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Local discourse and global research: The role of local knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2005

MICHAEL AGAR
MICHAEL AGAR
Affiliation:
Ethknoworks and Friends Social Research Center, PO Box 5804, Takoma Park MD 20913, magar@anth.umd.edu
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Abstract

Detailed analysis of transcripts is a time-honored practice among linguistic ethnographers. In contemporary research, however, interactions among global forces distant from ethnographic sites are critical for analysis and explanation, as is the fact that multiple sites must be covered. Ethnographers' interests, pragmatic relevance, and personal deixis militate against the ability of site-specific talk to serve as raw material for construction of the representations of those distant global forces. In this article, local discourse, as manifested in ethnographic oral-history interviews, is viewed first as a test of the impact of those global forces. Second, the talk is a construction that can be explained in terms of those forces' linkage with global representations. Finally, the concept “fractal” is suggested as a possible way to show such links.NOTE: Support by NIH/NIDA grant no. DA-10736 is gratefully acknowledged.

Keywords

Global/local researchethnographydiscourse analysissubstance use
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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