TEXTUAL PATTERNS IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING: DESCRIPTION AND NARRATION
TEXTUAL PATTERNS IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING: DESCRIPTION AND NARRATION

Summary/Abstract: Through this study, we propose an analysis of several ethnographic documents indexed in the Archive of the Folklore Society in Cluj, in the 1950s and 1960s. The aim is to show that ethnographic writing represents a process of recalibrating, not of objectively describing reality. The ethnographic text is written from the perspective of its purposes. The discursive strategies used in textualizing the records, through the transition from the oral to the scriptural, pertain to realistic ethnography. During this period, description was the most frequently used textual pattern. This supports the attempts to identify the prototype of a cultural model, as required by realistic ethnology. The narrative is used to illustrate the patterns traced through description. During the period under consideration, the principles of research were predicated on generalization and synthesization. Researchers most often took down general elements characteristic of the community they studied. This working mode was closely related to the purposes of the discipline and to the methodological and scientific framework of the time, most specifically, to the positivist paradigm.

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