form of diary training.  It was hoped that this would be extended to languages other than French but there were problems with standardising across languages.  

Conclusion

Robert Crawshaw thanked everyone for attending, and for creating the opportunity to share work, practice, theory and reflection.  

It was hoped that there would be future opportunities to give the ethnographic approach a wider airing within the context of FDTL.

Geneviève Zarate drew the meeting's attention to a conference in Paris in December entitled 

XENOPHILIA / XENOPHOBIA AND PROPAGATION OF LANGUAGES
15-18 December 1999  
ENS St Cloud.  
Contact:  Claudette Sum, Tel. +33 1 41 12 35 61 
email:  soum@ens-fcl.fr

A summary of the day's activities would be circulated to all participants.

The meeting closed at 4.15pm

JA
16 March 1999

Project Contacts

The Interculture Project
Room B30, Lonsdale College
Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YN

Tel:  01524 92670			Fax:  01524 843934
email:  icp@lists.lancs.ac.uk		website:  http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/interculture

The LARA Project
Oxford Brookes University
School of Languages
Mill Court, Gipsy Lane Campus
Headington, Oxford 0X3 0BP
England

Tel:  01865 483 710			Fax:  01865 483 690
email:  lara@sol.brookes.ac.uk	website:  http://lara.fdtl.ac.uk/lara

DATA COLLECTED FOR THE Interculture Project 	
	
Questionnaires	Cohort 1	Transcribed		Cohort 2	Transcribed	
Central Lancashire	50			27		
Homerton (Maitrise – PGCE Project)				25		
Lancaster University	57	48		87		
	(Pilot:   9)					
Sheffield University	55	in progress		65		
St Martin						
TOTAL	162			204		

Interviews		Cohort 1	Trans	Trans checked	Tagged		Cohort 2	Trans	Trans checked	Tagged	
Central Lancashire	French	8	8				4	3			
	German	11	10				2	2			
	Spanish	1	1				2	2			
	French/Spanish						1	1			
	TOTAL	20	19				9	8			
Homerton	(approx. 10 min)						23	yes			
	(approx. 30 min)						54	yes			
	TOTAL						77	77			
Lancaster University
 (30 – 60 min)	French	5	5		3		9	8	1		
	German	6	6		5		3	3			
	Spanish	2	2		1		2	1			
	Italian	1	1				3	3	1		
	TOTAL	14	14		9		17	15	2		
Sheffield University	French	7	7				2				
	German	5	5				2				
	Spanish	5	5				1				
	MLTC	8	8				6				
	TOTAL	25	25				11				
	GRAND TOTAL	59	58		9		114	100	2		
Focus Groups		Cohort 1	Trans	Trans
checked	Tagged		Cohort 2	Trans	Trans checked	Tagged	
Central Lancashire	Students (60 min)	1	1								
	Students (75 – 90 min)						2	2			
	Staff (60 mins)	1	1								
	TOTAL	2	2				2	2			
Homerton	Students (50 min)						2	2			
	TOTAL						2	2			
Lancaster University	Students (60 min) audio	1	1				1	1	1		
	Students (45 min) video	2	1								
	Students (60 min) video						4	4	3		
	Staff (60 min)	1	1								
	TOTAL	5	4				5	5	4		
Sheffield University	Students (60 min)	1	1				1	1			
	Staff (60 min)	1	1								
	TOTAL	2	2				1	1			
	GRAND TOTAL Students	5	5				11	11			
	GRAND TOTAL Staff	3	3						4		

Diaries	Cohort 1	Trans		Cohort 2	Trans	Tagged		Cohort 3	Trans	Tagged	
Central Lancashire				9							
Homerton				17							
Lancaster University				25	25	6		9	8		
Sheffield University				50							
St Martin											
TOTAL				101	25	6		 9	8		

Critical Incidents		Cohort 2	Trans		Cohort 3	Trans	
Lancaster University		43					
TOTAL		43			 		

