Applying ethnographic perspectives to issues in cross-cultural pragmatics

ELSEVIER

Journal of Pragmatics 30 (1998) 399--419

Applying ethnographic perspectives to issues in cross-cultural pragmatics K a t h r y n A. D a v i s a and R o s e m a r y C. H e n z e b . Department of ESL, University of Hawai'i, 1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA Art, Research and Curriculum Associates, 1212 Broadway Street, Suite 400. Oakland, CA 94612, USA

Received 21 August 1995; revised version 30 November 1997

Abstract Although a relationship naturally exists between ethnography and cross-cultural pragmatics, this relationship has not been fully explored. The purposes of this paper are to clarify the assumptions underlying ethnography and to suggest ways in which issues in cross-cultural pragmatics (CCP) can be approached from an ethnographic perspective. To this end, we examine the philosophy, goals, and methods that underlie ethnographic work. We then provide two illustrations of how an ethnographer examines issues in CCP, specifically, second language education and cross-cultural communication in the workplace. Finally, we offer suggestions as to how CCP researchers might best go about integrating ethnographic methods in their work.

1. Introduction We are entering an era in which many of us no longer consider cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration unusual. After several decades of increasing specialization and isolation, researchers from various disciplines are coming together to study human behavior in all its complexity. In the behavioral sciences, as journals and working groups on many projects suggest, it is becoming common to see, for example, psychologists, educators, linguists, and anthropologists sharing perspectives and enriching each others' scope and vision of human behavior. It is in this context of interdisciplinary research that applied linguists and others conducting studies in the area of cross-cultural pragmatics (CCP) are working with ethnographers (who describe and interpret cultural behavior, including patterns of social interaction) with the mutual goal of increasing our understanding of issues in cross-cultural communication. Although we feel that a relationship naturally exists between ethnography and CCP, we view that relationship as currently murky and underspecified. The purposes of this paper are to clarify the assumptions 0378-2166/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII S0378-2166(98)00010-1

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underlying ethnography and to suggest ways in which issues in cross-cultural pragmatics - for example, teaching L2 pragmatic competence or facilitating intercultural communication in the workplace - can be approached from an ethnographic perspective. CCP has done much to enhance our understanding of speech acts across cultures, highlighting both the universality of certain language functions (such as promising, requesting, etc.) and the cultural specificity of forms used to accomplish these functions. However, a weakness in CCP which is acknowledged by CCP researchers as well as others, is that the results tend to be interpreted without recourse to underlying cultural meanings. Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) suggest that "to understand how interactional styles form a part of a culture's ethos and determine the meanings attached to communication, we would need to enrich our studies of observed behavior by studies of perceptions of linguistic behavior ... that similar choices of directness levels, for example, carry culturally differentiated meanings for members of different cultures" (1989: 24). Saville-Troike (1989) similarly notes, "[t]here are differences in perspective and scope which separate the fields of ethnography of communication and speech act theory or pragmatics. Among these are the latter's primary focus on form ... For ethnographers, on the other hand, an emphasis on meaning is paramount" (1989: 15). But what, one might ask, does an emphasis on meaning look like? The following sections of our paper will explain and illustrate this somewhat nebulous concept. First, we examine the philosophy, goals, and methods that underlie much ethnographic work. Then we provide two illustrations of how an ethnographer examines issues in CCP, specifically, second language education and cross-cultural communication in the workplace. Finally, we offer suggestions as to how CCP researchers might best go about integrating ethnographic methods in their work.

2. Philosophy, methods, and goals of ethnography Ethnography originated in anthropology and is a whole cluster of methods for gathering data, analyzing, interpreting, and writing about a group of people who are considered a cultural unit in terms of their day-to-day interactions, t Given that ethnography is primarily a qualitative approach to the study of culture, many ethnographers also employ quantitative methods as part of their studies. Although ethnographers differ in the degree to which they use particular methods and in the conceptual frameworks they draw on in analyzing and interpreting data, certain r This is not to say that all individuals within any culture or sub-culture share all attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. On the contrary, a central task for ethnographers is to determine a cultural group according to patterns of the particular attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors shared among members. For example, teachers working within one school may share particular attitudes concerning the reasons for school failure, but differ considerably in terms of teaching methods, religious beliefs, and expectations for male/female relations. It is the degree and nature of shared attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors across teachers, as well as the fact that they interact on a daily basis, which can define the school as a cultural group.

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a s s u m p t i o n s and practices are w i d e l y shared a m o n g current ethnographers. These include: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

a b e l i e f that realities are multiple, constructed, and holistic an overt recognition o f the r e s e a r c h e r ' s o w n positionality a c o n c e r n with d o c u m e n t i n g variation and cultural change across a c o m m u n i t y p r o l o n g e d e n g a g e m e n t and persistent observation triangulation o f data sources working hypotheses thick description a p p l i c a t i o n o f research findings to address social issues

A s is true o f any c o m m u n i t y , ethnographers differentiate t h e m s e l v e s into m a n y groups, including (but not limited to) ethnographers o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n , educational ethnographers, and critical ethnographers. S o m e o f these designations refer s i m p l y to an interest area while others, such as critical ethnography, are not so m u c h about a specific interest area but m o r e about o n e ' s philosophy. W e will return to this point a bit later. F o r the p u r p o s e s o f this paper, we will focus on the two types o f ethnography m o s t closely related to C C P concerns - e t h n o g r a p h y of c o m m u n i c a t i o n , which e x a m i n e s c o m m u n i c a t i o n (nonverbal as well as verbal) from a sociocultural perspective, and educational ethnography, which e x a m i n e s learning (in both formal and informal contexts) from a sociocultural perspective. Each o f these areas has a rich history g r o w i n g out o f a n t h r o p o l o g y as well as other disciplines. 2 F o l l o w i n g is a discussion o f s o m e o f the c o m m o n characteristics o f ethnography.

