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blog 8

blog subject:

Do an ethnographic interview.

Advice from an ej in Asia:

"...often I am not able to ask each individual question (because my language isn't that advanced) so I try to come up with the broad topic and steer the conversation in certain directions to try to cover the questions.  I think in some ways this is also less intrusive because the person feels they can talk freely and often I find out a lot of things "by chance" because of the natural flow of talking rather than hammering at getting specific answers to each question.  Anyway, this is how it has worked for me.  Probably as my language progresses I'll be able to ask more specific questions and go over the stuff that I've found out already, find the holes and keep working at filling them in (or re-working what I've already written). I just finished reading a great book on Buddhism combined with a look at the cultural structure and society of the people group I am working with and I found that the author referred to a number of rituals that I had been told about.  Very encouraging because I must have understood correctly!  (I find that I'm always having to re-question and then re-write stuff because maybe I didn't understand something accurately, but that's all part of the learning process, right?!"

reading:

Ethnographic descriptions and interviews