On Ethnography, Chapter 1: Culture as a Verb

Ethnographers studying language and literacy delve into three types of learning environments:

1)Individuals striving to become expert in something
2)Groups in identity-making
3)Institutions of formal education

One of the things I found interesting in this chapter was how multimodal literacies, a term used by the authors to refer to "systems of representation that include written forms that are combined with oral, visual, or gestural modes," has changed the way we traditionally view "literacy" as a singular term that refers only to written representations.

This concept ties in with globalization, I think, and with multiple languages and multilingualism, whereby the world in which we live has come to embrace different languages and forms of communication. Such nontraditional modes of literacy are a reality in our continously changing, dynamic world.

I have to admit that I have never thought of culture as a verb. Yes, we usually refer to culture as a way of doing something, but we also use the term broadly to describe customs, traditions, beliefs, and values that separate members of a society from those of different cultures.

Ethnographers who view culture as a verb adopt the notion that "gradations of change in habits and beliefs ...correlate with shifts in structures and uses of language and multimodal literacies."

This, I believe, is true because the world that sorrounds us is not static. We might have a theoretical or conceptual framework today, but the same ideology may not hold true tomorrow, simply because the world is constantly changing and people are migrating, relocating, etc.

Therefore, as researchers we have to be open to different, perhaps nontraditional, less rigid methods and be willing to change our thinking habits based on the realities of the world.