How Use of Italics in Ethnographic Writing Shapes Authority, Reader Experience, and Cultural Representation

Ethnographers often shift between different languages and cultural contexts. In this process, anthropologists often learn new languages or recalibrate their relationship with ones they already speak.

Yet anthropologists typically receive no training in how linguistic translation works, or in the effects of different translation strategies.

One small typographical decision—whether to use italics in ethnographic writing for non-English ones, if the ethnography is written in English—carries surprising weight.

Writing ethnography across languages: Italics and style

Traditional style guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS 18: 7.55) recommend italicizing non-English words that may be unfamiliar to readers (e.g., not listed in a dictionary), while also advising flexibility when multilingualism is part of a writer’s voice.

Clearly, then, use of italics is not a technical issue, but a rhetorical choice. When anthropologists use italics heavily, it can draw attention to linguistic difference and subtly bolster ethnographic authority.

Let’s take a detour to translation studies, where this topic is also discussed:

Exoticism and italics in ethnographic writing and beyond

One of the constant challenges in translation is to gauge how far to move away from the original text (often called the source text). Too close and you end up with a clunky, literal translation with meanings unclear to readers in the new language. It can sound poetic, opaque, exotic.

Too far and you can end up changing the meaning and register, losing nuance and accuracy in the process. It may read nicely in the target language. But the target-language reader will have lost fundamental aspects of the original in this process of recontextualization.

Imagine you are writing a text for an audience that does not speak Spanish. Which sounds more exotic?

1. This summer I’m going on a trip to España.

2. This summer I’m going on a trip to Spain.

   
   

Usually the first one. Italics marks the word as different, separates it off from the rest of the text, and draws attention to its “special” quality, as this YouTube video by Daniel José Older explains. This can lead to a less immersive experience that helps produce a hierarchy between English and other languages.

In contrast, not using italics may lead to a kind of recontextualization. Side-note: This is sometimes referred to as cultural transplantation in translation studies, a term that leaves me uncomfortable because of the biological overtones.

For ethnographic writers, the question is rather: Do you want the reader to experience certain terms and phrases as “Other” and marked, or as part of the discursive world the reader is entering?

What about use of italics when editing ethnography?

Ethnographic texts are often full of expressions in italics. Does this mean they are exoticizing? It can do, but not necessarily. Cultural anthropologists often work between languages and cultural contexts. They have an interest in language and culture, and this kind of shifting between language and use of italics often comes from not having consciously thought about such editorial style choices, combined with code-switching within a draft. Let me expand on the reasons why anthropologists often (over)use italics:

Reasons ethnographers use italics: untranslatability

You cannot always easily translate a concept and it is helpful to use words from other languages to teach the reader the multiple meanings and connotations attached to a term. Examples include veze in Serbian/Croatian and 关系 in Mandarin. Moving out of English, how would you translate concepts like “being soft on crime”? Certain phrases have a specific, culture-bound meaning that you cannot translate literally, and if those terms or phrases are key to your argument, they may deserve the special attention that italicizing provides.

Reasons ethnographers use italics: drafting

Some anthropological texts have not been through multiple heavy rounds of editing. These ethnographic texts read more as reports caught between multiple contexts with more thought into the audience required.

In such drafts and fieldnotes, code-switching between multiple levels of dialect, idiolect, language, etc., is common. In these texts, the mix of words from multiple language varieties form part of a text’s scaffolding (much like the overuse of academic signposting) as the author works through their material and arguments.

In Kristen Ghodsee’s book From Notes to Narrative, she discusses her copyeditor’s comment that she overuses Bulgarian phrases in her work, and that this is distracting and difficult to follow for readers who aren’t fluent in both languages. After some consideration, she took her copyeditor’s view, perhaps sacrificing some nuance for readability across a larger audience, understanding the use of such terms as scaffolding appropriate for a draft but not a polished ethnography.

Reasons ethnographers use italics: ethnographic authority

Use of niche terms conveys a “good enough” or “excellent” command of another language, essential (in my humble opinion) for doing quality ethnographic research. Historically, an overuse of terms from another language has been used to convey ethnographic authority, including in situations where said linguistic expertise is lacking.

Reasons ethnographers use italics: exoticization

Sometimes, anthropologists italicize non-English words to create a sense of difference in a way that can be exoticizing. I don’t agree with this, but it’s important to note.

In summary, we might think of these uses of italics as serving different functions:

• conceptual precision (when a term truly resists translation)

• drafting residue or scaffolding (when multilingual phrasing helped the author think)

• performing authority (signaling linguistic competence)

• exoticization (marking cultural difference in a distancing way)

A revision exercise for ethnographic and cross-cultural writers:

Go through each italicized word or phrase in your draft and ask:

• Is this term doing conceptual work that English cannot do?

• Is it signaling social context or voice?

• Is it leftover scaffolding from drafting?

• Is it creating distance or “otherness” I don’t intend?

If you find this useful, feel free to get in touch or consider booking me for a sentence-level or developmental edit.

For more on this topic see:

From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies That Everyone Can Read (by Kristen Ghodsee)