2.1. A belief that realities are multiple, constructed, and holistic S o m e C C P research has suggested the v i e w that reality is single, tangible, and fragmentable. This v i e w is e x e m p l i f i e d in the external d e v e l o p m e n t and interpreta-

2 Ethnography of communication was formalized in the early 1970s by anthropologically oriented linguists, notably Hymes (1974), in reaction to prevailing psycholinguistic models based on the notion of an 'ideal speaker-hearer' in a 'completely homogeneous speech-community' (Chomsky 1965: 3). Hymes noted that "[1]inguistic theory treats of competence in terms of the child's acquisition of the ability to produce, understand, and discriminate any and all of the grammatical sentences of a language" (1972: 75). Contrary to this view of language as a strictly mental process, Hymes argues that "[w]ithin the social matrix in which it acquires a system of grammar a child acquires also a system of its use, regarding persons, places, purposes, other modes of communication, etc. - all the components of communicative events, together with attitudes and beliefs regarding them" (1972: 75). Based on this theory of communicative competence, Hymes developed the ethnography of communication approach aimed at exploring language use and acquisition within individual sociocultural communities. Educational ethnography (also known as educational anthropology, or anthropology of education) came of age in the 50's-70's when anthropologists such as the Spindlers (1959, 1963), Wolcott (1975), and McDermott (1976) began to make schooling the focus of their anthropological work. Up until this time, the study of schooling was primarily the province of educational psychologists, but psychological methods left large gaps in our understanding of schooling, particularly in terms of getting at why certain groups of students experience such disproportionate levels of failure.

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tion of discrete categories and frameworks, known in ethnographic work as 'etic' frameworks. Pragmatics researchers generally tend to focus on specific speech acts or, from a wider perspective, on discourse, whereas an ethnographic approach would take the social group as the primary 'unit' of analysis and the communication they produce as just one aspect of their culture at a given point in time. For example, cross-cultural pragmatics studies may focus on politeness (Kasper, 1992), requests (Weizman, 1985), directives (Ervin-Tripp, 1976), or compliments (Wolfson, 1981). This is not to say that context or social situation are ignored, or that the speakers' and hearers' identities do not matter (e.g. Goffman, 1967; Lakoff, 1974), but they are not the primary focus of the investigation. Ethnographers, on the other hand, start with the belief that realities are multiple, constructed, and holistic. The focus on a community and its members leads to a search for their internal (emic) perspective. It is important for the ethnographer not to impose her/his own categorization scheme, but rather to listen to how the members of the group themselves differentiate their ways of speaking. A trademark of ethnography is the use of the group's own language (rather than the ethnographer's language) in the terms that identify different descriptive categories. This circumvents the tendency of readers of research studies to interpret familiar words according to their own schemata. English speaking readers, for example, are much more likely to pay attention to the cultural nuances of a behavior among Greeks if it is called 'mangeia' than if it is called its English cousin, 'teasing' (Henze, 1992). Given that reality is viewed as a multiple set of mental constructions, ethnographers attempt to demonstrate that their reconstructions, in the form of findings and interpretations, are credible to those being studied. Attempts to establish this emic perspective are enhanced through the ethnographic procedures of prolonged engagement, persistent observation, and triangulation. 2.2. An overt recognition of the researcher's own positionali~

Along with the concept that social and cultural realities are constructed by the people who live them, ethnographers cannot leave themselves out of the picture as if they were totally objective or unbiased. Current ethnographic writing acknowledges the ethnographer's own position and the fact that "neither ethnographers nor their subjects hold a monopoly on the truth" (Rosaldo, 1989). The difference, of course, between everyday constructions and ethnographic constructions, is that ethnographers have been specially trained to be systematic in their observations, to record data and to check it out thoroughly before making strong claims as to its meaning. To begin the process of self examination, ethnographers are encouraged to bring their own assumptions to light as they prepare for fieldwork. This serves two functions: (1) it allows others (i.e., future readers of the ethnography) to see 'where the researcher is coming from'; and (2) it allows the ethnographer to reflect on the 'baggage' she/he is carrying into the field. The baggage may include biases that need to be checked against the actual data (for example, an expectation of quiet students not being interested in learning); the specific relationships one has with people in the community and how these relationships structure who and what knowledge one has

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access to; gender or other social roles that the community expects of the researcher; and any philosophical or methodological approaches that shape the kinds of data she/he is able to gather. The concern with articulating one's position as ethnographer is relatively recent. Most ethnographies prior to the 1980s assumed an objective eye and left musings about the researcher's own roles out of any published ethnographic writing. Self reflection of this sort is sometimes prone to becoming 'navel gazing' and may result in losing the focus of the ethnography on describing and interpreting a sociocultural group. We suggest that a balance is necessary and that the intent and purpose of self reflection (i.e. to recognize the lenses through which we see so that others can better evaluate our ethnographic interpretations) remain in the front of our consciousness. 2.3. A concern with documenting variation and cultural change across a community

Ethnographers of communication seek to understand the communicative repertoires of the different subgroups within a community, as well as their relationship to the whole. Like cross-cultural pragmaticists, ethnographers are also concerned with discovering universals. However, rather than comparing pre-determined pragmatic categories across languages, ethnographers conduct in-depth research within communities in order to determine culture-specific categories. These community specific studies can then be used to compare findings across language communities. In other words, ethnological studies (cross-cultural comparisons) are conducted so as to build typologies through which culture-specific and universal features of communication can be determined. Eckert's ethnography of social categories and identity in a U.S. high school (1989) provides a good example of the emphasis on understanding variation within a community. The high school which she studied consisted of predominantly white, English speaking teenagers, yet she shows how youth themselves define their identity with reference to two cultural groups - 'jocks' and 'burnouts', who differ in many ways. "Perhaps the strongest evidence of the depth of the difference between Jocks and Burnouts lies in their use of language, including pragmatic features such as different greeting patterns" (1989: 67). Eckert's work shows us the importance of not assuming that pragmatic strategies bear a one-to-one relationship with languages or even cultures. It also reminds us that it takes time for outsiders to discover the social categories that matter and how they structure the ways people use language. Along with cultural variation in a community, ethnographers also have to assume cultural change. No living culture ever stands still, and the forms and processes of cultural invention are constantly in flux. Contact between different groups can speed up these changes, but even with minimal cross-cultural contact, change is the norm rather than the exception. Pragmatic strategies and their meanings thus are subject to these shifting cultural tides, and studies must acknowledge that findings may be true for a certain group today, but not necessarily tomorrow.

