CHAPTER 3: Methodology
3.1 Ethnolinguistics and participant observation methodology
Research in ethnolinguistics, into which category the present study falls, aims to provide an understanding of the role played by language in different societies and cultures through the study of actual language use in context, that is, language studied within the natural social and/or cultural environments of its speakers (§2.3.1). Ethnolinguistics is, therefore, very much “a matter of ethnography of settings, situations, events, roles, groups, in complex societies” (Hymes 1974:79). As ethnographers of language, ethnolinguists make extensive use of ethnographic or field research methods in carrying out their work. The primary research technique of ethnography is participant observation. (The terms “participant observation”, “ethnography” and “field research” are often used synonymously.) The primary goal of participant observation is to study people through direct interaction and participation with them in their natural social and cultural settings, in order to gain an understanding of their worlds, and to be able to describe these worlds from an insider’s perspective (Duranti 1997:89; Neuman 1997:346); this as opposed to observing people from a distance and/or in artificial, simulated environments.
Researchers engaging in participant observation usually gain access as ‘outsiders’ into culturally-unfamiliar communities in which, ideally, they spend a considerable amount of time learning about, and becoming involved, i.e. participating, in everyday community life.
This participation typically requires researchers to develop social roles for themselves within the groups concerned, by forming personal relationships with individual group members and partaking in various community activities (Marshall & Rossman 1989; Johnstone 2000). In this way, researchers achieve some degree of immersion in the sociocultural environments of the communities (Marshall & Rossman 1989; Duranti 1997), and it is from this position that they make their observations regarding the social and/or cultural phenomenon that they are investigating. It is argued that, by participating in mundane, day-to-day community life, researchers begin to hear, see, and experience, reality as the local people themselves do (Marshall & Rossman 1989:79), so that the data collected in any specific cultural setting
39 reflects, at least to some extent, a native perspective; this is often referred to nowadays as the
‘emic’ view (Geertz 1983:56; Duranti 1997:85; Stocking 1983 cited in Johnstone 2000:81).
3.1.1 Participant observation and the ‘problem’ of local knowledge
The credibility of participant observation methodology, as it relates to ethnographic studies of tribal cultures, has been challenged in recent years as issues surrounding the decolonization of indigenous peoples in many parts of the world have become focal points of discussion and debate in both western and non-western scholarly circles (e.g. Cajete 1994; Deloria 1997;
Cooper 1998; Fixico 2003; Bastien 2004; Doxater 2004; Simpson 2004; Wilson 2004). In particular, the approach has been criticised for maintaining a bias towards imperialistic attitudes in terms of the nature of the relationship between western researchers and the indigenous peoples whose cultures are being studied (Johnstone 2000:82). One of the primary assumptions underlying such attitudes is the notion that western knowledge is “real”
knowledge, and therefore the standard against which all other knowledge must be evaluated, whilst indigenous, or local, knowledge represents primitive, irrational, subjective, and non- literate, orientations to the natural world (Cajete 1994:194; Deloria 1997; Cooper 1998:186;
Doxater 2004:618,19; Simpson 2004:373,74; Wilson 2004:359). This has led to the faulty surmise that western scholars engaged in the study of non-western, or tribal, communities possess a better understanding, and can therefore provide more authoritative accounts, of the traditional cultures of these communities, than the community members themselves (Deloria 1997:34).
The underlying problem is that the epistemologies of western science and tribal traditions differ in terms of how data is gathered and interpreted; for example, tribal knowledge systematically mixes a wide range of facts and experiences, including individual experiences, dreams, visions, prophecies, collective community wisdom, as well as information received from birds, animals, and plants, that western science would separate by artificial categories or simply discard altogether on the basis that it is primitive, subjective, illusory, or delusive (Deloria et.al. 1999:66-67). Tribal wisdom has thus not only been considered irrelevant to western science, but it has also been ignored by many western researchers seeking to explain phenomena occurring within the context of the native cultural systems themselves (Cajete 1994; Cooper 1998; Deloria 1997; Deloria et. al. 1999; Doxater 2004; Simpson 2004; Wilson 2004). This means that data collected in tribal communities have been extracted and
40 abstracted from their indigenous cultural contexts, and then placed within interpretative frameworks that are constructed on the basis of western epistemologies.
The view that non-western epistemologies are irrelevant to the modern world and are inferior to western knowledge systems (Wilson 2004:359) presents somewhat of a dilemma for the participant observer approach. The issue is this: if indigenous ways of thinking are deemed to be subjective, nonsensical, and based on superstition, then the data obtained through researchers’ sharing in the real experiences of their subjects—experiences that are rooted in and shaped by local bodies of knowledge—must be interpreted independently of cultural context, so that the analysis can make sense to a non-native audience and, more importantly, conform to the standards of western social science scholarship. In this regard, Bastien (2004:158) has commented that “the experiences of tribal people continue to be interpreted by Eurocentred thinkers who…are interpreting tribal experiences from their own Eurocentred perspective…distancing and isolating them as “culturally other”. In addition, they advance the notion that the Eurocentred analysis of tribal people has universal application, thus legitimizing the overall interpretation of deficiency.” Thus, ironically, whilst the aim of participant observation is to gain an insider’s view of whatever cultural phenomenon is being investigated, it would appear that the value of the local knowledge that is essential to providing this perspective has typically been undermined, or even ignored, once the data has been extracted (or abstracted) from its natural setting. This means that the results of such studies might reflect more about the researcher’s opinion about the phenomenon in question than what the latter really means to the community within which it occurs (Holland 2006:111).
The criticisms that have been levelled against western-centered ethnography, in general, and participant observation field methodology, in particular, became a reality to me through my personal, face-to-face interactions with people in the Kainai community. For instance, the first time I met with Frank Weasel Head, in March of 2005, he said to me: “Come back and live with us; spend time with us, learn about us, about our ways, about who we are.” I will also never forget Kainai elder Adam Delaney’s words to me after an interview I had with him in September, 2006: “One thing I would ask of you, that you try and use this [knowledge] in the right way.” I have come to realise that it would not have been necessary for Frank and Adam to make such comments if western scholars had not in the past, for the sake of conforming to the prescribed standards of Western academia, produced descriptions of
41 Niitsitapi cultural ways that have either ignored, or misinterpreted, what the Niitsitapi people have to say about themselves from their own unique cultural perspective.
3.2 Towards an alternative approach: using local knowledge as an interpretative