experimental research" (1988). She was also concerned by the fact that different people
were understanding ethnography in very different ways and the result was
"impressionistic and superficial" studies with the label of ethnographic research. She
defines what she calls the essentials of ethnography and states that true ethnography can
be very helpful for improving teaching and teacher training in ESL (ibid.). Watson-
Gegeo is not alone in her hopes about ethnography in applied linguistics. In the
following paragraphs I will deal with the approaches of van Lier, Holliday and Freeman,
three researchers in language education who have subscribed to ethnographic research.
As it will be evident, their approaches do not coincide. In fact, they diverge in what, for
me, are key research elements. As I see it, the comparison of these approaches will be
very relevant to my own research because it will allow me to put forward the specific
characteristics of my project and the reasons for my decision-making with regards to
methodology.
5.2.1.1 Van Lier
Leo van Lier, in a book on classroom research (1988,1) whose subtitle is
Ethnography and second-language classroom research, considers ethnography as "the
core of a humanistic approach to social science". According to him (1988,54),
ethnography is based on two principles: the emic and the holistic principles. The former
calls for an insider's (as opposed to an outsider or etic) description and explanation of the
culture studied (see Watson-Gegeo; 1988 for ESP research examples on this issue). This
means that the researcher has to consider the culture from the inside, taking into account
"just those features of the scene that are marked as significant by internal criteria"
(Brend:1974, 3 quoted in van Lier,ibid,17). The latter principle is based in Heath's
research (1983, cited in van Lier, ibid, 55). It argues for a Contextualisation both in terms
of relating the research to existing knowledge in the field and to the wider social context
of the participants. Watson-Gegeo explains the holistic aspect in terms of "a series of
concentric rings of increasingly larger contexts" (1988). Thus, the ethnographer has to
bear in mind that the specific phenomena s/he is investigating belongs to a certain
context which, in turn, belongs to a larger one. Related to this principle, van Lier puts
special emphasis on what he calls the "contextually defined setting", which he defines as
everything that "is relevant to the participants themselves" (1988,1).
Method-wise, van Lier says that there is a range of techniques that ethnographers
use. The choice, he adds, always depends on the types of data the researcher considers