On the necessity (and insufficiency) of ethnographic perspectives: Towards an inter-scalar approach to research on “academic language”

Abstract

This methodological commentary extends and complicates earlier discussions of the need for ethnographic approaches to exploring “academic language.” While indispensable as a tool for contextualizing classroom language use, this commentary suggests that ethnography alone is insufficient to the task of elucidating academic language in school-based settings. Drawing on ethnographic and interactional data, this article argues for the necessity of looking across multiple scales of analysis in order to apprehend the complex, nuanced, and contradictory ways in which academic language is learned, produced, and perceived in schools.