Appendix 2

The Interculture Project
Workshop
26th February 1999

Apply the Taxonomy to the following extract

Q.S.R. NUD.IST Power version, revision 4.0
Licensee: interculture project

PROJECT: interculture, User eva, 11.06 am, Feb 24, 1999
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++ON-LINE DOCUMENT: LUIC1ADwy
+++Document Header:
*Interviewer: Eva Eppler
*Date: 02/02/98
*Code: LIC1ADwy
*Country: Spain
*Course: combined h French and Spanish
*Placement: Foreign Language Assistant
*Age of interviewee: <23
*Sex: female
*Nationality: British
*Ethnicity: white

+++Retrieval for this document: 1 unit out of 722, = 0.14%
++ Text units 398-398
AD The thing is I don’t know how anybody could prepare you for it apart from like meal hours and +… Because it always depends on what part of the country you go to. And you don’t know whether you’ll be living with a family, with a friend with a Spanish friend xxx. I think it would be really hard. But we also did a course in Madrid when I first got there for two days. And hat told us a bit more about how to open bank accounts. I’d forgotten about that. but I think it would be really, like there in Madrid they prepared us a bit about transport round Madrid, places to go but there were people there who were going to other parts of Spain so it wouldn’t have been relevant to them.   398

Appendix 3.1

‘Nothing can prepare you for the real thing …. but there are certain things you can be told ……. so you know what to expect’
(student of Italian, focus group)

* * * *

‘To sum up my first term here I would say that its not been at all what we were told it would be like. Nothing could have prepared me for this year. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’
(student of French, diary)

* * * *

‘I guess one sometimes has too high expectations which when unsatisfied can only result in deep disappointment.’
(student of German, diary)

Appendix 3.2

‘One explanation for emotional reactions, often unrecognized, is that sojourners are reacting to disconfirmed expectancies.’
(Brislin et al., 1986:249)

-	react to the contrast, not the difficulty

-	frustration, then negative reactions towards hosts

Appendix 3.3

‘The fulfilment or violation of these expectations influence the sojourners’ evaluation of the sojourn and ultimately their cultural adaptation.’
(Martin, Bradford & Rohrlich, 1995:
88)

-	positive or negative violations

-	violation linked to evaluation of the sojourn

-	similarity of host culture to home not a reliable predictor of adaptation

	Appendix 3.4

‘The first month, at least, could quite easily be described as a nightmare of homesickness (never before experienced), frustration, and feelings of being totally abandoned and not wanted.

Before coming I was prepared for culture shock and surviving in a foreign country after six months in Zimbabwe, but never before have I been to a country without having a pretty good grasp of the language.’ (student of Spanish)

* * * *
‘I have lived in various countries since I left school, and have had some wonderful experiences and met some very interesting people, many of whom have become very close friends. As a child I lived abroad with my family – in Gambia, Israel and Ghana- …….. Now I am working as a foreign language assistant in Germany, an experience that is proving to be quite different to my previous adventures. I have supplied a very brief outline of my previous experiences to illustrate why I feel that the problems I have had here have not been caused by weakness or inexperience on my part. ‘‘Problems’’ is unfortunately the correct word to describe what I have had to cope with here,. I don’t think any amount of preparation or fore-knowledge would have made life here any easier.’
(student of German)

Appendix 3.5

Family life (Spain)

‘I found it very difficult after 2 years of living alone and fending for myself and that she was smothering me. I wasn’t permitted to cook something for myself – and instead was told I should sit down and eat with the family, at their hours and with their food! Of course I had to consign myself to the fact that I was living with them, therefore had to abide by their rules! It was like going back to being 12 years old again!’

Appendix 3.6

Concept of time/space of life (Spain and France):

‘Pace of life was also a difficult factor to cope with – in this house I found nobody had any ‘prisa’ (hurry)! They got up late, went to bed late, sat and watched T.V. all day (when they were not eating!), did no exercise and whenever I asked them for anything it was always ‘mañana’.

* * * *

‘However, in the South, the people have a very Spanish attitude towards life. They don’t rush anywhere they just take their time and enjoy the sunshine. The shops are supposed to re-open at 2pm, but at around 3pm the shop assistants re-emerged from lunch. Also , in supermarkets the cashiers are never in a rush to serve you, they’d rather chat for half an hour, and they don’t seem to find this impolite at all. Even the teachers at school tell me to ‘‘prendre le rythme’’ and arrive at lessons 10 minutes after they were supposed to start.’

