Practice Approaches and the Ethnography of Communication: Investigating for the Possibility of a Mutually Beneficial Relationship

In this essay, I explore the areas of accord and discord between two efficacious modes of research: practice approaches and the Ethnography of Communication (EOC). As an interpersonal and intercultural scholar, I carefully analyze these approaches in order to find innovative ways to describe the diversity that I see in modern social interaction. Working against paradigms that suggest using either one approach or another, I engage this project hoping (expecting?) to find and/both alternatives for communication study. I argue that, in spite of their differences, practice and EOC traditions co-exist in a mutually beneficial relationship for the study of communication in 2002