Dell Hymes's visions of enquiry

Abstract

AbstractThis commentary initially addresses Hymes's uncompromising scrutiny of the institutions of research, ceaselessly setting them alongside the people and processes that academics study. Turning then to the articles in this collection, it links this critical reflexivity to ethnopoetics as a project in the recovery of voices encrypted in the scholarly record, and it notes continuing tensions in the pursuit of equality and rigor. Last, it describes Hymes as a kind of “virtual mentor” for linguistic ethnography outside the United States. In a context where the boundaries between disciplines are often treated lightly, Hymes provides both a map of central currents in contemporary thought and a set of motives and tools for the exploration of local sites—he articulates a view of “social reality as practical activity” that antedates Bourdieu's praxis and Giddens's structuration and pioneers a framework for describing this empirically. In addition, when disciplinary conventions are relativized, and/or practical relevance looms large, there is a route back to first principles in the unflinching mutual interrogation between linguistics and ethnography that runs throughout his work.