What is Thick Description?

 Ethnographies pose unique challenges, because they involve a combination of fieldwork (observation, interview, survey) and critical analysis through the application of core disciplinary or course concepts. 

• Your thick description of behaviors in their context should try to paint a clear picture of the event, situation, environment, or culture in question. 
• If possible, bring a notepad and/or tape recorder in order to capture small details. If you cannot take notes while observing, be sure to write your thoughts down as soon after the experience as possible. 
• It is also extremely important to be self-reflective; notice how your presence might alter the environment, as well as how your own assumptions and reactions to the situation might affect what you notice and how you write about it. 
• spend adequate time observing and be a skillful observer. Consider questions like the following: 
• + What is the layout of the space or room? 
• + What are the specific objects or physical elements in the space? 
• + Who are the people involved? 
• + What clues signify people’s statuses and roles? 
• + What are the people you are observing doing in general or attempting to accomplish? 
• + What explicit structures, rules, or norms govern the situation? 
• + What are people wearing? 
• + What is their affect like? 
• + How do people interact with one another? 
• + What are individuals’ specific behaviors, both verbal and non-verbal? 
• When composing your thick description of events, try to show rather than tell by using evocative language. (Put another way, select words that help the reader see what is being described). 
• Try to be as specific as possible by avoiding general or abstract words. 
• Instead, use anecdotes, examples, descriptions, and quotations to make your experience concrete for the reader. 
• Taking Good Notes in the Field Before beginning your observation, interview, survey, or other fieldwork, 
• Identify your own ideas and expectations about the situation. Being aware of these will help you as you observe, allowing you to collect data more neutrally, instead of fitting the data to match your expectations. 
• below are sentences that could be in an essay; however, they are not good formulations for your observation notes because they move too quickly from observation to conclusion. Before you make judgments, give analysis, and draw conclusions, you need careful details. Notes of your observations or direct quotes from surveys and interviews make up the evidence needed for the final analysis. 

Too Vague Descriptive 

“Coach Rodriguez was my favorite.”   (instead)        

“Coach Rodriquez was the only coach who spent 30 minutes working one-on-one with each athlete every week.” 

“The chair of the meeting was ineffective.”  (instead)

“The chair addressed only 3 of 5 points on the agenda in the 60 minutes allotted for the meeting.” 

Too Conclusive Detailed 

“The teacher likes the students.”  (instead)

“The teacher smiles when the students enter the room, greets them attentively and warmly, and hugs those that run to her.” 

“The interviewee was uncomfortable with" (instead)

“During questions 5 thru 7 the interviewee started this line of questioning.” fidgeting in his seat, touching his hand to his mouth, and speaking more slowly while clearing his throat repeatedly. He displayed none of those behaviors in the first 4 questions.” 

Stating what COULD be Explaining what IS happening 

“Students will learn math better with hands- (instead)

“Yesterday, when the teacher wrote problems on the board on examples than numbers on a chalkboard.” 3 students answered all problems correctly. Today, when the teacher used blocks and bottle caps, 8 students answered most problems correctly in under 30 seconds.”

