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Ethnography of communication relies on systematic person-centered descriptions of patterns of linguistic form, pragmatic usage, and social function. Consider a visit by a graduate student to a nursing home to collect data for a project on dementia. Hymes (1972a, b)
summarized the major ethnographic factors involved in analyzing a speech situation through the use of the anagram SPEAKING.
- Setting: The resident's room in the nursing home
- Participants: A person with dementia and a graduate student in speech-language pathology
- Ends (goals): These are difficult to ascertain in the case of the person with dementia. However, the graduate student has both overt goals (e.g., to learn about the resident's life, and to spend time visiting with him/her) and covert goals (e.g., to collect data in order to study and treat dementia)
- Acts sequence: The types of communication used (e.g., a question-answer format)
- Key: Whether the interaction is informal or formal
- Instrumentality: The mode of communication (e.g., conversation or sign language)
- Norms: Polite conversation
- Genre: Possibly a friendly chat or "small talk"
An ethnographic approach allows the clinician to consider the communicative behaviors the patient or client manifests based upon his or her communication status and the situational and environmental factors that influence the interaction. This approach can be applied to all speakers interacting with people with communication disorders.
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