A study on Ethnography of communication: A discourse analysis with Hymes speaking model

Abstract

Ethnography of communication relates ethnography, the description and structural-functional analysis of society and culture, with the language a cultural behaviour that navigates and helps to share knowledge, arts, morals, beliefs and everything acquired by man as a member of society. Ethnography of communication is an approach to understand society & culture and its reconstruction of an ethnic group in particular and nation in general. To do it language, designed and structured by pattern of culture, acts as a communicative tool. Language carries and transmits social/cultural traits through generations. The role of speech behavior, one of the aspects of language, has always been significant in cultural anthropological research. Ethnography of Communication, the concept introduced by Del Hymes in late sixties, is an active action of human way of life. He and his associates constructed a model of Speaking model while tried to understand society and culture of an ethnic group through communication process. The present study intends to test Hymes Speaking Model in a set of homogenous speech community the academic folk of a department of the West Bengal State University, Barasat, West Bengal, India.

Keywords: Ethnography, Communication, Language, Speaking model