ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the microethnographic approach to the nonverbal communication study: research methods that examine the nonverbal cues through careful consideration of their relationship to other social and material phenomena. Microethnographic research addresses big social issues through an examination of small communicative behaviors. Microethnographic studies explain the nonverbal behaviors by explicating their suspension within webs of meaning that the participants themselves have spun. Furthermore, multimedia technology is becoming more than an analytic tool: Microethnographic findings may be presented in minidocumentaries form; digitized clips may be looped, slowed, marked up, and in many ways manipulated to bring attention to details of phenomena analyzed. The chapter illustrates briefly how nonverbal communication may be analyzed and understood as socially and materially embedded. While continuing to emphasize nonverbal communication and embodied cultural practices, microethnographic research has recently found fellowship with a variety of research programs in several disciplines that emphasize the importance of embodied action for the social formation of knowledge, symbols, and concepts.
