Applied ethnopoetics

Jan Blommaert
Institute of Education, University of London

Ethnopoetics is a form of narrative analysis designed, initially, for the analysis

of folk stories and based on an ethnographic performance-based understanding
of narrative emphasizing that meaning is an effect of performance. It offers op-
portunities for analyzing voice. The ways in which speakers themselves organize
stories along indexical patterns of emphasis, focus, super- and subordination and
so on. As such, it is a potentially very useful tool for tracking local patterns of
meaning-making in narrative. I argue that ethnopoetics could be productively
applied to data in which different systems of meaning-making meet a condi-
tion that defines many important service-providing systems in globalizing con-
texts. Asylum applications in Western Europe are a case in point, and examples
will be used from that domain, but the potential usefulness of such an applied
ethnopoetics stretches into many other types of service encounters in which
crosscultural storytelling is crucial. (Ethnopoetics, Asylum Seekers, Coherence,
Performance, Anthropological Linguistics)

Ethnopoetics made its entre in the early 1980s with high-profile works such as Dell
Hymes In Vain I Tried To Tell You (Hymes, 1982) or Dennis Tedlocks The Spoken Word
and the Work of Interpretation (Tedlock, 1983) and gathered admiration in a wide in-
terdisciplinary field of anthropologists, folklorists and linguists. Tedlock and Hymes
both added volume and sophistication to ethnopoetic analysis, Tedlock with his Find-
ing The Center (1999) and Hymes with Now I Know Only So Much (2003). Both Tedlock
and Hymes used ethnopoetic analysis to do justice to the artistic richness of Native
American verbal art. In Tedlocks case, the method served the purpose of rendering the
features of spoken artistry visual; for Hymes, it was a method for reviving defunct oral
traditions by turning written versions of folk stories in to re-oralizable ones.
Despite its initial acclaim, that is pretty much where ethnopoetics stayed: in the
field of Native American folk narrative. What I want to argue here is that it could be
used for the analysis of different narratives, especially in so-called applied areas
where narratives determine peoples fate, as in police interviews, courtroom hearings,

Requests for further information should be directed to Jan Blommaert, Institute of Education,
University of London, School of Culture, Language and Communication, 20 Bedford Way, Lon-
don WC1H 0AL, UK. E-mail: j.blommaert@ioe.ac.uk

Narrative Inquiry : (), 181190.

issn / e-issn John Benjamins Publishing Company
182 Jan Blommaert

asylum application interviews, social welfare application procedures and so forth. In

my discussion, I will mainly draw upon Hymes version of ethnopoetics. Hymes and
Tedlock have disagreed on analytic detail but not on the fundamental issues and ap-
proach. So let us turn to the basic principles of Hymes ethnopoetics.

