Conversation words in art and design practice: A corpus-based ethnography

Abstract

Spoken and written communication plays a crucial constitutive role in both the production and reception of contemporary art and design practice, and as a result ‘conversation’ words, such as discuss, talk, communicate and respond frequently occur in the texts and talk of art and design educators, their students and creative professionals. In order to understand more about the role of communication in art and design practice, as well as the conceptualisation of art and design practice as communication, this study examines the use of these ‘conversation’ words in ethnographic data collected from a site-specific instance of art and design discourse practice. To achieve this objective, the ethnographic data is treated as sets of corpora which are examined using the tools of corpus analysis. Findings indicate the different constitutive, functional and strategic roles of ‘conversation’ words in art and design education and professional practice. They also shed light on the potential of corpus analytical resources to contribute to ethnographic research.