An Ethnography of Communication: A Case Study of Boonbangfai Festival at Tambon Sangming, Amphoe Loeangnoktha, Yasothon Province.

Abstract

           The purpose of this Study was to analyse the pattern of communicative situation in the Boonbangfai Festival at Tambon Sangming, in Loengnoktha District, Yasothon Province to find different communicative events and components of each communicative event. The data were collected from Boonbangfai Festival at Tambon Sangming, in Loengnoktha District, Yasothon Province during April-May 2009 and 2010.

The results revealed that this communicative situation consisted of 15 events. The boundary between events was marked by the message content. The communicative events could be divided into three main sections: Preparation, Performance and Celebration.

According to the analysis of the ten elements proposed by Saville Troike (1982): the nature of genre or type of event, topics, purpose or function, setting, participants, message form, message content, act sequence, rules of interaction and norms of interpretation, it was found that the nature of genre or type of event, topics, purpose or function, setting, and contents of communications, sequences of speech acts were unique to respective incidents. Meanwhile, means of communications, interaction principles and interpretation norms based on different communication-related incidents were similar. That is to say that Northeastern dialect has been used as the means of communication in every incident together with some accompanying gestures from time to time. With regard to the interactions among bystanders, all of them were familiar with each other and periodically made jokes among themselves for fun. In addition, bystanders also paid respect to those who had higher rank or more experiences. Such respect was expressed by honoring, obeying, asking no questions or making no arguments. This could then be interpreted that people in the society revered those who had certain rank or position in the society as well as praised senior persons, public officers and persons with high professional experiences. Meanwhile, making jokes or using funny gestures by participants in Rocket Firing Festival Procession could refer to the fact that those social members loved the entertainment and amusing festivals. Also, Rocket Firing Festival was regarded as one of the biggest entertaining festivals for all people in the community to relax and enjoy themselves before going back to their farm work.