Tracking the transmission of culture: a cultural discourse analysis of narratives of circulation in the US undergraduate public speaking course

ABSTRACT

Ethnography of communication studies conducted by communication scholars, including those informed by cultural discourse theory, typically approach the cultural transmission of discursive resources using a narrow conception of language socialization. In this conception, expert speakers instruct or otherwise compel novice speakers to speak in locally recognized, normative ways and thereby achieve or affirm membership in the collective. I perform the cultural discourse analysis of narratives of circulation to extend this approach. In particular, I study narratives representing the movements of the Anglo-American speech genre known as public speaking in a US undergraduate course and a series of focus groups. Speakers narrated movement along four paths: from beyond the classroom into the classroom; inside the classroom (with the class acting as primary agent of dissemination); inside the classroom (with student speakers acting as secondary agents of dissemination); and from the classroom beyond the classroom. The analysis suggests three extensions of the existing approach to cultural transmission and, thereby, of cultural discourse theory: accounting for cultural ideologies (or metacultures) of transmission; producing more comprehensive accounts of transmission’s participation structure; and accounting for the local meanings of mobile resources both in context and in motion.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative
• circulation
• cultural transmission
• ethnography of communication
• cultural discourse analysis
• public speaking

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Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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David Boromisza-Habashi

David Boromisza-Habashi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA. He is an ethnographer of communication who studies the relationship between culture, communication, and mobility. His areas of research include cultural discourse theory, the translocal circulation of discursive resources, and the dynamics of speech economies. His current empirical research focuses on the communicative constitution of Anglo-American public speaking as a mobile (‘for-anyone-anywhere’) speech genre.