Ethnography Assignment First Activity:

Spend two hours observing your courtroom.  Take careful notes of the following:
• Describe the physical setting in detail.  Briefly describe the outside of the building, and explain how you make your way to the courtroom itself, entering it.
• Where does the public sit and how does that seating compare to where the judge and other employees of the court sit?  What are their roles?
• Describe the dress of the judge, employees, lawyers, 2-3 defendants, and 2-3 members of the audience.  What verbal and nonverbal activity is present for you to determine relationships between audience members or between the audience and the defendants?
• As you watch 2-3 defendants before the court, time the total time before the judge makes a decision.  Describe how the interaction takes place. Does the judge speak directly to the defendant?  Is there a lawyer present?

Once you are home, revise your notes so that they are easily readable.  Summarize your findings in a three page, double-spaced ethnographic report.  If you did not get enough information or your notes are not complete enough, make a second visit to the courthouse.

Observe your courtroom an additional two or three hours on another date. Describe the “ritual” processes of the court, both verbal and nonverbal.  How do you know the proceedings have begun?  Who directs the flow of activities and how?  What are the forms of address used?  Describe the syntax and lexicon you hear in these ritual proceedings.  For example, is it formal English, conversational English, legal English?  Do you hear dialect markers such as particular phonemes, lexemes, or syntax (get the definitions of these terms from your text and from Wikipedia.com)? Describe the gestures, and, if possible the way participants in the legal processes direct their gaze as part of these ritual proceedings.  What is the demeanor of the judge?

For this observation, you want to find evidence of “ritual” processes (formalized, symbolic, representing authority), and these may vary from case to case.  Choose one case to describe then discuss the variations you noted in other cases.

As in the initial part of the assignment, write a three-page summary of your notes. This should be double spaced, articulate, and you should use full, well-crafted sentences.  Thus your completed Part I of the assignment should be about 6 pages of text (1500 words).

Ethnography Assignment Second Activity

Go back to court and watch at least two to three hours of court in order to write dialogue.  Take careful notes of the questioning process for one or more defendants.  The goal is to take notes on 10 minutes of continuous interaction using the language you hear.  Who does the questioning?  Do the defendants give a narrative in their responses or are they limited by the questions to brief responses to questions that elicit the event?

Type up 10 minutes of interaction with as much detail as possible; that is, try to capture the actual language.  If there are significant features to the dialogue such as voice tone or gestures that signal meaning, add that in square brackets after the words they accompany.  Unless it is significant, you do not need to attempt to record the Judge’s interactions with the clerk or bailiff.

As you type the dialogues, you should begin a new line, single spaced, with each person’s speech and number each line. J is Judge, D is Defendant, DL is Defense Lawyer, PL is prosecuting lawyer.  Below is an example of the format to use.

1. J:  Do you plead guilty to…?
2. D:  No, I didn’t do it. [shrugs]
3. J:  …

The goal is to have 3 typed pages of dialogue.  Make one or two observations at the end of your assignment about the ways judges and lawyers shape the dialogue.

Read the summaries you have written for previous parts of the assignment and review your notes.  You have described the nonverbal aspects of the court, the ritual, and the ways dialogue is shaped.  Now it is time to analyze what you have learned within the framework of our course on cultural anthropology.  How does the arrangement of space, forms of dress, ritual, and particular kinds of non-verbal and verbal expression shape relations of power within the courtroom setting, particularly between representatives of authority (esp. Judges) and defendants?  Write a 800-1000 word ethnographic essay that considers how power is constructed in the courtroom.  Your essay should have a thesis that is supported by the evidence you documented during your three trips to the courtroom.

Be creative.  Your essay might provide a vivid, descriptive narrative of the dynamics within the courtroom.  Aim for what anthropologist Clifford Geertz called “Thick Description.”  That is, include those details that are specifically relevant to understanding questions of power.  Thus, Part II of the ethnographic assignment will contain your three pages of dialogue plus your observations and your 800-1000 word essay (about 4 pages for the essay).

In total you completed assignment will contain the following:

1. Part I:  A three-page summary of your notes, which should be double spaced, articulate, and you should use full, well-crafted sentences.  Part I of the assignment should be about 6 pages of text (1500 words).  If you include photographs of your research site, which is a good idea, they do not count as part of the pages of text in your paper.

2. Part II:  Three typed pages of dialogue.  Make one or two observations at the end of your assignment about the ways judges and lawyers shape the dialogue.  In addition, a 800 to 1000 word ethnographic essay (about 3 to 4 pages) that considers how power is constructed in the courtroom.  Your essay should have a thesis that is supported by the evidence you documented during your three trips to the courtroom.

3. The completed ethnographic assignment should be about 12 to 14 pages long.