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2.4. Prolonged engagement and persistent observation

Ethnographies involve the investment of a sufficient amount of time to build trust with respondents, learn the culture to the extent possible, and test for misinformation introduced by both the researcher and researched. To enhance the credibility of research findings (Davis, 1992, 1995), ethnographic data collection typically requires approximately a year of living or working in a community. It is important to recognize the difference between using ethnographic techniques and conducting a full ethnography. An ethnography, because of the holistic knowledge gained from living in or spending large amounts of time with a community, gives one an understanding of the whole system, whereas the use of ethnographic techniques (such as informal interviewing, participant observation) can be applied to many other types of research. It would be a misrepresentation, however, to call such a study an ethnography simply because it borrows a few techniques. 2.5. Triangulation of data sources

The credibility of ethnographic studies is further ensured through the use of multiple sources, methods, and investigators. This convergence of methods is called triangulation and may involve the use of multiple copies of one type of source (e.g., interviewing different respondents), different sources for the same information (e.g., interviews and documents), and use of different investigators. However, the most common practice is to triangulate through different methods such as interviewing, observation, questionnaires, and documents. Ethnographers generally follow a cyclical process of collecting data through triangulation, formulating hypotheses, and testing those hypotheses in continuing data collection. Much of the ethnographic field work literature is devoted to how the researcher goes about conducting participant observation (e.g. Agar, 1980; Spradley, 1980). Essentially, during participant observation, the ethnographer tries to map out the different kinds of communication situations that people in the community under study participate in. These situations include any and all formal and informal speech events within the community; some possible examples are various sorts of ritualized communication (e.g. church services, ceremonies), communication during games and sports, intimate communication, public speaking, talking (or not talking) with children, and workplace communication. The ethnographer then creates hypotheses about expectations for language and social behavior within the community. At this point, the ethnographer engages in further more focused observations and conducts interviews in order to determine the credibility of these hypotheses. This data collection may confirm hypotheses, but it may also result in alteration or creation of new hypotheses. This cyclical process continues until redundancy is achieved, i.e., the researcher has sufficient repetition of communication patterns to feel a degree of confidence in the salience of these patterns for members of the community.

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2.6. Working hypotheses

Ethnographers feel that in assuming multiple realities and the centrality of context, only working hypotheses, or what is commonly known as grounded theories, may be abstracted from the study? In addition, the degree to which working hypotheses can transfer to other times and contexts is an empirical matter, depending on the degree of similarity between contexts. A clear example of grounded theory is found in Heath's (1983) ethnographic study of three communities in the Piedmont Carolinas. After identifying the language and literacy uses and expectations within a working class Black community (Trackton), a working class White community (Roadville), and the townspeople made up of Black and White middle-class individuals communities, Heath investigated classroom interaction in terms of differences in language use expectations. Heath (1983) hypothesized that differences between home and middle-class dominated school patterns of language behavior helped explain academic failure among working class children. Although Heath does not claim that the language and literacy uses within the communities described will match those of other communities, her working hypothesis (or grounded theory) suggests that students from different sociocultural milieus may experience academic difficulties due to differences between the language/cultural expectations of mainstream teachers and the expectations of non-mainstream students. Subsequent studies have supported this home-school difference theory, including Delgado-Gaitan's (1987) ethnographic investigation of language behaviors within a Latino community and local school. In addition, researchers (e.g., Davis, 1994; Philips, 1983; Delgado-Gaitan, 1987) have found similarities in patterns of interaction across middle-class communities in the U.S. and Europe. 2.7. Thick description

The researcher is expected to provide a 'thick description' (Geertz, 1973) of the community under study with sufficient details to allow the reader to determine whether transfer can be considered a possibility. The reader is expected to accumulate empirical evidence about the contextual similarity between the described situation and the situation in which transfer is to be applied. In the home-school difference case, Heath's detailed descriptions of communication break-downs between mainstream teachers and non-mainstream students suggested the possibility of communication breakdowns across other sociocultural groups. Heath found that, based on their socialization into pragmatic expectations within the mainstream community, 3 The ethnographic notion of 'working hypotheses' has often been misunderstood by quantitative researchers, some of whom interpret this concept in terms of viewing ethnographic reports as the starting point (creation of hypotheses) for their own 'serious' investigation. Rather, ethnographers believe that any and all research descriptions and interpretationsare subjective and, thus, do not support claims for the discovery of 'truth'. On the other hand, ethnographiesdo result in 'grounded theory' (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), i.e. theories about the nature of human behavior based on inductiveanalyses of data from a particular cultural group.

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teachers tended to use indirect requests for adherence to an unstated set of rules. These indirect requests included statements such as: Is this where the scissors belong? It's time to put our paints away now. - You want to do your best work today. Someone else is talking now; we'll have to wait. - We have visitors coming to the school this afternoon; we want our school to look nice. (Heath, 1983: 280) -

-

-

Because of their socialization into a different set of pragmatic expectations, children from Trackton and Roadville had difficulty interpreting these indirect requests. For example, the Roadville children were familiar with and responded to direct requests such as 'put your toys away', but were confused by and failed to respond to statements such as 'someone else is talking now; we'll have to wait'. 4 In addition to allowing for cross-cultural comparisons of teacher-student miscommunication, the explicit descriptions Heath provides of expected interactional behavior within the three communities allows for comparisons with similar communities across the U.S. and elsewhere. Researchers such as Davis (1994) and Delgado-Gaitan (1987) were able to utilize Heath's 'thick descriptions' in comparisons with data they gathered in Luxembourg and a Latino community, respectively. 2.8. Application of research findings to address social issues

A last point about ethnographic philosophical assumptions concerns applications of research findings. Ethnographies of communication and educational ethnographies often "attempt to valorize subordinate forms of knowledge" (Rosaldo, 1989: xviii). For example, in a study of second language learning, rather than valuing assimilation into the target culture through development of pragmatic competence in the target language, an educational ethnographer would most likely point out the consequences of pragmatic differences between language communities with unequal power and possibly suggest ways in which the native language might be strengthened and validated. If a hypothetical ethnography found non-mainstream and/or L2 speakers having trouble approximating pragmatic competence in the language of power, educational ethnographers would emphasize the need for gatekeepers such as teachers and employers to acknowledge the likelihood of miscommunication due to cross-cultural pragmatic differences and to make adaptations to their own discourse style, as well as helping students to understand how they might be more successful in mainstream communication situations. In Heath's study, teachers became ethnographers of their own language behavior as well as that of their students. Not only were teachers able to discontinue negative evaluations of students based on their own cultural expecta4 Delpit(1988), in discussing African Americanchildren's responses to White teachers, described similar patterns of miscommunication.