Appendix 3.7

‘I’ve just ordered a pizza over the phone, because it’s too cold outside to go into town. I had difficulty in ordering what I wanted though. I wanted a marguerita, but when I said this, the man didn’t understand. I tried saying it again, but he still didn’t understand me. So I ended up saying it’s a pizza with just cheese & tomato on top. And then he said ‘‘oh a Marguerita’’. But he said it with a German accent. I always seem to have this problem. When I want to say a word, that isn’t of German origin, I’m only understood if I say it in a German accent.’

Appendix 3.8

The difficulty of making contacts/friends (all countries):

‘And none of the students want to talk to me! They’ve already made their friends so they’re not interested!’

* * * *

‘Um, I think that’s, in a sense that’s the thing that I’ve found hardest as well. You know, that if I was to leave tomorrow, there’s a sense that, you know, I wouldn’t be missed…… And there’s that need to feel needed, you know, to feel a part, that if you go, something becomes missing.’

Appendix 4.1

The Interculture Project, Lancaster University and LARA, Oxford Brookes University : February 26 1999 Workshop

LANGUAGE AND RESIDENCE ABROAD PROJECT LARA

Sub-theme: Intercultural Learning

LANGUAGE LEARNERS AS ETHNOGRAPHERS

1.	The thinking behind the Ethnography project

2.	Three examples from the Introduction to Ethnography Course

3.	The ethnographic experience abroad and student ethnographic projects

4.	Running and adapting an ethnographic project.

Shirley Jordan, Oxford Brookes University	Shirley@sol.brookes.ac.uk

Celia Roberts, Thames Valley University	Celia.Roberts@tvu.ac.uk

OUTLINE OF THE INTRODUCTION TO THE ETHNOGRAPHY COURSE AT TVU

The Units cover the following areas:

1.	Introduction to Ethnography
The period abroad is introduced as an opportunity to go out into the field, on the analogy of the anthropologist’s fieldwork, and study some aspect of a community in a systematic way.

2.	What is ethnography?
Some of the basics of ethnography are introduced: holistic method, data as always interpreted in context, the notion of reflexivity.

3.	Non-verbal communication and social space.
These concepts are used to introduce students to methods of observation. Goffman’s work is introduced along with some of the anthropological studies of how people make meaning out of their use of space.

4.	Share cultural knowledge
The idea of ethnography as ‘thick description’ is introduced. The difference between description and interpretation is used to focus on the idea that we draw on our social and cultural knowledge in order to judge and label experiences.

5.	Families and households
The idea of the ‘family’ as a cultural construct is introduced and the role of cultural knowledge is illustrated by looking at kinship terms, and more sociolinguistically by the analysis of family conversations.

6.	Gender relations
The focus in this unit is on gender and language, both the discourses around gender and female and male interaction.

7.	Ethnography of education
The concept of education as a process of socialisation is introduced. Culturally organised patterns of classroom behaviour are related to wider issues of education as a means of social reproduction.

8.	Participant observation
This is the first session to focus on specific methods and it introduces the key methods of participant observation. The tension between being a participant and being an observer is explored and practical help is given in how to locate informants and take fieldnotes.
	
9.	Ethnographic conversations
Alternative methods to observation are discussed. Some techniques for informal ethnographic interviewing are tried out and problems raised and discussed.

10.	Ethnographic interviewing
In addition to trying out some ethnographic conversations in a foreign language, more formal interview methods based on cognitive and linguistic anthropology are used to elicit key cultural words and their semantic associations.

11.	Data Analysis – 1
Qualitative data analysis on interview data is introduced. Students learn to draw out cultural themes from data, using grounded theory etc. The relationship between data collection and data analysis is examined.

12.	Data Analysis – 2
Different types of data are reviewed and the processes of indexing, coding and categorising data are practised. Further practice in qualitative data analysis.
	
13.	National identity and local boundaries
The period abroad is designed to immerse students in a different cultural experience and so questions of identity, of what it means to belong to a nation are particularly salient. In this unit, the concept of boundary is used to explore ethnic and national groups.
	
