Fundamentalist Differences: Using Ethnography of Rhetoric (EOR) to Analyze a Community of Practice

• In Event: Communities of Practice: Negotiating Identities in Church, College, a Small Town, and a Family of Fisherman

Abstract

The author conducted a four-year ethnography of American fundamentalists through fieldwork at 200 churches in 17 states. Lay speech is readily analyzable through an ethnography of communication (EOC). But in a community of ideology, leaders' rhetoric set norms for identity construction and established power distances by determining whether leaders ruled via charismatic or expert authority. Ethnography of rhetoric (EOR), an approach proposed by Lindquist, can go beyond EOC as a framework for studying communities of practice.

Author

• Mark Ward Sr., Clemson University