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tions, but they also altered their speech in order to accommodate the pragmatic expectations of students. Heath and others (e.g. Delpit, 1988) also advocate development of metalinguistic awareness among students. In other words, through studying variation in patterns of language use across situations, students acquire linguistic, including pragmatic, competence in the language of power; the language of power being either mainstream or that of the L2 context in which speakers are operating. In addition, ethnographers may suggest the relevance of findings not only to the classroom but also to whole schools and communities. Findings of educational ethnographies may influence such areas as teachers' communication with students and structuring of classroom discourse (e.g. Heath, 1983; Michaels and Collins, 1984); the organization of schools (e.g. Lipka, 1994); and the relationship between school and community (e.g. Lipka, 1994; Moll, 1992). In addition to acknowledging the influence of culture on behavior, ethnographic studies view behavior as contributing to the ongoing construction of culture, and thus to the continually changing nature of culture (Rosaldo, 1989). They tend to see their strength in encouraging teachers, school administrators, and others to consider other patterns of communication and other ways of teaching; or, in the case of Lipka's work with Yup'ik Eskimo teachers, encouraging native teachers to rediscover and implement their own indigenous ways of teaching and learning (Lipka, 1994).

3. Some examples from the field To demonstrate how ethnography can be utilized to gain an understanding of cross-cultural communication, we have drawn on our own ethnographic research and experiences. The first example is drawn from a language planning study of Luxembourg conducted by Davis (1994). The second example is a vignette of cross-cultural interaction within a work situation in which Henze was a participant-observer) 3.1. 'Learning H o w to B e h a v e '

The following description of the ways in which pragmatic features are acquired and used within communities comes from a larger ethnographic study conducted by Davis in the multilingual country of Luxembourg from 1986 to 1987. During this year, Davis lived in a working class neighborhood and collected ethnographic data on language interaction within lower, middle, and upper class communities ~ts well as within the schools serving these communities. Part of the study involved determining the degree languages such as Letzebuergesch, French, German, and English were integrated into community life. However, the data presented here will focus on the roles language abilities played in social life within different communities and at school. One of the salient language issues discovered in the study of social interaction in Luxembourg involved the nature of parent-child interaction in upper, middle, and 5 All names in the two examples(exceptRosemaryHenze's) are pseudonyms.

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lower class communities. It should be noted here that socioeconomic c o m m u n i t i e s were defined from an emic perspective, i.e., in terms of the ways in which L u x e m bourgers themselves made social class distinctions (see Davis, 1994; Chapter 3). Text 1 portrays expectations for interaction within an upper class c o m m u n i t y . 6 Text 1 Father: Diane: Father: Diane: Father: Diane: Father:

(L) Ah, kEnns de mer d~ii Buch weisen? (L) Yo. (L) A wat as dat do? (L) Eng Katz. (L) Yo, w6i eng Faarf huet d'Katz? (L) Schwaarz. (L) Ganz gut. Mir hu Katzen, gell? W6ivill Katzen hu mir? Erziel dem Kathy vun eise Katzen. Diane: (L) Ech hun eng d6ck w~iiss Katz ... do hannen. Kuck. T'as eng 16if Katz. Mais d6i aner Katz ... wou as se? Sie as net 16if. Sie huet mech gekratzt. Father: (L) Mais jo, mais du has sie ze fest ugepakt, gell? Hei, so mer wat dat hei as. Father: Diane: Father: Diane: Father: Diane: Father:

(L) Ah, can you show me the book? (L) Yes. (L) And what is that there? (L) A cat. (L) Yes, what color is the cat? (L) Black. (L) Very good. We have cats, don't we? How many cats do we have? Tell Kathy about our cats. Diane: (L) I have a big white cat ... over there. Look. He's a nice cat. But the other cat ... where is he? He's not nice. He scratched me. Father: (L) Oh yes, but you held him too hard, didn't you? Here, tell me what this is. In this dialogue, which occurred while reading a G e r m a n story book, the father asks questions requiring one-word responses, requests a description, makes a brief response to D i a n e ' s answer, and then turns back to the text. Children learn through these conversations that parents, and other adults, ask questions and children answer them. Middle class parents also socialize children into adult question-child response ways of interacting. In addition, both upper and middle class parents encourage story telling in the form of real events and in chronological order. In working class homes, parent-child native language interaction focuses on instrumental, imaginative, and interpersonal needs and purposes during the course of every day activities. Although language interaction b e t w e e n parents and children often involves instrumental purposes, 7 parents also engage in extended talk with 6 In transcribing dialogue and comments taken from interviews and observations in communities and classrooms, I have not provided either phonetic representations or speech conventions. These convenetions were not utilized since the purpose of dialogue and comments is to illustrate patterns of language or social behavior and values. Translations are provided as close as possible to the colloquial sense of the language. The language used is indicated by abbreviations in parentheses before the word, phrase, or sentence spoken or written: L = L~tzebuergesch, G = German. 7 Davisdefines instrumental purposes in terms of requests which serve to accomplish tasks, e.g., 'What do you want for dinner?' 'Pick up your toys now'.

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children through 'fantasy dialogues'. For example, one mother and son whom I called Marie and Joey, often engaged in imaginary conversations using toy soldiers. In the battle dramas they created together, there were good guys and bad guys and the good guys always won. However, beyond this basic script, all things were possible and Joey was allowed to fantasize without regard to truth or chronological sequencing of events. Not only are imaginative and interactional language functions central to working class parent-child relationships, but heuristic language is also encouraged. For example, while helping his father remodel the bathroom, Joey asked questions about the use of different tools, plumbing problems, and plans for tiling. Working class parents rarely ask children to display understanding through ' w h y ' and ' h o w ' questions, but instead expect them to perform those tasks learned through parent modeling and child questions. Thus, children learn that their use of contextualized questioning is an acceptable and necessary way in which to gain information. As in many Western schooling situations (e.g., Heath, 1983; Philips, 1983), classroom interaction in Luxembourg is based on middle class teacher expectations. Because of expectations for middle class ways of speaking, working class children are initially bewildered by the numerous and specific regulations imposed by teachers - and teachers are commonly annoyed that these children apparently lack awareness of 'normal' ways of behaving. For example, the child-centered nature of working class homes, which includes contextualized child questioning, often results in what the teacher would consider 'unruly' classroom behavior and inappropriate responses during lessons. Text 2 is an example of miscommunication which occurs between the teacher and several children during a first grade lesson on cats. Text 2 Pedro: Ms. Schmit: Many students: Ms. Schmit:

1 2 3 4 5 Pedro: 6 Ms. Schmit: 7 8 Pedro: 9 Alain: 10 Ms. Schmit: 11 12 Many students: 13 Ms. Schmit: 14 15 16 17 18 Many students: 19 Ms. Schmit: 20 21 22

(G) Er hat gute Tanzen. (G) Wie nennt man das? Das sind die ... ? (G) H~inde ... Tatzen ... (G) Tatzen. Keine Finger, es sind keine Hande. (G) Tatzen. Sie hat auch Krallen. (G) Ja, wo sind denn ihre Tatzen? Was hat sie an den Tatzen? (G) Die Nagel [incorrect pronunciation of'N~igel']. (G) Die Krallen. (G) Krallen, ja. Seid ihr schon jemals yon einer Katze gekratzt worden? (G) ich ... ich ... ich (G) Wenn ihr eine kleine Katze auf den Arm nehmt, und ihr nehmt sie an den Pullover, dann f~illt sie nicht herunter, dann bleibt sie h~ingen, wegen ihrer scharfen Krallen. (G) Joffer ... ich hab' ... ich ... etc. (L) Mir schw~itzen n~t all duurchern6n, soss verstin ~ch guer n~iischt m6i, mir weisen de Fanger.

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Alain: Ms. Schmit:

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Marcel:

Ms. Schmit:

Pedro: Ms. Schmit: Many students: Ms. Schmit:

1 2 3 4 5 Pedro: 6 Ms. Schmit: 7 8 Pedro: 9 10 Alain: Ms. Schmit: 11 12 Many students: 13 Ms. Schmit: 14 15 16 17 18 Many students: 19 Ms. Schmit: 20 21 22 Alain: 23 Ms. Schmit: 24 25 26 Marcel: 27 28 29 30 Marcel: 31

(L) Joffer! (L) A wat hun Ech gesot? Mit lauschteren och denen anere Kanner no. De Marcel schwfitzt elo. (L) Ech wollt emol an d'Schoul goen an do sin Ech bei e FrEnd gaangen an do woar eng Kaatz do, eng kleng, Ech wollt d6i emol kucken, Ech wosst net, dass sie geng kraatzen, do sin Ech dohi gaangen m6 sie huet mEch direkt gekraatzt. (writes on blackboard and repeats in German) Die scharfen Krallen. Aber wie sind diese Tatzen? Also, die Krallen sind scharf, aber wie sind diese Tatzen? Wenn ihr die Tatze einer Katze ftihlt, wie ist die? (G) He (incorrect gender) has good paws (incorrect pronunciation). (G) What do you call it? They are ...? (G) Hands ... Paws ... (G) Paws. No fingers, they are not hands. (G) Paws. It also has claws. (G) Yes, where are the paws? What has it got on its paws? (G) The nails [incorrect pronunciation of 'N~igel']. (G) The claws. (G) Claws, yes. Have you ever been scratched by a cat? (G) I have ... I have ... I have ... (G) If you take a little cat on your arms and you hold it against your sweater it will not fall down, it hangs on your sweater because of its sharp claws ... (G) Miss ... I have ... I ... etc. (L) We do not all talk together, otherwise I do not understand anything at all, we raise our hands. (L) Miss! (L) What did I say? We also listen to the other children speaking. Marcel will speak now. (L) Once I wanted to go to school and I went to a friend's and there was a cat there, a little one, I wanted to have a look at it, I didn't know it would scratch me and

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Ms. Schmit:

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so I went there and it scratched me right away ... (writes on the board and repeats in German) The sharp claws. (G) But how are these paws? The claws are sharp, but how are the paws? If you feel the paw of a cat, what is it like?

Miscommunication occurs at several points in this dialogue. First, Pedro fails to adhere to the expected teacher question-student response format expected by the teacher. In line 6 Pedro repeats the term 'paws' and then suggests that a cat 'also has claws'. Since this is a deviation from the teacher's question-answer expectations, in lines 7 and 8 Ms. Schmit ignores Pedro's suggestion and retakes control of classroom interaction by formalizing the question 'What has it got on its paws?'. Pedro thinks he has answered incorrectly and suggests another word, 'nails'. However, in lines 10 and 11 Alain manages to supply the correct word in the proper questionresponse format and, in this way, gains the teacher's approval. Another example of communication breakdown occurs in lines 14-18. Ms. Schmit asks the children if they have ever been scratched by a cat. However, the children fail to follow teacher expectations for one word answers (probably 'yes' or 'no') by all speaking at once about their experiences with cats. Ms. Schmit spends the next few minutes reminding children about classroom rules through indirect requests, i.e. 'we do not talk all at once' and 'we raise our hands'. However, Marcel still does not get it right. In lines 27 to 33, he tells a story rather than responding with a simple yes or no in German. Ms. Schmit then indirectly shows her disapproval by ignoring Marcel, writing 'sharp claws' on the blackboard, and trying once again with the question 'But how are these paws?' It should be pointed out that the lesson was mostly in German, the teacher is fluent in German and had spent and continues to spend a great deal of time in Germany. It would take another study to determine whether or not her expectations for interaction such as requests and questioning are reflected in German communities. What the example does illustrate is how miscommunication, or what might be called pragmatic failure on the part of children, occurs because of class differences in patterns of interaction. The consequences of this miscommunication are severe. The teachers and administrators interviewed generally view working class children as lacking in intelligence. Because they are not made explicit, the children continue to be confused by such expectations throughout their schooling and usually do poorly on examinations. In this and other ways, working class children eventually become working class adults. 3.2. Interpretations

The example of Luxembourg provided here represents only a small sample of the complex ways in which children from different communities are socialized into uses of one or more languages. In the final analysis, the pragmatic features which arose

