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Ethnographic Research Paper for Intercultural Communication

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Ethnographic Research Paper for Intercultural Communication
Background
My site of investigation is a dance studio, namely Fit Dance Studio, in Kowloon Bay. It has been, without a second thought, chosen for my ethnographic research because I have been an active participant over there recurrently for five years on a regular basis. I have been going to the dance classes and joining regular parties with other participants, including dance tutors and students of different ages and backgrounds from time to time. In this regard, my ethnographic data may sound and accurate with my understanding about the community. I acquire the data through observational techniques and participation in the practice. Since my participation is a long process of approximately five years, I believe I am a competent member and my analysis is representative to illustrate the ideas of interdiscourse communication in this site.

Context of the community
The dance studio offers dancing classes every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday at night, as well as Saturday and Sunday in the afternoon. Each class consists of ten to twenty students and one dance tutor. There are sporadic dancing sessions at night when members participate in dance competitions. The community hosts parties on a regular basis for birthday celebration of dance tutors. The members in the Discourse have these few variety of social interactions attributable to the constellation of genres.

Participants of the Discourse are from different Discourse systems and hence they have different social identities in the society, namely office ladies, housewives and secondary school students. Majority of the participants are female.

Verbal language is the key message form of communication. Text-based communication on phone and Facebook group page are sometimes used for announcement of updated class information and informal discussion.

Ideologies of the community
It can be said that the Discourse community is highly ideological from being legitimate members to patterns of communication. Members have to pay to



References: Scollon, R., Scollon, S. W. & Jones, R. (2012). Intercultural Communication: a discourse approach. West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell. Jones, R. (2012) Discourse analysis: A resource book for students. London: Routledge.

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