Linguistic anthropologists often record people communicating in "naturally occurring" settings and using "naturally occurring" conversations. Introducing a recording device changes the "context" of a situation. Ahearn describes the four ways that anthropologists respond to this phenomenon. What are those four ways?

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The four focuses listed by Ahearn are: multifunctionality, practice, linguistic ideology and indexicality. By multifunctionality it should be understood that each speech act is composed of six constitutive factors, with a specific function for each one (expressive, conative, referential, poetic, phthalic and metalinguistic).

The linguistic ideology allows to connect the micro level with the macro level. It is the set of beliefs and assessments that have about language as a whole, about some languages, about its use and how to use it.

The indexicality of language refers to the existence of words that act as particular markers: context, power, equality-inequality. This indexical character allows to show the referential relationship, such as the one between an arrow and what it indicates.