@inbook{b256d5382e9c4b10900463edfc821921,
title = "Toward an anthropology of Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE)",
abstract = "This chapter makes an argument for the role of ethnographic play in the study of informal digital learning of English (IDLE) as a complement to the work of applied linguistic research. In most cases, the initial impulse to study IDLE is itself a result of researchers' playful observation of youth learning English from engagement with a wide variety of digital media. IDLE is therefore a fundamentally cultural, anthropological phenomenon requiring a range of methods to be understood in its fullest context. A review of the history of ethnography presents its key practices as complementary to the more quantitative approaches of applied linguistics research. These include participant observation; analysis of artefacts; narrative, thick description; case study; grand theorization; and confession. An ethnographic approach also provides a check on reductionism, implications for language pedagogy, and assistance in building general knowledge about IDLE as a global, contextualised phenomenon. The chapter concludes with a {"}confessional{"} account of studying IDLE ethnographically in Morocco, illustrating again the need for the playfulness of ethnographic research as a complement to the temperance of careful measurement and design.",
keywords = "Confessional writing, Ethnography, Informal digital learning of english (idle), Morocco, Thick description",
author = "Mark Dressman",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. All rights reserved.",
year = "2023",
month = jul,
day = "3",
doi = "10.1515/9783110752441-002",
language = "English (US)",
isbn = "9783110752342",
series = "Studies on Language Acquisition",
publisher = "De Gruyter",
pages = "21--42",
editor = "Denyze Toffoli and Geoffrey Sockett and Meryl Kusyk",
booktitle = "Language Learning and Leisure",
}