Sunday, January 27, 2008

Ethnography: Situations and Events

The pattern found in the Pentecostal meeting example in our reading was very interesting. The people from the church thought the Holy Spirit was invoking them to randomly participate in the meetings by shouting out during the meetings. However, the ethnographer found a pattern in the speech the church goers had not realized. This is interesting because it shows people subconsciously pick up on specific cues in order to know what is /is not appropriate in speech situation.

I also thought our last class discussion about American classrooms was very interesting. I observed my next class that day paying close attention to the power levels between the instructor and the students. Everything fit into what we had been discussing. The teacher held a certain amount of power because of the control over the grades, but the students had power in the attention, or lack there of, they were expressing toward what was being discussed. Each time students began to check the clock, text message or any other variety of expression of lack of interest, the lecture would take a turn. The instructor was controlling the discussion by following a planned speech to the students, but the students were also controlling the discussion by their attention levels.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like how you were talking about how people subconsciously pick up on specific cues in order to know what is and is not appropriate to say in a speech situation.
I also like how you talked about when students change their attention in class it changes the power between teacher and student.