14.	Language and social identities
The relationship between language and social identity is introduced, drawing on interactional sociolinguistics. The use of different varieties of language, styles of talking and code-switching illuminate the political economy of language.

15.	Local level politics – 1
The central role that small ‘p’ politics plays in the formation and maintenance of social relations is discussed. The notion of exchange is related both to students’ own gift-giving habits and to wider social issues of honour and shame.

16.	Local level politics – 2
The notion of exchange is extended to communication and issues of networks, face and compliments as forms of exchange are introduced.

17.	Belief and action – 1: symbolic classification
The distinction between the symbolic and functional is explored by looking at eating habits.

18.	Belief and action – 2: discourse and power
Aspects of the ethnography of communication, critical linguistics and the anthropological analysis of ritual language are combined to look at some aspects of institutional discourses.

19.	Writing an ethnographic project
Recent work on writing ethnographic accounts is used to highlight the constructed nature of ethnographic texts, challenging positivistic assumptions of objectivity in writing. Students are also helped to think about some of the tensions they will have to manage in writing their ethnographic project in the foreign language but using many of the Anglo-American concepts of the ethnography course.

20.	Butterfly unit
This unit contains guidance on assessment and preparation which is not attached to any particular unit. Any parts of it may ‘alight’ on a particular unit depending on the way in which the course is time-tabled. The elements of this unit are:
•	Preparing for the home ethnography
•	Assessment of criteria
•	Procedures for self-assessment
•	Preparing for the ethnographic project abroad.

UNIT ONE

HANDOUT 2

ETHNOGRAPHIC PROJECT TITLES

HOME ETHNOGRAPHY TOPICS

Despatch riders in London

Telequest [hierarchies and relationships in a market research/telephone company]

Observations on queuing

‘Members only’

Pub behaviour

Space on the Underground [how people behave and react when forced to share limited space with strangers]

Identity and boundaries: An ethnographic project on the Irish youth community in London

The debt collector

The rituals around food and the discourses of food help to construct the borders, structures and hierarchical relations that constitute society itself … or do they?

Greyhound racing in East London

Survival of the fittest [Selling double glazing]

Things you can’t get at Safeways [Portobello Road Market]

The priest: The obstacle of the church [Institutional discourse]

Show me your hand [Aspect of non-verbal communication]

Culture in chaos [Latvian cultural identity]

Shared cultural knowledge in advertising

To belong or not to belong [Study of a group of friends in Spain]

No escape when you are ‘court’ by boredom [Study of waiting rooms in a Magistrates Court]

The Natural Law Party

Down at the Riv. [Observations in a bar]

‘I fry with my little eye’ [Study of a fish and chip shop]

An ethnographic study of the regular clientele in three public houses in Hanwell

One foot in the past [Old people’s home]

‘Beyond Sarah’ [Hierarchies and customer relations in a clothes shop]

Behavioural studies on the football terraces

Observations of behaviour in a laundrette

What pragmatics reveal about character in a working environment [Apologising, requesting, interrupting, complaining in a bar/restaurant]

How different people order drinks in a pub and behave around the bar [Norfolk/London]

‘Black talk’ in a London Jamaican pub

Twelve angry young men. A study of Pizza Hut delivery drivers

The organisation of a children’s language school and the special way of teaching children

Pregnant fathers [What it means to become a father]

“Steam in the blood” [The lives of steam engine owners]

Nudity in Spas and Saunas

Order in the classroom – how it is affected by different relationships

The Public Library

‘Next customer please!’

The ‘orderly’ British queue [In how far is the stereotype of British queues being orderly, true?]

‘If you are not in with the crowd you can forget it!’ – An ethnography on the groups within the Hull rock Scene

Bouncers – How they maintain their identity, earn respect and reject their stereotype

Casualty [Observations in a hospital waiting area]

Au-pairs working in London

FRANCE

Le Club de Petanque a Aubervilles

Le Carnival de Nice: qui veut devenir Carnavalier

La Socialisation au Sein d’une Famille Francais

GERMANY

Alltagbewältigung der Blinden und ihre Interaktion mit Sehenden

Inwieweit erlaubt oder begrenzt das Leben im Studentendorf Kontakte zwischen Studenten

Die Kategorisierung ausländischer Studenten durch ihre deutschen Kommilitonen. Ein ethnographischer Bericht

“Ellbogengesellschaft”. An ethnographic study of assertiveness in public in Germany

What role does ‘world knowledge’ play in everyday social encounters?

