Symbolic Interaction:an Ethnographic Communication Study Of A Dai Community

With the ethnographic approach, the author gathered many field materials on interpersonal communication, ritual practices, religion activities, and media-use, etc. By resorting to some related theoretical resources of anthropology and sociology, the author believed that these activities could be viewed as social dialogues."Symbolic interaction" is proposed not only to refer to those activities, but to form a framework of interpretation of meaning.This paper analyses those activities from three perspectives:the maintenance of tradition, the implication beyond the tradition and the use of modern media. The author finds out that traditional activities including religious ritual and daily custom are the expression and representation of people's basic emotion and relationship. Moreover, it shows the hierarchical and relation structure. Anti-traditional practices provoke competition and conflict and thus entail the adjustment of the relation structure. Outsiders can change their relationship with insiders by participating in the traditional ritual, and by doing so, conversely make an influence on the practice.On some occasions, the use of modern media, subject to the interference of traditional factors, can highlight the traditional relation structure; while in many other cases, it may change the traditional relation structure thanks to the new knowledge and technologies followed by the introduction of modern media. In some extreme cases, the use of media can form a temporary "tradition"Finally, the paper concludes that "symbolic interaction" is the construction and maintenance of the meaning world that features order and dominant practice. The author believes that the nature of media is embedded in these practices which are also one of the subjects of the media study, and making thick description of these subjects are the goal of media study.