The Ethnography of Communication: The Essential Readings Paperback - 2002

First line

"Ethnography is a field of study which is concerned primarily with the description and analysis of culture, and linguistics is a field concerned, among other things, with the description and analysis of language codes."

From the rear cover

The Ethnography of Communication explores how and why language is used, and how its use varies in different cultures. In this now standard introduction to the subject, Muriel Saville-Troike presents the essential terms and concepts introduced and developed by Dell Hymes and others, and surveys the most important findings and applications of their work. Drawing on insights from social anthropology and psycholinguistics and using examples from many languages and cultures, she builds a model that includes communication within the overall framework of cultural competence.

This third edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the substantial contributions made in recent years to the development and application of the subject. It includes two completely new chapters on contrasts in patterns of communication and on politeness, power, and politics. The book now incorporates an even broader range of examples and illustrations for analyzing the patterns of communicative phenomena in the languages of the world.