{"id":9411,"date":"2016-09-16T03:23:50","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T10:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9411"},"modified":"2016-09-16T03:23:50","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T10:23:50","slug":"a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words-or-why-are-there-so-many-emojis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words-or-why-are-there-so-many-emojis\/","title":{"rendered":"A picture is worth a thousand words or why are there so many emojis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Like many students that have been assigned one of Sarah Pink’s books, or any like it, my first thought upon opening\u00a0Doing Visual Ethnography\u00a0<\/em>was, ‘What is Visual or any other form of ethnography?’
\nPink’s gives this definition of ethnography (34) : \u00a0a methodology…. an approach to experiencing, interpreting and representing experience, culture, society and material and sensory environments that informs and is informed by sets of different disciplinary agendas and theoretical principles.
\nThis gives us a starting place, although not the clearest one. \u00a0 The dictionary definition of ethnography: the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures. \u00a0<\/em>Misses the detail and depth of Pink’s, but it too helps to build a base of what we are trying to do when we engage in ethnography. \u00a0The visual aspect of this study is incredibly important, and one of Pink’s main points is that visual ethnography is not simply using the visual (pictures\/video\/etc.) in the description of people or culture.
\nPink states that\u00a0The visual is therefore inextricably interwoven with our personal identities, narratives, lifestyles, cultures and societies, as well as with definitions of history, time, space, place, reality and truth…….<\/em>Images are indeed part of how we experience, learn and know as well as how we communicate and represent knowledge. \u00a0<\/em>I can’t imagine that there are any among us that would argue with her point – we live in a visual world, images are central both to who we are and to how we understand who we are – or how we understand anything meaningful about any group or people.<\/p>\n

Connected to this understanding is the recognition that there can be no such thing as a completely unbiased observer or researcher when undertaking ethnography (or could we say any type of social science?). \u00a0There are two aspects to the point here. \u00a0First, in an argument against the tradition of her field(s) and traditionalists in it, she convincingly articulates that there is no\u00a0possibility of a ‘purely objective social science’ and she also rejects the common notion in academia of the superiority of the written word, making the case that we all know – that a picture is worth a thousand words and that pictures – the visual has a place in ethnographic study. (10)
\nThe second aspect is encapsulated by Pink’s acknowledgement that, as she is in the process of writing the book:\u00a0\u00a0As I write this book I am facing the web cam in my laptop, and my camera-phone is next to me….\u00a0<\/em>She makes the point that….\u00a0the camera and the digital image, as an increasingly constant presence in our pockets, our hands and our computers is part of our contemporary reality (31).
\n<\/em>The nearly universal nature of our webcams, our smartphones and digital cameras means that these things are a part of our reality – some among us might say they are a part or at least a representation of – who we are. \u00a0That means they \u00a0are not just tools we use in our research, but rather they are a part of how and what we communicate on a daily basis.
\nThis makes visual ethnography both more accessible to us and harder to define. \u00a0Because of their ubiquitous presence in and around our lives, we may not have to spent much time learning the ‘tools of the trade’ of visual ethnography. \u00a0At the same time, how do we know\u00a0what makes something a piece of ethnographic knowledge?
\nPink says that no single thing (experience, artifact, action or representation) is in itself ethnographic, but that these things maybe defined as such through the ethnographer’s interpretation and context. \u00a0She says that the same is also true of what she calls\u00a0the sometimes arbitrary nature of our distinctions between personal experience and ethnographic experience, autobiography and anthropology(35).<\/em><\/p>\n

This is important, I think, and was very helpful for me in getting to understand what ethnography really is – another way of articulating this is, possibly, to ask this question: what is purely personal experience and what of one’s personal experience might be indicative or instructive of the wider culture. \u00a0That which belongs to or informs the larger culture is ethnographic.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

I end with a caution. \u00a0Pink highlights, in numerous places throughout the book, using several examples the danger in assuming what I would call neutral meaning or understanding to the visual images that we might use in ethnographic study. \u00a0I maybe able to tell you what the words I say mean, but on some level a picture speaks for itself and pictures may speak to all of us in different ways.
\nAssumed meaning is a temptation because I think we all, reflexively ‘trust’ what we see – not just to be true, but to mean what we think it means. \u00a0 In highlighting the importance of the visual in understanding culture and people, Pink wonderfully states:\u00a0human expressiveness is not limited to a smiling or angry face. The whole body is included in how a person expresses him- or herself(16).<\/em><\/p>\n

This is why visual ethnography is so important – human expressiveness is not limited by the written word any more than it is by a smiling or angry face . To even begin to truly understand any culture – even our own – simply by describing it with words (even really wonderful ones).
\nBut, there is also the danger of reading both too much and too little into what an image can tell you about a particular moment, event or culture. \u00a0A picture can take the place of a 1000 words, but without the appropriate context to anchor them, the value of those words in terms of gaining meaning or understanding about a culture is limited.<\/p>\n

As I read Pink’s words about human expressiveness, I instantly thought about emojis. \u00a0Why are there so many of them – there are, on my phone at least, almost 200 variations on the smiley face? \u00a0It is because they are designed to clearly communicate meaning without the ambiguity that is built into so many of the images that we see (Pink’s picture of the ‘Bullfighters braid’ is understood in many different ways, for example). \u00a0Emojis are trying to, without the use of words, provide the context that is essential for\u00a0the visuals that we interact with to have discernable meaning and value as we seek to understand each other, a particular people or culture.<\/p>\n

Visual ethnography reminds us that we cannot understand our world, other cultures or even ourselves simply with the written word – we need visual perspective, but we also need words to help us anchor those visuals and give\u00a0them context…. at least until Turabian gives us a way to properly attribute emoji\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many students that have been assigned one of Sarah Pink’s books, or any like it, my first thought upon opening\u00a0Doing Visual Ethnography\u00a0was, ‘What is Visual or any other form of ethnography?’ Pink’s gives this definition of ethnography (34) : \u00a0a methodology…. an approach to experiencing, interpreting and representing experience, culture, society and material and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[900,901,279],"class_list":["post-9411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlpg7","tag-lpg7","tag-pink","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}