English 1001: Essay #3: Ethnographic Research
(from College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction)
In this assignment, you will be conducting an ethnography of a discourse community. Ethnography is essentially a study of a group of people and is a methodology and genre used typically in anthropology. In doing ethnographic research, you observe a group, take notes, and report on your findings. For this ethnography, you will be observing and analyzing a discourse community that you belong to or one that is new to you. In other words, you will be focusing primarily on the writing practices within a specific social group. The focus of this research should not be solely on social dynamics or oral discourse, but rather on how written texts work within the group.
Assignment Requirements
The essay (8-10 pages) will present your findings as a research report or researched argument. Here are some guidelines for a successful essay:
You should organize your essay thematically, not chronologically. Do not give a report of what you did while researchinginstead, group your data and focus on reoccurring themes of interest in your data that give answers to your research questions.
You should also utilize some of the data you have collected directly in the essaydirect quotes or observations make great examples!
Regardless of format or organization, each essay should have a primary focus on the writing practices, written texts and language of the group in question.
Your research should include appropriate primary or secondary sources to support or amplify your field research. You may use sources from popular magazines, newspapers, non-scholarly Internet sites, or other sources, but you need to include at least three scholarly sources, as this is an academic essay.
Use American Psychological Association (APA) citation guidelines for in-text citations and the works cited list at the end of your essay. (APA is generally the citation style used in the social sciences.)