ABSTRACT
Ethnography can be defined briefly as the study of a social group or indi vidual or individuals representative of that group, based on direct recording of the behaviour and voices of the participants by the researcher over a period. An im portant dim ension of any ethnographic study is the part played by language, bu t language is considered within the context of its production and reception, ra ther than in isolation, simply as text. E thnographic and naturalistic approaches to academic discourse therefore take a broader, m ore contextual view of discourse than do the o ther approaches represented in this collection.
