ethnomethodology (n.)

A term referring to a movement that developed in American sociology of the early 1970s, which led to the development of CONVERSATION ANALYSIS in LINGUISTICS. The approach proposed to replace the predominantly deductive and quantitative techniques of previous sociological research, with its emphasis on general questions of social structure, by the study of the techniques (= ‘methods’) which are used by people themselves (curiously referred to as ‘ethnic’) when they are actually engaged in social (and thus linguistic) interaction. The emphasis is on how individuals experience, make sense of and report their interactions; and ethnomethodological data therefore consist of tape-recordings of natural conversation, and their associated TRANSCRIPTIONS.