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from the data were not associated with the language being used. Rather, pragmatic expectations were determined by the sociocultural norms for interaction within the community in which French, German, English and/or Letzebuergesch are spoken. Associations between languages and sociocultural expectations are generally interpreted differently by cross-cultural pragmatics researchers and ethnographers. From the perspective of a cross-cultural pragmatics researcher, the classroom dialogue presented here could be viewed more as case of children's limited German language abilities than as an example of cross-cultural miscommunication. Limited foreign language ability as well as issues of code-switching (between German and Letzebuergesch) are indeed suggested by the classroom example. However, the ethnographer is interested in the larger context of communication and, thus, views interpretation of cross-cultural interaction in terms of the total economy of language functions and uses within different communities, in this case the working class community of the children and middle class community of the teacher. Through this holistic perspective, the ethnographer compares the emically-determined features of one community with another to determine possible breakdowns in communication. Instead of taking the cross-cultural perspective of identifying features of pragmatic failure, ethnographers are more interested in how interlocutors interpret possible breakdowns in communication. In the case of the classroom interaction example, the ethnographer is concerned with the consequences of the ways in which pragmatic features such as requesting, questioning, and responding to questions are defined by, and deeply embedded in, sociocultural experiences. For example, the ethnographer sees the cultural embeddedness of pragmatic features creating largely unconscious expectations for performance which may have significant consequences for the various participants. Without an awareness of pragmatic variation, the teacher is likely to label the children as 'unintelligent' and 'badly behaved'; the children are initially confused and may internalize the teacher's negative evaluations. In framing cross-cultural communication in terms of pragmatic differences, ethnographic research findings suggest the power differential which exists between teacher and students as well as the negative consequences this power differential has for children's school and future economic opportunities. In cross-cultural pragmatics, one possible solution to pragmatic failure would be to teach the children mainstream pragmatic norms. However, from an educational ethnographer's perspective, some of the solutions to breaking the cycle of classroom miscommunication and working class academic failure lie in bringing about both teacher and student metalinguistic awareness, i.e. an awareness of the wide variety of linguistic, pragmatic, and stylistic norms available for choice and connected to particular language and social functions across communities and situations. The next example presents a different type of communicative situation, one which occurred within a work environment among adults from different cultural backgrounds. 3.3. 'Piece o f C a k e '

The following vignette describes a series of interactions that occurred in 1993 among a working group of three women. The women have many characteristics in

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common, though culturally they are quite different. Rosemary, the director of the team (and co-author of this paper), is an European-American woman in her 40's; Sandra is a Chicana in her 30's who grew up speaking Spanish in the home, but who is fully Spanish-English bilingual; Jenny is in her 40's and is Chinese, born in Hong Kong with Chinese as her first language, but also fully bilingual in Chinese and English. The three women all hold doctorates in Education from the same major university on the West Coast and, at the time this paper was written, had known each other for about 10 years, first as acquaintances and then as colleagues who in many ways leaned towards friendship, though they did not usually see each other outside of work contexts. All three worked for the same non-profit organization that specializes in improving educational opportunities for minority students, though Jenny worked there only on an occasional basis in addition to her regular teaching position in a community college. The three of them constituted a team whose primary purpose was to do research and evaluation of a multimedia curriculum development project that was being field-tested at a number of local school sites. They met on a regular basis every week or two to collaborate in the planning and implementation of upcoming tasks. The description that follows does not use verbatim discourse because these interactions were never tape-recorded. Thus, what follows is a reconstruction from Rosemary's fieldnotes, which include input from the other two team members. Over the time we've worked together, we have noticed some very interesting patterns in our communication which seem to be culturally influenced. The most salient of these surfaces appeared when I (as director) laid out the tasks we had agreed needed to be done next. My strategy in the past was to 'offer' the tasks to my colleagues and let them negotiate who would do what. I would usually take on whatever tasks were left over, or if a particular task fit my expertise more than that of the others, I would volunteer to do it. However, we all noticed that typically Jenny would defer to Sandra, saying something like, 'Would you like to do that one?' And Sandra would say something like, 'Sure, I can do that'. And the work would pile up on Sandra and Jenny would have very little to do. At one point, Jenny came to me privately and said, 'I hope you don't think I'm avoiding taking on work. It's just that I don't need the hours and I have the impression Sandra does need more hours'. I told Jenny that I didn't think it (Sandra's hours) was an issue, but the pattern continued anyway. Sandra came to me also, wanting to know if I had noticed anything weird and if I understood it. I explained to her what Jenny had said and told her what my response was. Then one day while I was driving somewhere with a colleague, who is also Chinese from Hong Kong, I described the situation and asked him what he thought was going on. He immediately said it was cultural, and that Jenny was just acting very Chinese. 'She doesn't want to appear grabby or assertive', he said. Later I talked to Sandra again and asked her if she thought I should (1) raise the issue in the team, or (2) quietly change my management style and start assigning tasks rather than offering them. She thought (2) would be better for now. So | did that, and things did work better, though the change was a little difficult for me

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because I felt I was more overtly using my power and acting more 'director-like', which I always felt uncomfortable about. Some time after this shift, Jenny and Teresa (another woman from our office) and I had lunch, and Jenny asked me to tell her how I would respond in the following situation: I ask Jenny to do a task, and Jenny gives a fairly long list of reasons why it might be difficult for her to complete the task on time, but at the end she says she will try. What would I think about her as a person and about whether the task would get done? I replied that knowing her, I wouldn't worry. I'd be fairly certain she'd complete the task. She explained how for her and for many Chinese people, excuses are needed as a protection against the slim possibility that they might not be able to come through. The agreement to do a task is viewed as a serious commitment, a promise in fact. They don't want to promise anything which has the remotest possibility of being unfulfilled. Teresa and I found this fascinating, and we also wondered how Sandra's style fits into this picture. I later talked with Sandra, and she sees herself as almost opposite in this regard. She generally says 'yes' or more precisely, 'Oh sure, that'll be a piece of cake' to most task offers and assignments in this context, and often finds herself cramming at the last minute to get things done because she has taken on more than she can realistically accomplish within the time frame. 'I would give excuses after the fact', she noted. Since all of these events transpired, we have talked as a threesome about these issues, and have learned a great deal about how to take care of our communication. We have each, through these discussions, developed a 'metalinguistic awareness' about our own and the other team members' pragmatic strategies. Sandra, with characteristic good humor, has even developed a signaling device, 'piece of cake', to indicate to the other two members that the pattern (or something related to it) is occurring. Ethnographers tend to use 'vignettes' of this sort a great deal. This one would be greatly enriched if it included actual excerpts of conversation. Vignettes provide the 'thick description' which ethnographers need to contextualize their findings, and which also allow other readers to judge how well the situation transfers to another context. Vignettes are usually preceded, as this one was, by some background information, and followed by an interpretation, or in some cases, several interpretations from different perspectives, reinforcing the notion that there are 'multiple realities' and many ways of viewing the same events. 3.4. Interpretations

