Ethnography is often described as the translation of culture, yet there has been little discussion of actual linguistic translation in ethnography. Many ethnographers engage in research across divides of language that require them to make decisions about how to represent the language of their informants. The privileging of academic Standard English creates dilemmas for ethnographers whose subjects speak stigmatized languages. Based on an analysis of 32 book-length ethnographies about African Americans (reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology between 1999 and 2009), this article answers the questions of how ethnographers typically deal with language difference in their texts, particularly when research takes place across dialects of the same language, and why language matters in the production of ethnographic texts.
AbrahamsR (1962) Playing the dozens. Journal of American Folklore75: 209–20.
2.
AbrahamsR (1972) Stereotyping and beyond. In: AbrahamsRDTroikeRC (eds) Language and Cultural Diversity in American Education, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp. 19–29.
3.
Agar M (2008) A linguistics for ethnography. Journal of Intercultural Communication 16.
4.
AlimSHIbrahimAPennycookA (2009) Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language, New York: Routledge.
5.
AtkinsonP (1990) The Ethnographic Imagination, New York: Routledge.
6.
Baca ZinnM (1979) Field research in minority communities: Ethical, methodological, and political observations from an insider. Social Problems27(2): 209–219.
7.
BaileyG (2001) The relationship between African-American Vernacular English and white vernaculars in the American South. In: LanehartS (eds) African American English: State of the Art, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, pp. 53–92.
8.
BaughJ (1983) Black Street Speech: Its History, Structure, and Survival, Austin: University of Texas Press.
9.
BaughJ (1999) Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice, Austin: University of Texas Press.
10.
BeckerHS (2001 [1996]) The epistemology of qualitative research. In: EmersonRM (eds) Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations, 2nd edn. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, pp. 317–330.
11.
BenjaminW (2000 [1923]) Task of the translator: An introduction to the translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens, trans. Zohn H. In: VenutiL (eds) The Translation Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, pp. 75–82.
12.
BourdieuPWacquantL (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
13.
ChunE (2001) The construction of white, black, and Korean American identities through African American Vernacular English. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology11(1): 52–64.
14.
ChurchillCJJr (2005) Ethnography as translation. Qualitative Sociology28(1): 3–24.
15.
CicourelAV (1980) Language and social interaction: Philosophical and empirical issues. Sociological Inquiry50(3/4): 1–30.
16.
CicourelAV (2003) On contextualizing applied linguistic research in the workplace. Applied Linguistics24(3): 360–373.
17.
CliffordJ (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
18.
CloughPT (1998) The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism, New York: Peter Lang.
19.
CutlerC (2003) ‘Keepin’ it real’: White hip-hoppers’ discourses of language, race, and authenticity. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology13(2): 211–233.
20.
DaviesA (2003) The Native Speaker: Myth and Reality, Trowbridge: Cromwell Press Ltd.
21.
DaviesPMehanH (2007) Aaron Cicourel’s contributions to language use, theory, method, and measurement. Text and Talk27(5/6): 595–610.
GeertzC (2001 [1973]) Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In: EmersonRM (eds) Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations, 2nd edn. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, pp. 55–75.
32.
GubriumJFHolsteinJA (1997) The New Language of Qualitative Method, New York: Oxford University Press.
33.
GumperzJ (1968) The speech community. In: DurantiA (eds) Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–73.
34.
Gutiérrez Rodríguez E (2006) Translating positionality: On post-colonial conjunctures and transversal understanding. In: Beyond Culture: The Politics of Translation Research Project: Under Translation, June 2006. Available at: http://translate.eipcp.net/transversal/0606/gutierrez-rodriguez/en (accessed 28 January 2010).
35.
HammersleyM (1992) What’s Wrong with Ethnography? Methodological Explanations, New York: Routledge.
36.
HanksWF (2005) Pierre Bourdieu and the practices of language. Annual Review of Anthropology34: 67–83.
37.
HeathSB (1978) Social history and sociolinguistics. The American Sociologist13(May): 84–92.
38.
