Assignment # 1: Introductions

Anthropology 33:Culture and Communication

Syllabus for Anthropology 33

Instructor: Prof. Alessandro Duranti

[Updated Jan 22, 2006, 10am]

Goal

This assignment is designed to get students to analyze video recorded interactions. It simulates the kind of problem-solving that researchers on culture and communication engage in when analyzing video recorded material. The activity you will be examining can be thought of as a cultural activity, that is, something that people in a particular community do and need to be socialized to (e.g. through participation, observation, explicit instruction, or implicit modeling). It might be something that is also found in other communities and in other languages. But we do not know until we go and look. Before we go and look for what happens elsewhere, we need a good description of what happens in the DATA that we have at our disposal.

Procedure

You will review 15 video clips taken from a large corpus of audio-visual material recorded by Alessandro Duranti during the 1995-96 political campaign for the U.S. Congress in the Santa Barbara-San Luis Obispo district (what at the time was the 22nd district of the State of California - districts have been redrawn since then). You will also have access to rough transcripts of all the video segments (in some cases the transcripts might need to be slightly revised). The final goal of the assignment as a research project is for you to propose a series of generalizations about introductions. This means that once you are done with the assignment, (a) you should know more about introductions than when you started, (b) what you have learned should be of potential use to others who are interested in similar phenomena, e.g. students of American politics, or of debates, or of how social identities are formed, and (c) others should be able to understand your analysis and be able to test your description and your hypotheses.

Directions for analysis

A First Observation. In looking at the 15 segments or just by reading the transcripts, one realizes that one of the activities that participants are engaged in is to introduce other people or to introduce themselves. This does not mean that everyone introduces everyone else or that all people introduce someone else. But there is a fair amount of "introducing" that goes on (in addition to other kinds of social activities also done through language, like, for instance, "thanking" or talking about places and family members). You will be asked to focus on such "introductions."

How do we know that there is "introducing" going on? First of all, we do find a couple of people referring to the activity itself. For example, in Segment 8, the Moderator says "At this time I would introduce Mr. Porter ...", which is both a description and an instantiation of the act of introducing (just like when people say "I would like to thank so-and-so," which is a way of saying "thanks" to so-and-so). And in Segment 9, Mr. Bersohn says "I'll give you a short introduction to myself." But looking for the word introduction or some form of the verb introduce might not very productive for finding examples of "introductions." For example, in Segment 1, the speaker says "I'm Irene Harter ..." This seems a good candidate for an introduction even though the term "introduction" is not used. Similarly, when the moderator says "Our- third speaker is:- representative Andrea Seastrand," one could argue that this is understood by the audience as an introduction, although it is a bit different (it will be up to you to decide whether this difference constitutes a different TYPE).

First Task: Find examples in the data. Think of the 15 clips plus their transcripts and the contextual information provided here and elsewhere on my web pages as the DATA. On the basis of such data, you need to find examples of a particular TYPE of activity, namely, introductions. The first task is to identify and list ALL the cases (tokens) in the data of what you interpret as introductions (TYPE). To do this, you need to go to introductions, and carefully look at the 15 clips and their (rough) transcripts.

Second task: Provide a definition of the phenomenon under investigation. On the basis of your exhaustive list of "introductions" provide a definition , i.e. provide an answer to the question "what's an introduction (in the available data)?" Your answer should include (1) a structural description , that is, a description of what an introduction looks or sounds like in English (given that the transcript is a visual version of something that was said), e.g. My name is + NAME, and (2) a hypothesis to explain what "introductions" (of the kinds found in your data) do, i.e. what they are used for. There are different ways of doing (1) and (2). For (1), you might just list the types of sentences used by moderators or candidates. For (2), you might want to consider what happens BEFORE or AFTER introductions are done (or, rather, what happens before or after what you defined as introductions). This is the time to think about whether introductions are consequences or responses to some previous activity or they are themselves activities that have certain effects or consequences, e.g. do they bring about further activities of a particular kind? Are they the pre-requisite for something else to happen? What, exactly? (In all of your answer, remember to support your claims with examples from the corpus of data you have, including the examples that do not fit in your definition).

In providing (1) and (2), it might help to think of what you are doing as instructions for someone who is from another culture and would like to learn how to do introductions in English (in this particular type of event).

Third task: Find out if there is a native theory of introductions and compare your definition (second task) with such a theory. Check your hypothesis about what introductions look like and do with people who are not part of the class. Find at least two people (outside of the class) to whom you can explain WHAT you are looking at WITHOUT telling them that you call these phenomena "introductions" (i.e. give clear examples of what you are looking at) and then ask them (1) what they would call such things and (2) whether they have any ideas about what these things (what you call introductions) are for. This should allow you to find out whether the people you are talking to have their own theory, what we might call a native theory of the same verbal activity that you have been analyzing. Write up the result of this third task. Make sure to (a) explain how you carried out the task (200 words max.), (b) describe the native definition (200 words max.), and (c) discuss what you can learn from this comparison (200 words max.) (N.B. This is the only part of the assignment for which there is a restriction on the number of words to be used)

Fourth task: How strong is your analysis? On the basis of your definition (see Task # 2 above), look for exceptions, more specifically look for (and list) (a) cases that sound like an introduction but do not fit with your description, and (b) cases where you would expect an introduction but you DO NOT find it (e.g. are there cases where a candidate does not introduce himself or herself?). Propose a hypothesis on why there are such exceptions and a plan of action for testing your hypothesis (i.e. suggest what you would do next if you needed to test your hypothesis, e.g. you would need to know what?).

Instructions for completing the analysis and turning in the assignment:

This assignment should be done in a GROUP, with all members (no more than 4) from the same section (all exceptions must be negotiated and approved by your TA prior to the completion of the assignment). Working in a group will hopefully allow you to pool resources and gain from each other's insights.

You are NOT being asked to write a paper. Restrict your writing to observations, classifications, generalizations, and hypotheses. Do not waste words with fancy introductions or other rhetorical devices that do not have anything to do with what this assignment is about. Again, this is NOT a paper. Think of it as a REPORT on what you were able to see, hear and find out about a particular cultural activity that characterizes political debates in the U.S.

Hand in to your TA a typed (double spaced) version of your analysis. Make sure to write the first and last name of ALL members of your group on top of ALL pages. Divide up the assignment according to the 5 tasks described above..

To view the video clips for this assignment, go to introductions