Emergent identity: An ethnographic 'conversation' on the constitutive making and remaking of researcher and 'speechie' selves

If for once we could engage a scholarly discussion that unapologetically and substantially foregrounded all ethnographers as malleable individuals worthy of study in our own right, we would find that the doing of ethnographic research---including "traditional" or "standard" modes of ethnography that typically purport a reflexive distance between subject and object---creates the conditions that make possible the constitutive making and remaking of selves. This project enacts a risky, but necessary line of discourse on subjectivity.; Following H. L. Goodall (2000), I provide a descriptive and contingent ethnographic "conversation" about the creative and resourceful cultural communication of the "speechies," a speech community comprised of members of a local high school speech team. Who the speechies are as cultural persons is inextricably bound to their humorous, open, and supportive discourse. Their interrelated ways of communicating and being serve as an exemplar that contrasts contemporary and generalized representations of young individuals as occupying a "jaded" and "imperiled" status within US culture. The ethnography with the speechies is both a cultural account in its own right and a launching pad for a larger philosophical conversation involving communication, ethnography, and subjectivity.; I use personal narratives and hermeneutic phenomenology to describe how salient moments of lived experience make possible interpersonal and cultural communication and ethnographic research. Moreover, I use Calvin O. Schrag's (1986) "communicative praxis" and Lenore Langsdorf's (2002) "communicative poiesis" to argue that the mundane and ecstatic doing of ethnographic research (ethnographic praxis) makes possible performances of dynamic and fluid ethnographic selves (moments of poiesis within the doing of ethnography---whether or not we are cognizant of such transformation.; Holistically, we come to better understand subjectivity as being an emergent phenomenon. Ethnographic identity, and communicative identity in general, are multiple and ongoing, instead of singular and static, phenomena. As human beings (speech team members, ethnographers, everyday communicators, etc.), and amidst social constraints, we are more possible and changing, instead of devoid of opportunities for hope and adaptation.