Dialogue in Ethnography

Anthropologists are often insecure about using dialogue in ethnographic vignettes and revert to

familiar academic formats, such as block quotations.

This is partly for good reason: They don’t want to misrepresent an actual conversation that

occurred. This is not something fiction writers worry about. And there is a tension in

anthropology between writing notes or a report, which might be dry but has the veneer of truth

about it, and narrative. A well-told story might be much more immersive and use creative

writing techniques to curate the reader experience, but if it feels like an invented story, then

readers may doubt it really happened.

Yet as the anthropologist Michael Taussig famously said:

“Anthropology is blind to how much its practice relies on the art of telling other people’s stories—badly. What happens is that those stories are elaborated as scientific observations gleaned not from storytellers but from ‘informants.’”

It is important to emphasize that dialogue is not always appropriate for ethnography. Sometimes

a block quote works just fine. But dialogue can help you to anthropologize a discussion,

interview, or quote, because it allows you to create a more immersive read that also brings in

elements of setting and emotionality. Here's a table with some more details on different kinds of writing:

Memoir	Ethnography	Fiction	Reports
Creative nonfiction	Creative nonfiction	Fiction	Nonfiction
Usually a first person point of view: retrospective (from a future moment looking back)	Usually a first person point of view: retrospective (from a future moment looking back) or immersive (told in the moment)	Usually a first, second, or third person point of view. Narrator can be within or outside of the story world.	n/a
Focus on the individual and their encounters with other people and situations	Focus on the description of a social situation / setting and broad social categories of persons	Highly variable depending on genre
Aims to describe an illuminate a theme of chapter of a person’s life in detail	Aims to describe a social group or setting and make arguments through the description	Aims to illuminate an aspect of life in some way	Aims to present facts and insights in a structured way
Vignettes	Vignettes	Scenes	Report
Narrative modes: Exposition Description Dialogue Internals (Thoughts) Action	Narrative modes: Exposition Description Dialogue Internals (Thoughts) Action	Narrative modes: Exposition Description Dialogue Internals (Thoughts) Action	Narrative modes: Exposition Description

I encourage anthropologists to experiment with writing narrative that includes dialogue, but

whether you use it or not depends on the tradition you are writing in. For example, Anglo-

American anthropological writing has generally been more open to memoir-style accounts,

whereas German anthropology favors a more reported style. Here are a few examples of how using dialogue can create a richer reader experience:

Reported style	Immersive style with dialogue	Comments
Tomi had invited me up for a beer at his place, but I wanted to be more public for the fieldwork.	My phone rang. I answered, and Tomi asked, “do you want to come up to my place for a beer before the game?”   “Nah”, I said, “I’d rather hang around outside the stadium, be more social.”	Use of dialogue is more engaging; positions are implied rather than stated directly. [Of course, for ethnography, this depends on you remembering conversations].
I went down to the café in front of the stadium and bought an ice cold beer and then walked around.	I mooched around outside a café right by the stadium entrance, my mouth tingling from the cold sensation of beer.	Again, the narrative distance is decreased by describing first-person sensations rather than reporting on what I did. Use of informal language to match up with the (informal) field context.
I saw Matija, but at first I didn’t speak with him as I didn’t get a good impression of him at the last away game.	Matija glanced at me and tried to engage me in conversation; I said “hi”, nodded to acknowledge him, and carried on walking.	Again, more showing than telling here.

If you want to experiment with this more, I can recommend these books (and I plan to write a

book on this topic too!):

Ghodsee, K. (2016) From Notes to Narrative. University of Chicago Press.

Narayan, K. (2012) Alive in the writing : crafting ethnography in the company of Chekhov.

University Of Chicago Press.