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Harold Garfinkle

Harold Garfinkle's studies in ethno methodology firmly established ethnomethodology as a distinctive theoretical perspective. He established ethno methodology as a field of inquiry that seeks to understand the methods people employ to make sense out of their world. He places considerable emphasis on language as the vehicle by which this reality construction is done. Indeed for Garfinkle, interacting individuals' efforts to account for their actions that are to represent them verbally to others is the primary method by which the world is constructed. In Garfinkle's terms folk technique used by actors is verbal description. In this way people use their accounts to construct a sense of reality.

Garfinkle places enormous emphasis on indexicality that is on the fact that members' accounts are tied to particular contexts and situations. An utterance indexes much more than it actually says, it also evokes connotations that can only be understood in the context of a situation.Garfinkle's work was thus the first to stress the indexical nature of interpersonal cues and to emphasize that individuals seek to use accounts to create a sense of reality.

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