Ethnography101 :

-1-Historical background :
Ethnography from Greek ethnos "folk, people, nation" and grapho "I write" is the
systematic study of people and cultures,it traces back it’s origins to ancient
Greece,Herodotus who is also known as the father of history traveled from one culture to
another to ducoment the traditions and socio political practices among people of the
ancient world.

-2-What is ethnography ?
Ethnography is the recording or analysis of a culture or society based on participants
ovbservation and resulting in a written account of people,place or institution,it can also be
defined as the systematic study of people by observing society from the point of view of the
research of the study .

-3-How ethnographies are conducted ?

“I want to understand the world from your point of view. I want to know what you know in
the way you know it. I want to understand the meaning of your experience, to walk in your
shoes, to feel things as you feel them, to explain things as you explain them.’’
― James P. Spradley

Anthropological ethnographers often live amongst a group/society for a year or more, in

order to learn about them. This fully immersive, long-term ‘live and work’ approach to
ethnography has not proven popular within the field of usability.Part of the reason may
involve cost, but it is also the case that anthropologists and usability practitioners are
interested in different things. Anthropologists use ethnography in an attempt to fully
understand as much as possible about an entire society. Usability practitioners are usually
only interested in learning information that will support their reasoning on a specific
design problem.We would argue that deep, immersive ‘live and work’ ethnography is
rarely required within the field of user-centred design. However, short ethnographic studies
can be very useful for user-centred projects. For example: in order to understand the way in
which a Merchant Bank trades and operates, a usability consultant might conduct an
ethnographic study by working and socialising with its employees for a month.Individual
methods which are available within an ethnographic study include: participant observation,
interviews and surveys. All of these ethnographic methods can be very valuable in gaining
a deeper understanding of a design problem. Usability practitioners often make use of these
in order to develop their understanding of the relevant domain, audience(s), processes,
goals and context(s) of use.

-4-Gullion J.S. (2016) A Brief History of Ethnography

’Ethnographers are culture detectives. We immerse ourselves in a field—a setting in

which social interactions occur—living for a certain time and to the extent possible, in
a specific social reality under study. We then share the experience of that social reality
with others through our writing. Our fieldwork can occur anywhere, in all sorts of
settings, such as hospitals or in jails, or among gangs or cult members, or with dance
troupes or artist colonies, or even online in chat groups or massive multiplayer online
video games. ‘’

Examples of ethnography :
The ethnographer would go around with an informant as the informant goes about his/her
day, asking questions. Like if the person is going shopping, you might ask the informant,
"Why did you select that brand of detergent?" and then the person would answer you and
you'd have an unstructured interview with him or her about it.
Some examples of ethnography include work being done in marketing and user experience,
such as conducting interviews to understand how the user relates to products or services.
 -5-Why are ethnographies important?

Ethnographies as texts offer excellent insight into how social anthropologists undertake their
fieldwork, what it is like to experience daily life in an environment that may be initially
unfamiliar, and the political, economic and social dynamics involved in collecting ‘data’. By
providing specific, in depth case studies, they can serve as excellent means for teaching
about global issues such as climate change, migration and globalisation. Even where
ethnographies focus on a particular practice such as a religious ceremony, or a culinary
ritual ,the anthropologist will typically place the practice in its full context to give a holistic,
rich and multi-faceted account.

-Reading good ethnographies is an excellent way to learn how social anthropologists go

about their research; and how they reflect on their own and one other’s experiences in the
field, and construct their broader theories.

Origin of the language :

Basicly language is the heart of human life and it is the only thing distinct human beings from
animals,One of the things that make this language unique is that it is creative,animals
language on the other hand is repeated and does not create new
meanings,Particularly,knowing the origin of the language is a fundemental step,especially for
learners of a particular language.In fact the word language is latin derived from ‘’lingua’’
which means ‘’tongue’’,and from here the questions can be rised which are :
how did the first language come into being and how did this language instinct in humans
originate ?
Concerning the origin of the first language,there are two main hypothesis or believes either
can be proved or not by a given present knowledge :

1- Belief in divine creation :

Actually, many societies throughout history believed that language is a gift from god
to humans,The most familair is found in genesis tells that adam gave name to all
living creatures,this belief predicates that humans were created fril birth with an
innate capacity to learn the language,In addition to that it can’t be proved that
language is as old as humans but it is definetly true that language and humans are
unseperable,wherever humans exist,language exist .Even stone age tribes has a
language equal to english,latin or greek in terms of its expressive potential and
grammatical complexity,Technologies may be complex or simple but language is
always complex,Charles darwin noted this fact when he stated that as far as concerns
language,’’Shakespeare walks with the macedonian swinlherd and plato with the wild
savage of assam’’.

-2-Natural evolution hypothesis :

 At certain points in their evolutionary development humans acquired a more
sophisticated brain which made language invention and learning possible.In other
words at some points in time humans evolved on Lad(language acquisition service)
,In addition to vocalization and gestures which were inherited from the primate
ancestores quickly gave a way to create a language system perhaps in one generation
or two due to genetic mutation,Additionaly some studies indicate that the
‘’HomoSapiens’’ (Those who existed 150.000 years ago)were able to produce only
the fricative sound like ‘F’ and ‘V’ but later they developed to produce more sound
like ‘B’ and ‘W’ and they were called under the name of Homoloquens(the speaking
humans)besides this,the theory of evolution was initially proposed by charles darwin
in his book the origin of speies in 1859 stating that all species of organism arise and
develop through the natural selection of small inherited variation that increase the
individual’s ability to compete,survive and reproducenIt originally included the broad
convern of transmutation of species.

THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ORIGINS

1. THE DING-DONG THEORY:
Language began when humans started naming objects, actions and phenomena after a
recognizable sound associated with it in real life. This theory holds that the first human
words were a type of verbal icon, a sign whose form is an exact image of its meaning.

Example one: crash became the word of thunder.

Example two : boom became the word of explosion.

Some words in language obviously did derive from imitation of natural sounds
associated with some object: Chinook indian word for heart tun- tun, Basque word for
knife : ai-ai (literally ouch-ouch).Each of these iconic words would derive from an
index, a sign whose form is naturally associatied with its meaning in real space and
time.

Criticism: the problem with this theory is that onomatopoeia (imitation of sound ,
auditory iconicity )is a very limited part of the vocabulary of any language ;imitative
sounds differ from language to language: Russian: ba -bakh =bang ,bukh=thud.
Even if onomatopoeia provided the first dozen or so words , then where did names for
the thousands of naturally noiseless concepts such as rock, sun, sky or love come
from?

*this theory was favored by plato and pythagorance.

2. THE BOW-BOW THEORY:
The most famous and therefore the most ridiculed theory . It holds that vocabulary
developed from imitations of animal noises, such as: moo ,bark ,hiss ,meow ,quack-
quack. In other words, the first human words were a type of index, a signe whose form is
naturally connected with its meaning in time and space.
But , once again, onomotopoeia is limited part of the vocabulary of any language.
The linguistic renditions of animal sounds differ considerably from language to
language, although each species of animal everywhere makes essentially the same
sound:
 Dog: bow-wow; chinese :wu wu; japenese.wan-wan. Russ gaf-gaf,tyaff,tyaff
 Cat: meow , Russ. Hryu -hryu ; chin. oh-ee - oh-ee ; jap. Bu-bu.
 Owl: Russia; ukh ; Cherokee goo-ku spanich ect…
 Rooster: Russia, kukareiku. Japanese kokekoko.

Criticism one : language is more than only sets of names.

Criticism two: how would soundless things and abstract concepts have been
referred to??

3. THE POOH-POOH THEORY:

Language began with interjection , instinctive emotions such as pain and joy,
hunger, pleasure . Eventually leading to the expression of more developed ideas
and emotions. In this case the first word would have been an involuntary ha-ha-ha
,wa-wa-wa, these began to be used to name the actions which caused these
sounds.

Criticism: this theory was criticized in the sense that, once again, emotional
exclamations are very small part of any language. They are also highly language
specific. For instance, to express sudden pain or discomfort: English: ouch;
Russia, oi; Cherokee eee. Thus , exclamations are more like other words in that
they reflect the phonology of each separate language. Unlike, sneezes ,tears which
are innate human being responses to stimuli, the form of exclamation depends on
language rather than precedes language . Also , exclamations ,like most other
words are symbols ,showing at least a partially arbitrary relationship between
sound and meaning.

4. THE LA LA THEORY :
The Danish linguist otto jesperson suggested that language may have developed
from sounds associated with love , play ,and especially song.
 Criticism: As david crystal notes in How Language Works (Penguin,2005),
this theory still fails to account for “the gap between the emotional and the
rational aspects of speech expression”.

5.THE YO-HE-HO THEORY :

According to this theory , language arose out of the rhythmical grunts of
people working together ,involved in physical efforts that has to be coordinated.
Early humans may have developed a set of grunts, groans and curses used when
lifting and carrying trees. In addition, primitives must have lived in groups,
which require some form of organization and hence communication to maintain
development of language placed in a social context.

Criticism: apes and other primates also live in groups and use grunts without
having developed the capacity for speech

Language Family tree :

In fact when linguists talked about the relationship between languages they used a
tree metaphor on which languages are classified according to the descents from the
common ancestors,in other words,language which have the same origin,Mainly,there
are three basic language families :
 Inde-european(includes english)
Simo-tibetan(Includes chinese)
Afro-asiatic( includes arabic )
Indo-european is the largest language family followed by Simo-tibetan and lastly
Afro-asiatic .
The language tree below shows languages that come from the same origin.

Talking specifically about the largest family,an ancient source says that the Indo-
european has various branches such as : romans and germanic which themselves
have sub branches like north and west germanic which feed into specific languages
like swedish and narwigian ….etc .Today,the most widespread group is the Indo-
european spoken by half of world’s population since 2000b.c,People speaking those
languages began to spread to europe till reaching the Atlantic coast and the northern
part of mediteranian,After this it come the other large group spoken by large
population,It is divied into simitic and tibeto burman languages,Ending by the last
group(afro-asiatic family) spliced by berber,chadic,cushitic,and semitic languages.

Conclusion :

The original mother tongue may never be found,it becomes increasingly difficult to
distinguish between inheritance from a common ancestor and borrowing from an
other group,No written records exist,so we can never know if word similiarities
happened by sheer chance or by accident .