Edward Rose and linguistic ethnography: an Ethno-inquiries approach to interviewing

Abstract

and the analytic affinities with Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks established in the formative development of Ethnomethodology. The article introduces the Ethno-inquiries approach to sociological interviews. Using a project that captured ordinary, oral accounts of the 1996 bombing of Manchester, England, this article shows how the epistemological and methodological attitude of the Ethno-inquiries towards talk -recognizing the linguistic constitution of the social world, avoiding methodological irony, letting informants rather than analysts organize topics -affords fine-grained analyses of ordinary actions within extraordinary events. This article discusses important aspects of interviewing including data gathering and the nature of 'interview data', the selection of interviewees and getting the story. A series of vignettes demonstrates the enabling potential of this analytic attitude towards people's accounts.One year later, a research project 2 sought first-person accounts from people who were present on that morning and those who had been affected by the explosion. The bombing of Manchester City Centre was used as a critical event with which to recreate the seminal, linguistically oriented ethnography conducted by Edward Rose (1997 [1965]).This article outlines particular themes: why the bombing of Manchester City Centre was chosen as a topic of investigation; how the study was conducted; and discusses some topics of analysis which were suggested by people through their talking about the Manchester bomb. It proceeds to show how these topics are available for study using a research programme known as the 'Ethno-inquiries'. 3 This moves us towards explication of people's practical activities in talking about the bomb -how situations are defined -rather than trying to achieve thick description (Geertz, 1975).The opportunities for people to talk about the bomb were interviews. This article gives analytic attention to interviews in their own right, rather than employing them in the service of other methods; and discusses the use of interviews as exemplars of the Ethno-inquiries and how they relate to Ethnomethodology. A recent review of approaches to interviews in this journal (Roulston, 2006) fails to mention the Ethno-inquiries as part of the Ethnomethodological 'family'. This current article is part of a growing corpus of studies that addresses this gap within sociological discourse.This article engages with the contingencies of doing fieldwork in research on physically bounded areas, spaces and places, considering the status and usefulness of forms of 'data'. 4 It looks at how people talk about their environment in the aftermath of a major incident. It discusses the 'Ethno-inquiries' programme for researching bounded spaces developed by Edward Rose, using the methods of his 'skid row' or 'Larimer Street' studies (Rose, 1997(Rose, [1965) to investigate people's understandings of a changing urban setting.First, however, this article discusses Edward Rose, his development of the Ethno-inquiries, his relationship w...

Harold Garfinkel and Edward Rose in the early years of ethnomethodology

“…Their task was to try to translate the other group's language as they sent messages back and forth, attempting to produce a meaningful exchange, and constructing dictionaries for their languages, assigning word equivalences, and describing the grammar as they progressively developed it. The sessions were audiotaped and transcribed in accordance with Rose's efforts to conduct “sociological investigations that retain and celebrate members' accounts” (Carlin & Watson, 2019): most of the three published volumes (Rose et al, 1964, 1965, 1966) consist of verbatim transcriptions of the groups' actual talk at work.…”

“…… I see the conference as one devoted to detailed talk about specific issues to which talk is directed by actual accomplished work or work in progress." 53 The next section describes this collaborative effort of Garfinkel and Rose, and its outcomes, in more detail, concluding with a closer look at Rose's studies of "small languages" (see Carlin & Watson, 2019) that he had presented to his fellow early ethnomethodologists.…”

“…In 1961, Rose and Garfinkel started to consider a conference focused specifically on ethnomethodology, where they would invite a limited number of seriously interested people—as Garfinkel wrote in a letter to Rose: “Indeed my inclination is to invite only those who have interests that are focused enough to have stuff in the works that they can and ought to and want to write about. … I see the conference as one devoted to detailed talk about specific issues to which talk is directed by actual accomplished work or work in progress.” 53 The next section describes this collaborative effort of Garfinkel and Rose, and its outcomes, in more detail, concluding with a closer look at Rose's studies of “small languages” (see Carlin & Watson, 2019) that he had presented to his fellow early ethnomethodologists.…”

The Corpus Status of Literature in Teaching Sociology: Novels as “Sociological Reconstruction”

“…Whilst Coser distinguishes between society-members and novelists, his distinction is clearly that of society-members versus "trained social scientists". Methodological irony receives more detailed treatment elsewhere (Carlin 2002(Carlin , 2009G. Watson 1994;R.…”

Book review: Rod Watson, Analysing Practical and Professional Texts: A Naturalistic Approach

“…Of significance to Watson’s argument is his careful use of Edward Rose’s conceptualization of the ‘word’ in relation to the ‘world’; where the world is understood as a worded entity; the relationship between word’s and things are not separate but inextricably linked. Watson’s use of Rose’s work reflects his long standing friendship with him and concern with the important ideas that are conveyed within Rose’s Ethno-Inquiries and their critical importance to our understanding of the formulation and development of ethnomethodology more generally (see also Carlin, 2009; Slack, 2000; Watson, 2000).…”