My first major series of Deep End topics is an assessment of a sociological theory known as Ethnomethodolgy to see if it’s got anything useful to say for those of us involved in public speaking, presentation skills coaching, speechwriting and executive communications.

Ethnomethodology is an obscure branch of sociology. It’s concerned with the ways in which social order is maintained. It describes the practices (the methods) people use to describe social settings.

Ethnomethodology was all the rage in the mid-1970’s when I was a graduate sociology student. It attracted those of us who were looking for an alternative to structural-functionalism (Talcott Parsons seemed such a boring old fart) and were tired of mainstream Marxist sociology (Karl Marx was another boring old fart).

It was a ‘hip’ social theory. It promised the excitement of Street Theater and Happenings. It didn’t take the fact of social order for granted (Yeah! Anarchy Rules, OK!) It encouraged people to see things around them as if for the first time. This resonated for students who’d experimented with hallucinogenic drugs. It was an intellectual cleansing of the doors of perception. It appealed to anyone enthralled by the afterglow of the sixties that bathed the student population of Europe in the early 1970’s.

It was cool. Obscure. Angular. Immediate. Some went on to build careers out of theories like this. The rest of us got $20 haircuts, entry-level jobs in corporations and conveniently developed amnesia for these angry critiques of our late adolescence.

So it’s with a sense of deja-vu I return to Ethnomethodology to see if it has any value for my life, thirty-five years after I first studied it. Are there any useful nuggets I can find to help my work in executive communications in the 21st Century? Will I see speechwriting as if for the first time?

My search, inspired, as I have said, by Roy H. Williams, is a deep dive into and report on the core elements of the theory that are relevant. I’ll strip out the academic jargon. And, frankly, plagiarize the academic sources without the usual attribution, but I will include a full set of references for sources I use.

My next posting in the series will examine what the heck Ethnomethodology is all about and why should speechwriters bother examining what everyone else takes for granted?