What we see in this series of interactions is a complex web of different notions of commitment to complete a task, different pragmatic strategies to realize a speech act, power relations, and (fortunately for the participants) plenty of background knowledge to help them come to a better understanding of their miscommunication. In fact, the series of incidents are a good example of how an ethnographic approach

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with a focus on meaning can lead to mutually agreeable participant outcomes (i.e., improved understanding of each other's communication styles, and smoother working relations). Looking at the interactions from the perspective of cross-cultural pragmatics, one might interpret Sandra's and Jenny's responses to task assignments as pragmalinguistic failures because they mapped a different force onto their agreement to complete a task than did the team director (Thomas, 1983). Rosemary's behavior as 'taskmaster' in relation to Sandra and Jenny might be seen as a case of sociopragmatic failure in that she makes a mistaken judgment about the relative rights and obligations of a team director (Thomas, 1983). Jenny expected and preferred her to assign tasks, while Rosemary, as Jenny noted, has a 'liberal white female' approach which hinges on a belief that she should share the decision making process, making task assignments a matter of individual choice. Sandra would have preferred to select the tasks, but when it became obvious that this was not working, she opted for Rosemary to assign tasks instead. To an ethnographer of communication, however, the sociopragmatic/pragmalinguistic distinction would only be one interpretation, and an external one to be sure. More to the point would be the participants' meanings, for instance the fact that Jenny characterized her move as a promise, whereas Sandra characterized her 'piece of cake' as a statement of good intentions but not necessarily a promise: 'I assumed that trying my best was enough'. It is these meanings that tell us what the participants were trying to do and how they perceived the intentions of others. They also remind us that even when participants all speak one language fluently, they do not necessarily share the same pragmatic expectations. An ethnographer might also dig more deeply into the culturally based value systems that underlie the surface behaviors we see in the vignette. For instance, it may be that Sandra places greater value on making the interpersonal relationship smooth in the moment, as opposed to Jenny's valuing the promise at the expense of some momentary discomfort in the interpersonal relationship. Jenny may be willing to sacrifice comfort in the present in order to preserve future harmony; Sandra is not willing to forego the ease of present communication, even if it brings with it the possibility of difficulty later on. Rosemary's underlying value system regarding the confluence of collegiality and situationally different power relations would also be a fruitful area to explore. Through participant observation and triangulation of data sources, an ethnographer might uncover a deeper system of meaning that generates and explains the pragmatic choices these individuals make. Eventually, the patterns of this threesome would need to be compared to others of similar cultural backgrounds to see how far the patterns hold. Jenny pointed out, however, that these underlying values are difficult to uncover because for the most part they are unconscious: When I told you that I did not volunteer because I thought Sandra needed the hours, I was telling you my true concern; I had interpreted Sandra's willingness to take on tasks as her need for more work. However, what I did not realize at that point was that beyond my concern for her need, I was not aware of a deeper layer

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of values driving my hesitance to volunteer .... Part of it was my unwillingness to appear over-confident or assertive by volunteering. The other part I didn't realize until I found myself making prolonged explanations about my worry of not meeting the time-line. When I saw myself giving the string of reasons, I got in touch with my deeper urge of wanting to deliver what I had committed myself to and not to lose face in case I couldn't. Those concerns/values driving my actions were so spontaneous that it took my reflecting after the fact and discussing with others such as you and Teresa to pinpoint them. While Jenny characterized her behavior as being largely driven by implicit cultural values, Sandra was not convinced that a cultural explanation for her behavior was adequate. In particular, she felt that personality should be considered as a possible source of these differences as well as culture, and that even the cultural explanation would need to be further defined. In her case, and probably in Jenny's and Rosemary's as well, it is not enough to say that certain behaviors are influenced by Mexican American (or Chinese or 'mainstream' American) patterns; rather, each individual actually may be drawing on a number of different culturally-based repertoires. Sandra sees her own behavior in the team as a blend of her own personality and influences from Mexican-American, American, and university doctoral program norms for teamwork. Although the university doctoral program norms are presumably shared by all three participants, they are most likely interpreted and integrated differently depending on the individual sociocultural experiences of each participant. Although this particular examination of interaction was not part of a larger ethnography, it illustrates the approach an ethnographer would take. Essential in this approach is the focus on the meaning of behavior in context; the ethnographer's interpretations are often placed alongside those of the other actors in an effort to provide an interpretation that 'makes sense' to those involved. In terms of applications, some might favor teaching Sandra and Jenny a way to communicate agreement to a task according to middle class white American norms. This approach is based on assimilationist ideology, which sees mainstream norms as the 'target culture'. Ethnographers would lean more toward making all parties aware of the miscommunication and seeking a shared understanding of why it happened. Any changes in future behavior would be seen as a matter for negotiation among all concerned parties. In terms of wider applications, further ethnographic studies would be required to determine the extent to which these patterns vary within and across different social groups. The dangers of stereotyping based on limited information from a particular group would militate against broad generalizations.

