An ethnographic study examined the role of language in an economics classroom. The researcher became an undergraduate economics student for one semester and concluded that the language practices in that economics classroom were represented neither by the transmission model nor the process approach to writing. The most valuable part of this ethnographic study, for both the researcher and the teacher, was the understanding of how difficult it is for any ethnographer to comprehend the lens through which he or she reads a community and how much researcher and teacher appreciated the opportunity to exchange views and to vent their frustrations about teaching. The researcher learned that if writing instructors want colleagues across the disciplines to review the assumptions behind their views of writing and reading, teaching and learning, then the writing instructors will also have to be willing to examine their own assumptions about their field. (RS)