Politeness and forms of address: The use of ‘Sie’ and ‘Du’

Single student mothers in Berlin

Christmas in Germany

Forms of politeness on public transport in East Berlin

SPANISH (Spain)

Prostitutes and identity in Cadiz

Sevillanas: An Andalusian dance or a way of life?

How does the Catholic church maintain its power?

Young people in Seville – changing concepts of male and femaleness

The influence of religion on the daily life of Sevillanos

Code switching as a marker of identity in Barcelona

Out and about at night in Seville [La Marcha]

ONCE – an organisation for the blind

Clothes as symbolic system in Cadiz

Appendix 4.2

UNIT ONE

HANDOUT 1

ETHNOGRAPHY FOR LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Aims

The aim of the course is to help prepare you for the cultural challenge of the period abroad, and to make the time spent there more effective. The course aims to enhance cultural sensitivity and lead to a better understanding of your own and others’ cultural worlds.

Content

The course will introduce you to anthropological concepts, e.g. to what is meant by cultural knowledge, values and beliefs, the way these are expressed through language, and how cultural knowledge relates to behaviour and social structures.

Course methodology

The syllabus has been designed with our particular interest as ‘language people’ in mind. Your skills as language learners in accurate listening and remembering will be built on and your general language awareness and sensitivity will also be exploited. The disciplines of anthropology and sociolinguistics will be introduced by drawing on your own experience and by using weekly tasks as the basis for drawing out concepts and developing skills. The class sessions and tasks will prepare you to carry out a ‘home ethnography’, i.e. an ethnographic study of some aspect of your own society. This, in turn will be a preparation for your ethnographic project while abroad.

The course is run as one, two or three hour seminar sessions with the emphasis on group work and pair work. There are no formal lectures. You will learn from each other as much as from the teachers.

Learning outcomes

The course will give you an understanding of some of the concepts and methods of social anthropology and sociolinguistics and enable you to use ethnographic techniques. It will also provide an intellectual challenge and help to develop personal and social skills.

You will be introduced to some key concepts as used by social anthropologists in areas such as:

-	family and gender relations
-	roles and relationships
-	identity and boundaries
-	rituals and symbolic meanings
-	power and language

You will learn to use ethnographic methods:

-	to collect data required for your assignments
-	to carry out ethnographic interviews in your own and the foreign language
-	to record interviews and transcribe them
-	to act as participant observers
-	to take notes of field observations
-	to keep a field diary

You will learn to analyse the data for your projects:

-	to index the data collected
-	to evaluate evidence
-	to apply anthropological concepts to interpret them
-	to verify your interpretations through comparison with other evidence

Through the critique of other projects you will be able to establish

-	the kind of project expected of you
-	the standards applied
-	the criteria used in assessing them

Through course work and doing your home ethnography you will gain greater confidence in your ability to do a project:

-	to identify an area of interest
-	to pose interesting and innovative questions
-	to formulate a project proposal
-	to collect the data
-	to write up a project
-	to organise your material and findings logically
-	to present a coherent argument
-	to use appropriate evidence as necessary

Having learnt some concepts and methods of social anthropology you will be more aware of:

-	the social construction of perceived reality
-	the social nature of apparent individualism
-	the patterns and regularities under the surface of life
-	the cultural construction of beliefs, attitudes, actions

You will also have the opportunity to relate these ways of seeing to your own:

-	behaviour, roles, attitudes
-	environment
-	identity in a foreign society while abroad

The course will make a contribution to improving personal and social skills more generally, e.g. your ability to:

-	identify and solve problems
-	cope with unfamiliar circumstances
-	take controlled risks
-	overcome hesitation and shyness
-	communicate with others
-	be more tolerant of different cultures and values

Appendix 4.3

From Unit 17: Belief and Action (1): Categorisation and Rituals.
	Eating Habits: Taste or Symbol?
_____________________________________________________________________

Assignment

1.	Over the weeks try to engage as many of your friends/contacts/teachers/family members etc. as possible in an ethnographic conversation about their eating habits.

