Precis # 4

Wiley, Mark, Barbara Gleason, & Louise Wetherbee Phelps, eds. "Composition In Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field." Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1996

Moss, Beverly J. "Ethnography and Composition: Studying Language at Home."

In this piece by Moss, we learn about ethnography in general, as well as the issues surrounding the studying of one's own community. "Ethnography is the qualitative research method that allows the researcher to gain a comprehensive view of the social interactions, behaviors, and beliefs of a community or social group" (389). The goal is to study basic daily routines, interfering as little as possible, even though the researcher may interact with the participants of the study. Moss explains that there are three modes of ethnography: comprehensive-oriented, topic-oriented, and hypothesis-oriented ethnography (389). Comprehensive-oriented is rarely done due to the fact that it is too hard to follow and describe everything about a community. Topic-oriented ethnography deals with more precise "topics" in regards to the community being studied, which leads to hypothesis-oriented ethnography. This last "mode" can only be done when "[o]ne has a great deal of general ethnographic knowledge about a community" (389).
Moss decides to study a community she's familiar with (or, "part" of) and that was three African American churches in Chicago (one of which she was a member of). Her goal was to "make the familiar strange." "[i]f we don't want to be denied by our own communities, then we must be aware of and be prepared to deal with the baggage that membership brings" (396).
Basically, in order to get a true understanding of a community you're observing, you MUST be willing, "whether insider or outsider, to guard against blindness, to drive instead toward increased insight into the ways in which language communities work" (396).
This really brought me back to the time that I did my classroom observations for another class. I did my observations in a school I was very familiar with, (I have worked there before, and my son goes to school there) and in a community I had grown up in. I twas very hard to make the familiar "strange," and not to leave out details that I felt were common and unimportant. It was a very interesting as well as insightful reading, and I admired Moss' honesty of her situation.