EXAMPLES

(1) As we approached the steps down from the footbridge which had taken us over the railway line we looked down at people eating and drinking in the garden of the public house which was part of the business that Diane and I were currently studying. Tynemill, a business running a couple of dozen pubs and bars, had moved its base to the upper floor of The Victoria, a late nineteenth century former railway hotel. We entered The Vic and, after pushing our way through the group of customers who were crowding the main bar, found ourselves being greeted by Neil, a director of Tynemill who was currently spending most of his time in The Victoria and, it would seem, taking charge of activities in the pub. ‘Perhaps you ought to get round this side of the bar and help us out’, he suggested to Diane, who had learned how to serve pints, take food orders and all the rest at this bar as part of the ‘ethnographic fieldwork’ component of the Tynemill study. Neil looked a little more askance at Tony, ‘Fancy seeing you here, stranger’. ‘Yes, it’s no good asking me to help out, Neil. I’d be no better that side of the bar than I am at this’. Neil rolled his eyes upward, jokingly acknowledging his awareness of Tony’s well-known discomfort at struggling to get served at crowded bars. But he was also aware, from earlier conversations, that Tony tended to associate going into The Victoria with some unhappy experiences when he was working as a participant observer in the large company across the railway line. These were experiences of ‘going for a goodbye drink’ with managerial colleagues who had found themselves made redundant by the company to which they had given years of highly committed service.Yet, as Neil had pointed out on an earlier occasion, The Victoria in pre-Tynemill times was a ‘very different place’. ‘The Vic, as it was then’, Neil had argued, was ‘precisely what Tynemill had come into existence to provide an alternative to. It had been a scruffy, unwelcoming dump offering one brand of keg beer (imposed on it by the brewery) and two flavours of crisps if you were lucky’. ‘But look what you’ve got now’, he went on.‘There’s a proper choice of real ales, bottled beers and excellent wines. You’ve got full food menus in the bar and the restaurant. And you’ve got the chance of good conversation, without jukeboxes or the bridge games machines. And all of this is in a comfortable physical environment, inside or out in the garden, without any kind of pretentiousness …’ ‘Except perhaps on the part of some of the regulars who tend to block the bar,’ interrupted Tony, ‘and some of the old brewery posters are a bit …’. ‘Well, if you came in here a bit more often …’, Neil started to respond before being called away to deal with a problem that had arisen in the kitchen, an area of his territory that he was especially proud to rule over. ‘I’d better go and see what’s happening in the kitchen’, Neil explained, ‘and I’m expecting to see Chris at any time now. We’ve some rather big things to discuss’. With Neil away in his beloved kitchen, Tasha came over and served us with our pint of Hemlock (brewed in Tynemill’s own Castle Rock brewery) and a glass of red wine. Diane and Tasha had a quick conversation about recent developments among the Victoria’s bar staff but nothing was said about what the issues might be that Neil was going to be discussing with Chris, the managing director of Tynemill. This was something we would need to find out about later. Meanwhile, however, we took our drinks over to the only empty table, one which was next to the door of the bar. This was a slightly uncomfortable place to sit but, as Diane pointed out, it provided to the still uneasy Tony, quite a good vantage point for people who took their ethnographic research seriously. Suitably chastized, Tony sipped his Hemlock and turned to see how the customers who had newly arrived in the pub were managing to navigate through the now even more crowded space in front of the bar.

(2) The taxi turns right out of the honking traffic through the main gate set within a forbidding, three-metre-high, spiked wrought iron fence. 1 The taxi driver jokingly asks us, in English, whether the fence is there to keep students in, or others out.Students mill about in the yard, between the fence and the dull grey concrete buildings. They are nearly all female, and there seem to be two styles of dress. Some wear very short skirts or tight jeans, sweaters, shirts, boots and long hair. In contrast to this there are some in Islamic dress, their hair and head fully covered by the hijab or scarf and only the skin of the face and hands visible. We enter the main door, and are greeted by the caretakers, all brown-suited middle-aged men with moustaches, leaning against grey unadorned walls. We pass the student common room and tobacco smoke billows from the door.We walk along a tile-floored corridor past a large black bust of Atatürk, a Turkish National flag, tall glass cabinets with examples of costume and embroidery, and continue onto a grimy stone floor, passing hundreds of students along the way. Glancing right we see a ‘kitchen’ lined with large steaming urns of boiling water. In here there are five or six middle-aged men in blue overall jackets making glasses of tea and coffee and carrying them away, one handed, on silvery metal trays. We walk up a wide uncarpeted staircase, into the main administration and management area where the floor is carpeted and each office door has a brass plate with the occupant’s name and title. Each of the offices has an outer office with a secretary. 2 As we enter the Vice-Dean’s rooms her secretary, a woman in her forties wearing a dark skirt and white blouse, welcomes us with a formal and deferential ‘Guneydin’, shakes our hands and shows us into the main office. The room is about four metres square, with a blue/grey plain carpet, high windows across one wall and a piece of flat modern sculpture on the wall opposite.There is a large, very tidy, dark wooden desk. Everything on it is neatly arranged including pens, pencil, scissors, a jar of sweets, a television remote control, and two telephones.At the front of the desk is a black ceramic nameplate with ‘Prof. Dr -------’ in gold lettering. The desk has a padded black leather chair behind it. On the right of the chair is a Turkish flag furled on a pole topped by a golden crescent. Next to the flag there is a blue and white circular enamel charm against the evil eye. On the wall directly above the chair is a severe black and white portrait of Atatürk looking down into the room. An IBM computer sits on a small table to the left of the desk, and behind this a television. There are three houseplants in the corner, two armchairs facing each other across a low coffee table, on which there is a notepad from Manchester Museum of Science and Industry and a prospectus from Purdue University. The inside of the office door is covered in quilted leather padding. The secretary, through our interpreter, apologizes for the absence of the Vice-Dean, giving us a choice of tea, apple tea, coffee, or a herbal sage drink. We order apple tea and sit waiting. After about five minutes the Vice-Dean arrives, breathlessly explaining that she had been to a meeting to substitute for the Dean who was ill. She is wearing a blue and black striped suit, a white sweater and we notice a small gold Atatürk’s-Head lapel badge. She sits behind her desk under the portrait of Mustafa Kemal and immediately telephones her secretary to order more refreshments.

