Abstract
This paper considers the value of Hymesian ethnopoetics as a means of analysing everyday narrative in conditions of mobility and change. The paper offers an account of the development of ethnopoetics as a means to make visible and valorize narrative in the Native American oral tradition, and as a method of revealing culturally specific relations of form and meaning. Hymes’ ethnopoetic approach viewed narrative structure as a reflection of a cultural tradition of meaning‐making. Hymes’ analysis proposed that traditional narrative was a culturally shaped way of speaking, and analysis of narrative structure could reveal and recreate culture. His orientation rested on an assumption that the culture of a group was more or less stable and fixed. This paper adopts an approach to analysis based on ethnopoetics, representing everyday narrative dramatically, organized not only as lines and verses, but also as scenes and acts. Representation in scenes and acts makes visible the dynamic nature of the narrative. The paper asks whether Hymes’ ground‐breaking work on ethnopoetics still has currency and purchase in 21st‐century conditions of mobility, change, and unpredictability. Analysis of everyday narrative in a city market concludes that, notwithstanding the complexity of notions of ‘culture’ and ‘language’ in such conditions, ethnopoetics can be productively applied to everyday contexts for the analysis of narrative.
Highlights
Ethnopoetics, developed in analysis of Native American oral narrative, may be extended to the analysis of narrative in everyday encounters
This paper considers the value of Hymesian ethnopoetics as a means of analysing everyday narrative in conditions of mobility and change
We have reviewed Hymesian ethnopoetics, developed in specific cultural contexts as a means to understand the links between narratives and socioculturally mediated ways of apprehending reality
Summary
Ethnopoetics, developed in analysis of Native American oral narrative, may be extended to the analysis of narrative in everyday encounters. In the remainder of this paper we analyse an interaction between a Chinese butcher and his customer, audio-recorded in the course of four months of detailed ethnographic observation in Birmingham Bull Ring market, in the U.K. In doing so we consider whether ethnopoetic analysis, rooted in Jakobson’s analysis of poetry and Hymes’ analysis of folk tales, has the potential to enhance our understanding of language in contemporary social life. We saw on a number of occasions that Chinese customers would approach the butcher for help and advice about the market, and, on occasion, about other matters such as housing and welfare services In this brief interaction Kang Chen was typically helpful, pointing to the meat stall along the aisle where the woman would be able to buy lamb. [to BJ:] she see the lamb head over there being sold by the Asian men you got, you got any, any, any say Chinese yea language and she go
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