Ethnography of communication: An analysis of Turkish education minister’s speechon innovations

Abstract

Ethnography of communication (EOC)is an approach to discourse research that investigates the sequential organisation of talk as a way of accessing participants’ understandings of and collaborative means of organising the forms of social interaction. The objective of the current research is to explore the speech of the education minister and how he uses his language indirectly talking on solid innovations. The sample online recordings of the education minister are transcribed in close detail to allow for a fine analysis of the design, exchange and coordination of actions within the delivery of new implementations. This article will introduce intellectual foundations of discourse analysis, outline its approach to data collection and transcription, illustrate its analytical procedures and discuss the application of EOC in the education minister’s speech while addressing the teachers. The results suggest that the use of indirectness and implicit speech-making strategies fosters the politeness act in public speech. We can conclude that the politician’s speech delivered to the public may be researched more and it might be a part of discourse competence for English language learners. The future direction of EOC may focus on a transnational context by comparing the different countries and education minister’s speech which may help English teachers to teach culture and spoken discourse better.   Keywords: Ethnography of communication, educational leadership, discourse, speech community, speech event