___________

More on descriptive writing:

Show don’t tell, and including sensory detail from our five senses helps us drop the reader into our ethnographic world.  

Sight
The most often used sense when writing is sight. It’s what we use most and what comes naturally to us-write about what you see. 

• But here’s a tip: Look beyond what others see-blue sky, green grass-to the details of color, shape, size, to indicate something new. For example, “The shamrock green of the open expanse curved around a small grove of trees then down toward the river.”

Hearing
Loud, soft, yell, whisper, angry, and all kinds of other adjectives are used for sound. But have you thought about using something more personal? “She spoke with a lover’s voice, not a cat’s, making me want to listen closely to every syllable.” Or, “He sounded like freedom. Not just his words, but the way they tumbled gently from his lips.” Or use a little synesthesia: “It was a bright red noise, repeating stop, stop, stop continually, until I couldn’t go on any longer.”

• this may seem like creative writing and it is...don't go to far afield, but metaphors are okd

Smell
Smell is another one of those senses that’s different for each of us. What I think is a bad smell, someone else might not be bothered by it. So, works like stink and pungent are great to use, but you can easily go deeper into explanation. For example, “The alley smelled of urine and Cracker-Jacks, an assault to the nose and eyes alike.” Or how about this: “The wind changed to something foul, dead, wafting up from the darkened pit.”

Touch
The way things feel is more than just texture and temperature. Like the other senses, it can be personal: “His handshake was my father’s handshake, not to meet you, but the rough callousness of someone showing you who’s boss.” Or try something like this: “It felt like the memory of something long forgotten, thin, almost invisible.”

Taste
Taste is something that is different to each of us and is difficult to get across . Yes, we all know what bacon tastes like if we just say it tastes like bacon, but what about doing something unique with that idea? If you think about it, taste is more than just something your brain interprets from your taste-buds. It’s texture and smell and sight and even process, all mixed together. Try this: “The undercooked bacon felt like a wet sponge placed on my tongue, only grease leaked into my mouth instead of water.” Or this: “I could smell the mold even before I put the cheese into my mouth.” Of course, you can always use a metaphor or simile, like, “Like hot cocoa on a winter morning, the dinner calmed and relaxed me.”

Of course, you can always use the senses in your writing just to “explain,” in which perhaps you want to be straightforward and use familiar language, but when you have all these other tools, you’ll want to select how you approach the five senses. As mentioned and illustrated in the example, the senses overlap to a point where we often pitch them together as a way of explaining just one of them.