2.	Don’t elicit information in an interview – but try to work the conversation around to eating habits. Ideally, they should not feel they have been specifically questioned. But if you prefer to make your interest explicit, then mention that this is a subject you are looking at as part of your course. You may find talking about your own eating habits is a good way to get other people talking.

3.	Elicit as much as you can about:

-	what animals they consider edible
-	what parts of the animal they are happy to eat/would never eat (e.g. liver, lungs. tongue, etc.)
-	what meat they would consider eating if their normal food was not available (zebra, dog, sparrow, etc.)
-	what vegetables they would never eat
-	their feelings if someone sitting next to them was eating a food they would never eat
-	other interesting perceptions that emerge within all these questions. Elicit as much as you can about their reasons for eating/not eating certain foods

4.	Try to construct some ‘value’ patterns or classifications from the data you have collected. You might be asked to draw up a chart or a diagram.

__________________________________________________________________

Concepts behind the task

1)	Society is constructed out of feelings of affinity and estrangement (Bruce Lincoln, 1986)

2)	“It is culture which constitutes utility” (Marshall Sahlins, 1976) and not the other way round. In other words, we don’t do things for practical reasons and then find a meaning for them. The symbolic meaning is what underpins our practical endeavours.

3)	The rituals around food and the discourses of food help to construct the “borders, structures and hierarchic relations that constitute society itself” (Lincoln, 1986).

Appendix 4.4

SECTION THREE: ASSIGNMENTS AND HANDOUTS

ASSIGNMENT UNIT EIGTH

Participant Observation

There are two main parts to this assignment. It is essential that you do both of them to really benefit from the discussions on ethnographic methods and methodology from next week onwards. Both are important learning exercises in themselves and will help you:

(1)	to gain an overall picture of what you have achieved so far and to consolidate what you have learned, a kind of ‘stocktaking’

(2)	to develop your analytical skills by doing what is called ‘critique’ and 

(3)	to learn more about what is involved in actually ‘doing’ ethnography from a practical, emotional and ethical point of view.

So give yourself plenty of time to do this assignment and don’t rush it in the last minute.

Part I – Observing

Get your course file and retrieve all your assignments, tasks and notes on the following:

observing yourself (card exercise; life cycle line)

observing others (pub, NVC; focussed and unfocussed gatherings; mixed-gender interactions; videos)

as well as any other notes you have specifically about observation.

Next draw up a chart on a sheet of A4 paper. Starting with the card exercise, make notes on the following:

On the left hand side:
	problems or difficulties with this kind of observation (e.g. high visibility, awkwardness –why?, note-taking problems, ethical issues, etc.
on the right hand side:
	advantages of this kind of observation

Remember to consider not only your own position, but also that of the people or situation you are observing.

Part II – ‘Critique’

Read the two ethnographic assignments written by students (G. Mortimer / A. Seabourne) and based on three weeks’ research.

Read the student assignment at least twice, use a highlighter pen, annotate the text and then write your comment making detailed notes on the following:

(1)	What is the project about? (It might be useful to consider what title you would give it if you had written it)

(2)	What kind research do you think was needed to get the data on which this project was based?

(3)	What kind of questions does it ask?

(4)	How are these questions answered? (i.e. what evidence is given? Summarise and refer to text, page number and section)

(5)	Does it raise any possible further research questions in your mind which one could pursue given more time?

(6)	What difficulties or problems do you think the ethnographer encountered?

(7)	What ‘role’ did the ethnographer have to adopt (may be more than one)? How would you characterise their position as observer? Think also of the possible effects on the ‘researched’.

(8)	Any other thoughts and comments on these assignments?

Remember:	To ‘critique’ is not synonymous with ‘to criticise’! It is all right to be critical, but try to be analytical and constructive about it. This is not an exercise in running somebody else’s work down, you are trying to learn from it.

Appendix 4.5

ASSIGNMENT	LOCAL LEVEL POLITICS

Gift / favour / exchange	Relationship symbolised	Obligations	Wider implications