Ethnopoetics

Hymes ethnopoetics revolves around a conception of narratives as primarily orga-

nized in terms of formal and aesthetic poetic patterns, not in terms of content or
thematic patterns. Narrative is therefore to be seen as a form of action, of performance,
and the meanings it generates are effects of performance. Narratives, seen from this
perspective, are organized in lines and in groups of lines (verses, stanzas), and the
organization of lines in narratives is a kind of implicit patterning that creates narra-
tive effect: emphasis and insistence, narrative-thematic divisions and so on (see esp.
Hymes, 1998, 1996, pp. 166167). Content, in other words, is an effect of the formal
organization of a narrative: What there is to be told emerges out of how it is being
told. The metric that can be distinguished in narratives is linguistic, but also cultural
(indexical, see Silverstein, 1985, 1997) and therefore semantic. This is an old anthro-
pological view the connections with Whorf are obvious and it is influenced by
Jakobsons (1960) poetic-aesthetic conception of language structure.
Jakobsons influence becomes clear when we look at how Hymes defines the rela-
tions between lines: The relations between lines and groups of lines are based on the
general principle of poetic organization called equivalence and [e]quivalence may
involve any feature of language (Hymes, 1996, p. 166): prosodic aspects such as stress,
pauses, pitch and intonation, syntactic aspects such as similarity or parallelism in
grammatical structure, morpho-grammatical aspects such as similarity in verb tense
or aspect, phonetic aspects such as alliteration and rhyme and lexico-syntactic aspects
such as the use of certain particles or discourse markers. Units thus identified then
combine into larger ones, verses and stanzas, and again equivalence is the formal prin-
ciple that identifies such units: A transition from one unit to another can be marked by
a shift in intonation or prosody, a change in the dominant particles used for marking
lines, a change in verb tense, a lexical change and so forth. Let us consider an example
one that will illustrate, in the same move, the point I want to make in this paper.
The example we shall discuss here is a small fragment of the beginning of a long
narrative interview, recorded in late 1998 by two students (A and B) with a female
refugee from Somalia whom we shall call Habiba (H). What follows is in response to
an invitation to introduce herself, and it will become clear that Habiba has only limited
command of English: This is a story told with minimal linguistic resources (see Blom-
maert, 2001).
Im from *Somalia and my name is Habiba Mohammed and I=I have *five chil-
drens and I coming here before the children are coming=when I was euh when
I=Im arrive in Belgium I was *alone\ yeah\in sake of the war=the war of Somalia\
 Applied ethnopoetics 183

and. I w=Im. Twen=*thirty five years old\ and euh I was working in Somalia ICRC
International red Cross () and I was euh office assistant\ So Somalia is starting
war *nineteen ninety one .. So until ninety one to ninety five I was in Somalia ..
and wa= and I have *four children at that time and euhm.. My husband comes
from euh *north Somalia and I *south Somalia is fighting north at=at south is
fighting\ So my=my husband and my children have no. *safety for their lives
If we now look at the patterns of equivalence that structure this story, we see that
Habiba accomplishes a great deal of narrative structure by the use of just two initial
discourse markers: and, and so. In fact, just the use of these two markers in conjunc-
tion with pauses allows us to identify lines and to organise them into two larger nar-
rative units:
PART I
1. Im from *Somalia
2. and my name is Habiba Mohammed
3. and I=I have *five childrens
4. and I coming here before the children are coming
{clarification}=when I was euh when I=Im arrive in Belgium I was *alone\
yeah\in sake of the war=the war of Somalia\
6. and. I w=Im. Twen=*thirty five years old\
7. and euh I was working in Somalia ICRC International red Cross
8. and I was euh office assistant\
PART II
1. So Somalia is starting war *nineteen ninety one
2. so until ninety one to ninety five I was in Somalia
3. and wa= and I have *four children at that time
4. and euhm.. My husband comes from euh *north Somalia
5. and I *south Somalia is fighting north at=at south is fighting\
6. so my=my husband and my children have no. *safety for their lives
Two main units (stanzas) can be distinguished, marked by the dominant use of the
discourse marker and (part I) and so (part II). This shift is formal, but it also marks
a major shift in topic organization and speaking position: whereas Habiba herself is
the topic of part I, the topic shifts to Somalia in part II. In part II, so alternates with
and, and interestingly, this again reveals a narrative structuring pattern, in which lines
beginning with so are subordinate to lines beginning with and. The use of just two
initial discourse markers (an effect of Habibas limited command of English) neverthe-
less enables considerable amounts of structure, coherence and transparency. Stories
told in simple language need not be simple stories.
According to Hymes and others, these structuring patterns in narrative display a
cultural (indexical) logic (Silverstein, 1997). They reveal, thus, a form of emic orga-
nization which allows analysts to follow the narrators traces in organizing relevance,
epistemic and affective stance, desired effects and so forth. Thus, the analysis of these
implicit indexical patterns in narratives helps us distinguish more meaning in
184 Jan Blommaert

narrative, because like grammar/style and content, ethnopoetic patterns form a dis-
tinct layer of meaningful signs in narratives. This theme, that ethnopoetic patterning
is a distinct pool of meanings, is what allows Hymes, Tedlock and others to claim
that ethnopoetics offers opportunities for reconstructing defunct narratives, reinstate
their functions, recapture the performance dynamics that guided their original pro-
duction, and so on (see Blommaert, 2006, for a discussion).

