The Ethnography of Communication

The Ethnography of Communication is concerned with how and why language is used and how its use varies in different cultures. In this now standard introduction to the subject, Muriel Saville-Troike presents the essential terms and concepts introduced and developed by Dell Hymes and others and surveys the most important findings and applications of their work. Drawing on insights from social anthropology and psycholinguistics and using examples from a great many languages and cultures she builds up a model which includes communication within the overall framework of cultural competence. This second edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the substantial contributions made in recent years to the development and application of the subject. The book now incorporates a yet broader range of examples and illustrations for analyzing the patterns of communicative phenomena in the languages of the world.