Moss: "Ethnography and Composition: Studying Language at Home"

Moss, Beverly J.. Ethnography and Composition: Studying Language at Home. Carbondale: Southern Illinois: Methods and Methodology in Composition Research, 1992.


Beverly J. Moss writes on her experience of doing an ethnography of the African American church, and goes about the tactics and methods in which create a valid collection of analysis on a particular community. Moss was inspired by Shirley Brice Heath's "Ways With Words" and claims "Heaths work validated [her] desire to do research that connected with [her]...because [she] was convinced that finding out what students did outside class was the key to helping them succeed in school" (388). Ethnography essentially is the study of community of people, and how they act, speak, and live in their daily lives. the goal of a successful ethnographer should be to describe a community so that an outsider may understand that community just as a participating community member would. Moss identifies Hymes ideas that ethnography can be broken down into three major categories or inquiries: Comprehensive-oriented ethnography, (which is a way that seeks to describe a total way of life) topic-oriented ethnography (picking only one major focus in a study) and hypothesis-oriented ethnography, which can only be acquired through the use of the two other inquiries of ethnography. Moss claims that generally speaking, ethnography connects with "phenomenological-oriented culture perspective" in the idea that ethnographers can focus on a select number of individuals within a community, and observe what they do and say, so that they can understand below the surface emotions and feelings. Certain methods an ethnographer would create are things such as taxonomies and cognitive maps, and they would need to find a way to gain access to a community, as well as keeping a conceptual framework in mind. A successful ethnographer collects data and analysis's that "consists of recognizing patterns and relationships that emerge from the framework" and the developing it into a coding scheme which transfigures them into categories (391). Moss claimes that one of the most important lessons to be learned from creathing an ethnography is that ones experience is not reproduced through literacy, but must be understood as a narration.

Critical Response: It is insightful to see that many times, ethnographers choose to write on their own community of which they are famaliar, and they are then choosing to re-adjust their mindsets on something which would have otherwise been seen as the norm. These individuals who choose to study their own community must choose to keep an open mind about the community, and must be willing to ask questions without having an immediate answer. With this being said, there seems to be a few flaws in this logic that states such an ethography on one's own community is the hardest to do of all. This can be argued either way, but initially it is understood that the gaining of access or acception of the community has already been accomplished. One of the most interesting ideas on this study of a particular culture or community, is the fact that you must "fit in" or not be noticed, in order to gain unfaltering data. Once a community member notices you, they are at risk of acting differently from how they "normally" would, which could cause other community members to follow the same pattern, which ultimately leads to a set of invalid observations and field notes.
In connection with thinking about literacy, it is interesting to think of your data you collect as a professional ethnographer, should not be a series of notes, or a collection of writing for others to merely read, but it should in fact been seen as a narrative or memoir of your experience among a particular group of people. This idea of literacy can be quite complex and interesting because, when one goes back to tell a "real-life" story, things will always be less accurate of what really happened. This is this interchangable tie between "story-truth" and "happening-truth". what makes a good story, as to what really happened?