Ethnopoetics applied

Narratives are produced in a myriad of contexts, genres and occasions. While some
forms of storytelling are used to entertain, others to invoke tradition and sustain ritual,
a large body of narratives are produced in the context of bureaucratic and institution-
al procedures. They range from job interviews in which applicants are invited to talk
about themselves and classroom situations in which children tell stories as a means of
displaying their command of linguistic and communicative skills, to bureaucratic en-
counters such as asylum application procedures, police interviews and court hearings,
or service encounters in domains such as welfare, social housing, psychosocial counsel-
ing and so forth. Stories elicited there can be long and scripted (as, e.g., in a job inter-
view) or ritualized (as e.g., in court hearings). But apart from such easily recognizable
stories, people in such encounters produce a multitude of micro-narratives: short bursts
of narrative interactionally embedded in question-answer sequences. The encounters
are consequently often complex and layered narrative events in which several stories are
produced, often in intricate relations to one another.
Such encounters are characterized by inequalities in command over
(socio)linguistic, communicative and narrative resources and in capacity to control
the contextualized interpretation of the narrative (e.g., Gumperz & Roberts, 1991; Sa-
rangi & Slembrouck, 1996; Briggs, 1997; Barsky, 1994; Maryns, 2006). The issue, of
course, is crucial. Narrative involves a deployment of skills and resources against a
backdrop of (often ideologically patterned) expectations about such deployments: A
suspect in a police interview is expected to provide detail and accuracy about facts
relevant to the case; s/he is, in other words, expected to produce a particular kind of
narrative, carrying specific features that (iconically) correspond to this expectation. If
s/he doesnt, the lack of such features may cause doubt about the validity of the story
and may be used as incriminating evidence later. The problem is that, given structural
inequalities in societies exacerbated by transnational migration on a world scale, more
and more people find themselves in narrative encounters in which the institutional
expectations about narrative cannot be matched by their resources. Returning briefly
to the example of Habiba above, it is clear, for instance, that limited command of the
language in which such encounters develop can have a disastrous effect on the under-
standability of the story. And in institutional encounters marked by inequality, unclear
stories either remain unregistered or quickly become bad stories.
 Applied ethnopoetics 185

But our example of Habiba shows us at the same time a possible way out. Eth-
nopoetics allows us to transcend the typical range of perceived meaningful features
of stories by adding another layer of meaningful structure: poetic structure. Difficul-
ties in linguistic structuring (lots of grammatically and lexically awkward features) and
pragmatic delivery (a lack of fluency articulated through the use of short and hesitant
phrases) were overlaid by a crystal-clear narrative structure in which the bits of infor-
mation were elegantly organized and ordered in relation to one another. Thus, whereas
Habiba displayed problems with some forms of linguistic-communicative compe-
tence, she clearly had a well-developed narrative competence. Detecting this narrative
competence and exposing it as a dimension of meaningful communicative behavior
produces another version of her story told in a different voice: a more accessible, more
understandable version. This is a judgment based on implicit, indexical patterns, not
on explicit denotational and syntactic ones.

Asylum narratives

Let us now turn to an applied example. What follows is a fragment from an asylum
application interview between AS, a young female refugee from Sierra Leone whom
we shall call Fatoumata and I, a young female Belgian official from the Immigration
Department. (The case is extensively discussed in Maryns, 2006, pp. 268282; this
fragment can be found on pp. 274275.)
(1) I: ((writes)) . and . when you were in Guinea urm .. then what
happened they put you on another boat
(2) AS: then I saw people (road) they were going inside a big one .
(3) I: a big boat . big boat
(4) AS: yeah I was crying . shouting for help . there x saw a man .. he asked what
is happening I told him there s war in my country I cant go back .. then .I
say you have to help .me . flee . for my life to safe .. then .. he said ok . xx I
dont xxx like aaa I dont xx how to . call it xxxxxx times .. the people I was
with . people that he said ok .. I should go inside .. no problem .. they wont
catch me . inside . the boat . they take xxx I dont know
(5) I: this man .bought
(6) AS= yeah
(7) I: the ticket for you
(8) AS: yeah
(9) I: for the boat
(10) AS: yeah and I was inside .
(11) I: so . you think he bought the ticket and then you were in the boat
(12) AS: yes I was inside the boat ..
(13) I: you were . hidden
186 Jan Blommaert

