Ethnography: expanding the boundaries in EAP

In this chapter we will look at how ethnography helps both us to understand our students and our students to understand the nature of the University and of EAP. Furthermore, because of how ethnography has become a de-centring, postmodern methodology which defies common structures, it reveals a perhaps previously unrecognized knowledge and competence that students either bring with them or are able to discover. We will first look at the nature of ethnography and its potential contribution. Then, by means of the ethnographic method of creative non-fiction, we will demonstrate what we can learn about our students and the knowledge that they bring. In considering the possibilities of ethnography for EAP, we treat ethnography not as simply a data collection method, but as a social theory which offers ‘a general programmatic perspective on social reality and how real subjects in real conditions of everyday life, possessed by real interests, make sense of it’ (Blommaert, 2018: ix).