There is unexamined potential for developing and testing rival causal explanations in the type of data that participant observation is best suited to create: descriptions of in situ social interaction crafted from the participants' perspectives. By intensively examining a single ethnography, we can see how multiple predictions can be derived from…

Research by Labov dealing with everyday speech and its relation to thinking and reasoning is critiqued, and Cooper's detailed criticism of Labov's research is discussed. Researchers should pay attention to actual speech in settings that are natural, rather than using only quantitative abstractions from artificial and restricted verbal encounters.…