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• other shared patterns of knowledge and behaviour which are transmitted from
generation to generation in the process of socialization/ enculturation.
For Psycholinguistics:
• the Ethnography of Communication means that studies of language acquisition must not
only recognize the innate capacity of children to learn to speak but must account for how
particular ways of speaking are developed in particular societies in the process of social
interaction
• such cross-cultural research requires the openness and relativism of ethnographic
methods.

For Sociolinguistics (generally involves the recording of naturalistic speech in various
contexts):
• the Ethnography of Communication helps to evaluate the social significance of the
material recorded;
• ethnographic knowledge about social norms govering linguistic choices in the situation
recorded helps to understand them.
For Applied Linguistics:
• the identification of what second language learners must know in order to communicate
appropriately in various contexts;
• recognizing and analyzing communicative missunderstandings;
• knowing possible sactions for various communicative shortcomings;
• contrasting whole communicative systems in cross-cultural interaction and translation.
For Theoretical Linguistics:
• make a significant contribution to the study of universals in language forms and use;
• language-specific and comparative fields of description and analysis;
• its approaches and findings are essential for the formulation of a truely adequate theory
of language and linguistic competence.

ETHNOGRAPHY AND ITS TOPICS
Ethnography includes the following topics:
• cultural models of communication;
• patterns and functions of communication;
• nature and definitions of speech communities;
• means of communicating;
• relationship of language to world view and social organisation;
• linguistic and social universals and inequalities;
• components of communicative competence.

CULTURE, CULTURAL MODELS
There are very many interconnections among language, culture and communicative
meaning in cultural models.
Culture: Definition:
1 The ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview
created and shared by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors
(which can include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and/or
religion).
2 Culture is best seen not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns – customs, usages,