Dell Hymes and the Ethnography of Communication

Dell Hymes ’ formative role in the ethnography of communication, ethnopoetics and educational ethnography alone merit him biographic attention. In addition, though, tracing out Dell Hymes’ career arc offers a window on the birth and development of sociolinguistics as a whole. The particular cluster of early influences on Hymes – Franz Boaz, Edward Sapir, Roman Jakobson and Kenneth Burke – as well as Hymes ’ resulting resistance to Chomskyan linguistics, are representative of the sources of impetus for sociolinguistics in general. Hymes had an abiding personal and scholarly interest in American Indians in all their linguistic and cultural diversity. He argued for a widened scope for linguistics which started with diversity rather than in a search for the universal. In particular, he wanted linguists to pay attention to the poetic, aesthetic, reflexive aspects of discourse through which cultural knowledge is circulated. His interest in diversity has always been linked with a concern for the sources and consequences of inequality, and much of his work has taken place in the context of educational research. In Hymes ’ interests, we can see sociolinguistics ’ recurring concerns. If we want to understand how sociolinguistic