Jacobs-HueyL (2002) The natives are gazing and talking back: Reviewing the problematics of positionality, voice, and accountability among ‘native’ anthropologists. American Anthropologist104(3): 791–804.
39.
KasinitzP (2011) The best of (ethnographic) times is now. Sociological Forum26(4): 950–951.
40.
KatzJ (1997) Ethnography’s warrants. Sociological Methods and Research25(4): 391–423.
41.
KirklandDJacksonA (2008) Beyond the silence: Instructional approaches and students’ attitudes. In: ScottJStrakerDYKatzL (eds) Affirming Students’ Right to Their Own Language: Bridging Educational Policies and Language/Language Arts Teaching Practices, Champagne/Urbana, IL: NCTE/LEA, pp. 136–154.
42.
KirklandDEJacksonA (2009) ‘We real cool’: Toward a theory of black masculine literacies. Reading Research Quarterly44(3): 278–297.
43.
KramschC (1997) The privilege of the nonnative speaker. The Modern Language Association of America112(3): 359–369.
44.
LabovW (1972) Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
45.
LabovW (1982) Objectivity and commitment in linguistic science: The case of the Black English trial in Ann Arbor. Language in Society11: 165–202.
46.
LabovW (1998) Co-existent systems in African-American Vernacular English. In: MufweneSSRickfordJRBaileyGBaughG (eds) African American English: Structure, History, and Use, New York: Routledge, pp. 10–153.
47.
LabovW (2001) Applying our knowledge of African American English to the problem of raising reading levels in inner-city schools. In: LaneharS (eds) African American English: State of the Art, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, pp. 299–318.
48.
LabovW (2010) Unendangered dialect, endangered people: The case of African American Vernacular English. Transforming Anthropology18(1): 15–28.
49.
MedgyesP (2001) When the teacher is a non-native speaker. In: Celce-MurciaM (eds) Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, Boston: Heinle & Heinle, pp. 429–442.
50.
MahiriJ (2004) What They Don’t Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth, New York: Peter Lang.
51.
Masi de Casanova E (2010) Ethnographic border crossings: Translating Latin American lives. Presentation given at the Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting, Boston, MA.
52.
Masi de Casanova E and Mose Brown T (manuscript in progress) Ethnography as translation, translation in ethnography: The case of Latin American Studies.
53.
MertonRK (1972) Insiders and outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge. American Journal of Sociology78(1): 9–47.
54.
Mose BrownTMasi de CasanovaE (2009) Mothers in the field: How motherhood shapes fieldwork and researcher-subject relations. Women’s Studies Quarterly37(3&4): 42–57.
55.
MufweneSSRickfordJRBaileyGBaughJ (1998) African American English: Structure, History, and Use, New York: Routledge.
56.
OrtizR (2009) La Supremacía del Inglés en las ciencias sociales, Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
57.
PaikedayTM (2003) The Native Speaker is Dead!, Brampton, ON: Lexicography Inc.
58.
ParisD (2009) ‘They’re in my culture, they speak the same way’: African American language in multiethnic high schools. Harvard Educational Review79(3): 428–447.
59.
Pattillo-McCoyM (2000) Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
60.
PillerI (2002) Passing for a native speaker: Identity and success in second language learning. Journal of Sociolinguistics6(2): 179–206.
61.
RobertsJTHardenT (1997) Native or non-native speakers teachers of foreign languages? Old and new perspectives on the debate. The Irish Yearbook of Applied Linguistics17: 1–28.
62.
SadovnikAR (2001) Profiles of famous educators: Basil Bernstein (1924–2000). Prospects31(4): 607–620.
63.
SpearsA (1982) The Black English semi-auxiliary come. Language58(4): 850–872.
64.
VenkateshSA (2002) American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
65.
WacquantL (2000) Corps et âme: Canets ethnographiques d’un apprenti boxeur, Marseilles and Montreal: Agone, Comeau & Nadeau.
66.
WacquantL (2003) Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, New York: Oxford University Press.
67.
WhorfBL (1987) Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, ed, Carroll JB. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
