This edited collection presents a range of heretofore unpublished,
unavailable methods for the systematic reconstruction of culture from
interviews and other discourse. Authors set the design and evolution of
their methods in the context of their own research projects, and draw
general lessons about investigating culture through discourse. These
methods have largely grown out of the work of the cultural models
school, and represent the approaches of some of the very best
methodologists in cultural anthropology today. An impetus for the volume
has been inquiries from researchers, many of them graduate students,
about how to conduct the kind of research that cultural models theorists
do. This is not a linguistics book; unlike approaches to discourse
analysis from linguistics, this volume focuses on culture, treating
discourse as a medium especially rich in clues for cultural analysis,
and hence a window into culture.