(14) AS: x
(15) I: you had to hide
(16) AS: no
(17) I: no at all you dont you was free on the boat=
(18) AS: yeah
(19) I: you were free on the boat
(20) AS: yeah
(21) I: yeah .. ((writes down)) and so . that boat took you . to
Belgium . yeah
(22) AS: I dont know if it was Belgium that time
(23) I: uhum
(24) AS: but xx I knew it was .. xx it was Belgium
(25) I: uhum
(26) AS: so ..
(27) I: uhum
(28) AS: xxx this .. but I dont know it was Belgium
(29) I: yeah
(30) AS: at that time xxx I see people they put me inside of the boat then I
have to come down xxxx when I come down I see a lot of people p people
they were (standing) I dont know what . they were waiting for and . I now
saw people walk into it .. I xx I was walking again .walking again . I saw them
. they stand .. some of them still walking ..
(31) I: uhum
(32) AS: then I stand .. you know now they still are . urm people coming then
people was running inside now they they enter inside too .. there there was
coming then people was going out of the bus .. and then . xx inside .. and
I have to xxxx but theres no . people inside that place ..xxxxxx so .. it was
xxxxxxxxxxx and I have to . stay xx I dont know xxxxxxx so then I sleep
xxxxxxxxxx then I saw a xxxxxx
The fragment shows the constraints under which narratives are produced in bureau-
cratic encounters such as the asylum interview. Stories emerge as micro-narratives,
sudden bursts of structured narration encased in the rigorous (and often punitive)
question-answer format of the interview. The interviewee is facing the task of produc-
ing a coherent and convincing narrative, but does not get the opportunity to do so by
means of long and uninterrupted stretches of storytelling. Fatoumata is not a powerful
storyteller: She is soft-spoken and hesitant, and clearly has a very limited command
of English, the language in which the interview was conducted. The fragment above
starts when Fatoumata is asked to tell the story of her escape by boat to Antwerp, Bel-
gium. Prior to that, she had told the interviewer that she had fled from Sierra Leone
to Guine; an uncorrected misunderstanding occurred when the interviewer assumed
that this journey had been done by a small boat, and this explains her reference to
 Applied ethnopoetics 187

another boat in turn (1). It is not the only misunderstanding: in turns (5)(9) the
interviewer assumes that someone bought a ticket for Fatoumata; the ship, how-
ever, was a cargo ship and no tickets were required. Asylum application interviews
are littered with similar kinds of small and big misunderstandings often based on the
uneasy match between very different (non-native and strongly accented) varieties of
languages and different levels of proficiency. The interviews, of course, are all about
factual accuracy and logical consistency, and such misunderstandings often have dra-
matic consequences.
The line of questioning developed by I is, thus, aimed at probing for facts, details,
and consistency (or lack thereof) in Fatoumatas story. Fatoumata mostly answers in
one-line phrases, quickly followed up by the interviewer with other questions (turns
(5)(29)). On two occasions, Fatoumata produces a longer burst of narrative: turns
(4), and (30)(32). Taken together, these two micronarratives construct most of the
story of her trajectory of escape, it is probably the story Fatoumata wants (and needs)
to tell as a coherent story. The long question-and-answer sequence separating both
bits of storytelling, however, is an effect of the perceived lack of factual substance in
the narrative: Fatoumatas turn (4), like the previous episodes of the interview, is an
emotional and confused story which fails to produce the factual details expected by
the interviewer.
This is where we meet the institutional, and culturally rooted, ideology that domi-
nates such encounters: people are imagined as rational being, stories are meaningful if
they mirror such rationality, and interviewers are trained to look for (verifiable) facts
and to pay no attention to affect and emotion in the stories (Maryns, 2006, Chapter 4).
Fatoumata failed to produce dates, place names, descriptions of people and objects in
her story, and consequently her application for asylum was denied because of the lack
of factual substance and consistency, all of which, to be sure, is seen in terms of the
particular ideology of meaning sketched above. If we replace that ideology by one that
recognizes ethnopoetic patterning as implicit, indexical meaning, the issue of facts
and substance becomes a different one. Let us take Fatoumatas turns (30) and (32): the
episode of her arrival in Belgium. The ship docks in Antwerp harbor and Fatoumata
is told to leave the ship. She has no idea where she is, and this is how she narrates the
extreme sensory confusion and disorientation that marks that experience:
1.
at that time xxx I see people
they put me inside of the boat
then I have to come down xxxx
2.
when I come down I see a lot of people
p people they were (standing)
I dont know what . they were waiting for
and . I now saw people walk into it ..
188 Jan Blommaert

