ROUGH LECTURE OUTLINE - Spradley: pp 92-106

Analyzing Ethnographic Interviews (Step Five)

Analysis begins with systematically "HEARING DATA" and "seeing"
what it has to tell us about the culture. There are many ways
to analyze something. The best way to begin analyzing your data
is to look for PATTERNS in the various pieces or parts of the
culture that the informants gave you in their data. This is the
phase at which you begin to "make some sense" of things, and
pull it all together.

NOTE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONVENTIONAL RESEARCH AND ETHNOGRAPHY:

--Conventional research:
  1) Select a topic
  2) Formulate hypotheses to test
  3) Collect data
  4) Analyze data in light of hypotheses
  5) Write it up using numbers

--Ethography, BY CONTRAST:

  1) Select a problem/issue
  2) Collect CULTURAL data
  3) Analyze date looking for themes, patterns, or common symbols
  4) Formulate ETHNOGRAPHIC HYPOTHESES (more on this as we go)
  5) Write it up, using our informants data

RELATIONAL THEORY OF MEANING: This is simply exploring the
relationship between words, experiences, and the telling of it.
Meaning, for Spradley, means: "How do words and behvior become
meaningful?" That is, how do they become signficant, and how
do we (the researcher) find out what they mean?

    A. Symbols: Something that stands for something else (see
previous lectures

    B. Meaning Systems: What is the link between symbols and
other symbols? What do the terms "joint," "stir," "big house,"
"slammer," or "pokey" all have in common, and what differences
might there be that reflect the cultural meanings of each
term for participants (if any)? How does somebody become
"fluent" in a meaning system" such as street-racing, dance,
or hangovers?
   --Cultural meanings systems are encoded in symbols
   --Language is the primary way we reflect this, but it
     can be done by t-shirts, hair, or cars we drive.
   --The meaning of symbols is linked to other symbols in   
     in the culture
   --our goal is to "decode" it all and identify the underlying
     coding rules

    C. DOMAINS: A symbolic category under which other terms
are included. 
    --Cover term: "Tree" is a cover term for "oak, pine, walnut"
      or "New person" is a cover term for "fish," "noob" or
      "newbie"
SO? Well, we begin by looking at how cultural members put their
world together, that is CONSTRUCT IT. We do this with a
DOMAIN SEARCH, which is going through the data to see what
terms people use in their everyday world in the culture (see
Spradley, pp 102, ff).

STEP SIX:  Domain ANALSIS: (read pp 107-119)

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