ethnomethodology a phenomenological approach to interpreting everyday action and speech in various social contexts. Derived from phenomenological sociology and introduced by Harold Garfinkel, the method aims to guide research into meaningful social practices as experienced by participants. A major objective of the method is to interpret the rules that underlie everyday activity and thus constitute part of the normative basis of a given social order. Research from this perspective generally focuses on mundane social activities – e.g., psychiatrists evaluating patients’ files, jurors deliberating on defendants’ culpability, or coroners judging causes of death. The investigator then attempts to reconstruct an underlying set of rules and ad hoc procedures that may be taken to have guided the observed activity. The approach emphasizes the contextuality of social practice – the richness of unspoken shared understandings that guide and orient participants’ actions in a given practice or activity. See also VERSTEHE. D.E.L.