3.
I xx I was walking again .
walking again .
I saw them .
they stand ..
some of them still walking
4.
then I stand ..
you know
now they still are . urm people coming
then people was running inside
now they they enter inside too ..
there there was coming
then people was going out of the bus ..
and then . xx inside ..
5.
and I have to xxxx
but theres no . people inside that place ..xxxxxx
so .. it was xxxxxxxxxxx
6.
and I have to . stay xx
I dont know xxxxxxx
so then I sleep xxxxxxxxxx
7..
then I saw a xxxxxx
We see seven verses of unequal length and structure. Verse (1) is the framing event: she
is told to leave the ship by the people who took her on board. Verses (2), (3) and (4)
provide an account of the extreme confusion she experiences when she gets off board.
Verses (5), (6) and (7) provide microscopic accounts of subsequent events, and note
the structural parallelism between (5) and (6) (three lines, starting which and, ending
with so and with a complication in the middle line).
Verses (2)(4) are the most interesting ones because they provide iconic and al-
most filmic accounts of Fatoumatas first impressions. In verse (2), she describes herself
coming down from the ship. She sees people the term is always used generically
here who are standing and walking: rudimentary categories of motion and body
position. The same frame standing and walking is carried over in verse (3).
Fatoumata herself is now walking around, and again she only perceives the vaguest
of activities around her. The sequence of verses (2)(4) is constructed out of parallel-
isms (marked by arrows in the transcript), suggesting the circularity and iterativity of
 Applied ethnopoetics 189

the event. But then she stops and looks she stands (verse (4)) and gradually we
see that her perceptions become more detailed. Motion is now described by means of
more specific terms: coming, running, enter, going out. At the same time, we again
see parallelisms: now-then-now-then-then. Iconically and by means of ethnopoetic
patterning, Fatoumata describes the gradual getting used to an environment which is
totally unfamiliar to her.
She describes the refugee experience in an amazingly accurate and factual way,
and she does so within severe linguistic and communicative constraints. In spite of
that, the confusing, chaotic and utterly disorienting experiences of escape, hiding, and
arriving in an unknown land are here narrated not in explicitly denotational words,
but in ethnopoetic, implicit and indexical, structures in her narrative. This is a different
kind of factuality, one that locates her in a place and a time-frame: She has undoubt-
edly gone through experiences of dislocation and displacement, and these experiences
were traumatic.

Conclusion

This is what applied ethnopoetics can do. By attending to implicit, indexical patterns
in narratives it creates different criteria for assessing the validity of stories, because it
reconstructs a different voice: An experiential, emotive voice that is deployed in poetic
patterns in narratives. Denying such voices and allowing only one factual voice in
narratives, is an act of power which defines many contemporary cross-cultural bureau-
cratic encounters. Offering forms of analysis that destabilize such institutional inequali-
ties are therefore a pressing matter.

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