9:15 - 9:45

Marcia Farr -- "Studying Language Ethnographically and Transnationally: Challenges and Chances"

Abstract:

        In this presentation I reflect on the challenges as well as the opportunities that emerge when one studies language according to ethnographic principles. This reflection is based on a long-term transnational study of Mexican families in Chicago and in their village-of-origin in northwest Michoacán. This study focused on language use, both oral and written, within these families (Farr, 1994a,b,c; Farr 2005a.,b; Farr, 2006), primarily in their homes (in Chicago and in Michoacán), but occasionally in traveling cars, at church, and in other community settings.

If the goal of a study is to understand how daily language use is embedded in identity construction and in cultural maintenance and/or transformation, then the researcher must be present to experience (and ideally record) language that occurs in the interstices of daily life. Ethnographic methods and perspectives best suit this purpose, especially as they focus on meanings from participants' points of view, holistic contexts, and participant-observation. Because the researcher becomes a participant (although one who observes carefully), this process is fraught with both challenges and chances. The chances are opportunities that would never arise with other research methods. The challenges include the delicate balancing of human relationships, as well as communicating across cultural, gender, class, and other potential boundaries.

About Marcia Farr:

Marcia Farr is an ethnographic sociolinguist whose research and teaching focus on cultural variation in the use of oral and written language and the implications of such variation for the teaching and learning of academic literacy. She has a Ph.D. in linguistics from Georgetown University and directed the funding of research on writing at the National Institute of Education from 1976-1982. She edited a research series, Written Language, first for Ablex and then Hampton Press, and she has served on numerous Advisory and Editorial Boards. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (Linguistics Program), the Spencer Foundation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the Fulbright Foundation. She recently completed a long-term ethnographic study of language and culture among a transnational social network of Mexican families in Chicago and in their village-of-origin in Michoacán, Mexico (Rancheros in Chicagoacán: Language and Identity in a Transnational Mexican Community, University of Texas Press, 2006).