Opening talk of a seminar held at the University of Glasgow, on May 22nd, 2009. The seminar was organized in the context of the ESRC-funded Researcher Development Initiative, Ethnography, Language and Communication (see www.rdi-elc.org.uk). It aimed to explore the possibilities and problems of employing ethnographic approaches in the analysis of verbal and textual data, and provided a forum to discuss how such methods can complement other perspectives and methods of inquiry.