working papers
No. 11. "Performance, Speech Community, and Genre," Richard Bauman,
Judith T. Irvine, and Susan U. Philips, 1987. This number of the
Working Papers and Proceedings of the Center for Psychosocial
Studies is made up of three related papers, "The Role of Performance
in the Ethnography of Speaking," by Richard Bauman, "Domains of
Description in the Ethnography of Speaking: A Retrospective on the
'Speech Community,'" by Judith T. Irvine, and "The Concept of Speech
Genre in the Study of Language and Culture," by Susan U. Philips. The
papers were originally delivered at a session on the Ethnography of
Communication: Current Trends and Prospects, at the Annual Meetings of
the American Anthropological Association, in Philadelphia, December 5,
1986. We are now in the 25th year since the publication of Dell
Hymes's essay, "The Ethnography of Speaking" (in Anthropology and
Human Behavior, T. Gladwin and W. Sturtevant, eds., pp. 15-53.
Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington), an
appropriate occasioning principle for taking stock of what has been
achieved in the ethnography of communication in the ensuing
quarter-century. Each of the following papers is a critical
examination, both retrospective and prospective, of a foundational
concept in the ethnography of communication, assessing its place in
the ongoing development of this field of inquiry, including its
relation to other key concepts and its relevance to thought in
anthropology, linguistics, and adjacent disciplines more
broadly. Click here to order a copy from the author.