of Communication Defined
The project of ethnography of communication has been contributed to from people in fields ranging from anthropology and sociology to linguistics and American studies. Departments of Communication or Speech Communication have been instrumental in the field's development.
Considering the field of communication broadly, it would be difficult to characterize Ethnography of Communication along the lines of audience size (e.g. from intra/interpersonal to mass communication). For within the area of ethnography of communication, there are researchers who examine personal relationships as well as researchers who examine the ways television presents culturally patterned practices, and everything in between.
Another common way of characterizing areas within the field communication is topically, such as health or organizational communication. However, ethnography of communication researchers may be working in any applied setting. As long as there people communicating, ethnographers of communication may be there.
Within Communication Departments, researchers who study from the perspective of the ethnography of communication do so usually with reference to a special sub-disciplinary interest, such as Intercultural or Cultural Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication or by positioning the work as within a framework of Language as Social Interaction. However one is labeled or describes one's work, the commitments are shared. That is, communication should be examined as a social and cultural practice and recognition should be given to the ways that the participants themselves describe and use communication.
The kinds of things we study include:
We have studied all over the world. Examples include: