As I reflect on various ways to construct Sweet Home Chicago into more of an ethnographic work, I draw on several different methodologies and recommendations from my fellow class mate as well as my own introspective analysis in conjunction with the class readings. First, one of the key shifts is to unpack for the reader the internal language that I use as a geographer. For example, I reference the significance of “spatial lineage” to engage with the various time-spaces that my family has traveled through that have contributed to my identity as a third-generation Black Chicagoan. Although ethnography is largely an academic practice, the strength that it possesses as a methodology is to invite readers from diverse backgrounds to engage with the culture, spaces, people and …show more content…
Although we have not referenced this in class, language also becomes spatialized at its genesis, but also how the spaces and places shift over time and the ways in which culture and the people that give it meaning allocate specific verbiage to denote particular spatial experiences. As a result, I must define the Chicago language and connect those descriptions back to the ways in which people place-brand their areas, create place attachments and how the city and its micro-spaces produce spatial identities and geocultures. What does the usage of geographic slang in the city tell us about the space and those that engage with the language? Who produced these words? What does internal language tell us about the “a-where-ness” of Chicagoans? How does this language distinguish Chicago and its residents from other spaces and places? What slang words have I used? What do those words signify for me? Do they allow me to travel to specific time-spaces or micro-spaces within the city? These are the kinds of questions that will help to make the work more of an ethnographic