4. Conclusions Through discussing the philosophies, methods, and goals underlying ethnography, and by providing two examples of ethnographers' realities, we have attempted to answer the questions of why and how ethnographic approaches might benefit CCP. It seems clear that ethnography holds promise for assisting CCP in discovering what

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is universal about communication and what is culturally specific. While CCP has provided insight into the surface realization of pragmatic features such as promising and requesting, the contribution of ethnography lies in uncovering the meaning system that underlies these pragmatic features. As we saw in the 'piece of cake' example, a particular interactional situation may elicit a promise for one group, whereas for another group the same interaction has nothing whatsoever to do with promises. In the Luxembourg example, the concept of requests had different meanings for the teacher and students. It is this different mapping of the concepts of 'promise' or 'request' that ethnographers are poised to uncover through their intensive time in the field and their triangulation of data sources. Because most people are unconscious of the cultural dimensions of language, elicitation instruments are unlikely to bring these insights to the surface. Participant observation of people in their natural setting is probably the surest way to grasp the subtleties of cultural meaning systems. Along similar lines, ethnographic approaches can help make the distinction between the pragmatic features of the language and the sociocultural features of the particular community in which a language is being used. Through these detailed analyses of communities, a clearer picture of universal as opposed to culture-specific pragmatic features can emerge. In addition, ethnographies are likely to point out variations in pragmatic norms within a community, thus adding greater precision and validity to pragmatic typologies and descriptions. It must be emphasized at this point that understanding the meaning system which underlies the pragmatic realizations of any particular community demands a holistic, emic approach in which the researcher devotes a sufficient amount of time (usually a year or more) to understand this meaning system. In other words, rather than focusing on specific predetermined pragmatic features, ethnographers attempt to determine the underlying meaning of those pragmatic features salient to the community within the sociocultural contexts in which they take place. Ethnographic techniques certainly may be used in a wide variety of ways, but use of these techniques does not constitute an ethnography. Rather, a study can only be considered an ethnography if it is based on ethnographic philosophy, goals, and methods as a synergistic whole. Another potential contribution ethnographers can make to CCP lies in the area of education. Researchers in cross-cultural pragmatics have tended to focus on what to teach (i.e. pragmatic competence in the target culture). However, educational ethnographers tend to see their strength in helping encourage teachers to consider other patterns of communication and ways to accommodate those patterns in classroom teaching. Heath's study and others (e.g. Watson-Gegeo, 1992) provide rich examples of how educational ethnography can change communication patterns (and particularly the discourse and participant structures of teaching) to make the classroom a more coherent place for students. The metalinguistic awareness that comes about through involvement in ethnographic studies (of teaching or of communication) can lead teachers in several directions. They may choose to change their own teaching style to fit more closely that of students' communities; they may choose to enlist students as ethnographers to go out themselves and study the ways of speaking in their communities, bringing back information to the classroom to share and increasing meta-

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awareness o f variation; and finally, teachers m a y be e n c o u r a g e d through ethnographic studies o f c l a s s r o o m s to teach students several different repertoires o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n (see Delpit, 1988). T e a c h e r s can validate the h o m e language or h o m e dialect, and also teach the l a n g u a g e o f the 'culture o f p o w e r ' so that students can ultimately have m o r e choices, m o r e w a y s o f speaking. A n o t h e r area for c o o p e r a t i o n is what is n o w called ' w o r k p l a c e diversity training'. As w o r k p l a c e conditions c h a n g e with the a d v a n c e m e n t o f m i n o r i t i e s / w o m e n and e c o n o m i c internationalization, m a n a g e r s increasingly reach out to various professional trainers to help c o m p a n i e s address intercultural c o m m u n i c a t i o n issues. Both scholars o f cross-cultural p r a g m a t i c s and ethnographers can provide m u c h n e e d e d input and in s o m e cases m a y be able to shape the future o f this e m e r g i n g field, s W h e n it c o m e s to a p p l y i n g research to classrooms, schools, w o r k p l a c e s and other arenas, scholars can no longer afford to r e m a i n isolated in their professional fields. Questions about culture in these arenas d e m a n d attention and c o o p e r a t i o n from anyone who can contribute. W e hope we have d e m o n s t r a t e d s o m e o f the w a y s in w h i c h ethnographic a p p r o a c h e s can contribute to cross-cultural p r a g m a t i c s to create greater depth, breadth, and validity in research.

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8 See the work by Gumperz (e.g. 1982) on cross-cultural communication breakdown in job settings.

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Heath, Shirley B., 1983. Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Henze, Rosemary C., 1992. Informal teaching and learning: A study of everyday cognition in a Greek community. Hillsdale, N J: Erlbaum. Hymes, Dell, 1974. Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadephia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kasper, Gabriele, 1992. Politeness. In: R.E. Asher, ed., The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2-25. Oxford: Pergamon. Lakoff, Robin, 1974. What you can do with words: Politeness, pragmatics, and performatives. Berkeley Studies in Syntax and Semantics 1: 16(I): 41-55. Lipka, Jerry, 1994. Language, power, and pedagogy: Whose school is it? Peabody Journal of Education 69(2): 71-93. Michaels, Sarah and James Collins, 1984. Oral discourse styles: Classroom interaction and the acquisition of literacy. In: D. Tannen, ed., Coherence in spoken and written discourse, 219-244. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. McDermott, Raymond, 1976. Kids make sense. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University. Moll, Luis, 1992. Bilingual classroom studies and community analysis: Some recent trends. Educational Researcher 21 (2): 20-24. Philips, Susan, 1983. The invisible culture: Communication in classroom and community on the Warm Springs Indian reservation. New York: Longman. Rosaldo, Renato, 1989. Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston, MA: Beacon. Saville-Troike, Muriel, 1989. The ethnography of communication: An introduction. Second edition. London: Blackwell. Spindler, George and Louise Spindler, 1959. The transmission of American culture. 3rd Burton lecture in elementary education at Harvard University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Abridged version, 1963. In: G. Spindler, ed., Education and culture: Anthropological approaches. Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Spradley, James, 1980. Participant observation. Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Thomas, Jenny, 1983. Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 4(2): 91-12. Watson-Gegeo, Karen, 1992. Thick explanation in the ethnographic study of child socialization: A longitudinal study of the problem of schooling for Kuara'ae (Solomon Islands) children. New Directions for Child Development 58: 51~i6. Weizman, Elda, 1985. Towards an analysis of opaque utterances: Hints as a request strategy. Theoretical Linguistics 27: 35-58. Wolcott, Harry, 1975. Criteria for an ethnographic approach to research in schools. Human Organization 34(2): 111-127. Wolfson, Nessa, 1981. Compliments in cross-cultural perspective. TESOL Quarterly 15(2): 117-124.

Kathryn A. Davis is an Associate Professor, specializing in interpretative qualitative research and language planning, in the Department of English as a Second Language, University of Hawai'i. Rosemary C. Henze is a Research Associate at Art, Research, and Curriculum Associates, Oakland, California.