Finding Culture in Talk A Collection of Methods [Hardcover]

This edited collection presents a range of heretofore unpublished, unavailable methods for the systematic reconstruction of culture from interviews and other discourse. Authors set the design and evolution of their methods in the context of their own research projects, and draw general lessons about investigating culture through discourse. These methods have largely grown out of the work of the cultural models school, and represent the approaches of some of the very best methodologists in cultural anthropology today. An impetus for the volume has been inquiries from researchers, many of them graduate students, about how to conduct the kind of research that cultural models theorists do. This is not a linguistics book; unlike approaches to discourse analysis from linguistics, this volume focuses on culture, treating discourse as a medium especially rich in clues for cultural analysis, and hence a window into culture.Introduction; N.Quinn How to Reconstruct Schemas People Share, from What They Say; N.Quinn Some Methods for Studying Cultural Cognitive Structures; R.D'Andrade Uncovering Cultural Models of Gender from Accounts of Folktales; H.Mathews Finding Culture in Narrative; J.H.Hill Analyzing Discourse for Cultural Complexity; C.Strauss 'Good Enough' Methods for Life Story Analysis; W.Luttrell

One of the best features of the book is the emphasis the contributors give to ruminating about the strengths and weaknesses of interviewing as a research method and analytical process. Another is the attention paid by various authors to the inconsistencies of both research and human lives. Even though this is very much a how to book, there is nothing mechanistic about these approaches to research and I appreciate how the authors show us ways to combine the creativity of the researcher with systematic approaches to information gathering in order to produce better results. - Wayne Fife, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

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