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Fieldwork Ethics: The Rights and Responsibilities of the Fieldworker

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Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork

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Abstract

There has been a great deal of discussion in recent years on the responsibilities of the fieldworker with respect to the community whose language is being studied. As Dwyer (2006:50) puts it, “The ethical requirements of fieldwork-based investigation are complex, as they demand that the researcher attend both to a respectful and reciprocal relationship with the language community and produce documentation meeting the standards of the academic community and the funding agency.” In this chapter, we review what has been reported in the literature regarding the challenges of meeting these many demands.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    If communities have this view of the loss of their language, it is more than likely because generations of speakers have been culturally and linguistically stigmatized. Speakers may be willing to trade away their linguistic heritage rather than continue facing oppression. Also, as discussed in Dorian (1993), speakers may feel a strong sense of loss once the language is gone.

  2. 2.

    See the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage http://www.Unesco.org/culture/ich.

  3. 3.

    http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/ethstmnt.htm

  4. 4.

    These concerns are being addressed by the field as evidenced by the recent symposium Fostering Synergistic Partnerships between Teachers and Linguists, held at the Linguistics Society of America Annual meeting, San Francisco, January 8, 2009. See also Schneider (2009) and von Gleich (2005) for suggestions on developing language teaching materials in documentation projects.

  5. 5.

    http://lsaethics.wordpress.com/category/ethics-statement/

  6. 6.

    We are referring to The Linguistic Society of America resolution recognizing the scholarly merit of language documentation which was prepared by the LSA’s Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation. The resolution can be found online at http://www.lsadc.org/info/lsa-res-lang-doc.cfm).

  7. 7.

    http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/ethics.php

  8. 8.

    Some examples of pedagogical grammars are mentioned in Section 11.2.1.2, and some examples of conversational phrasebooks are in Section 12.2.2.6.

  9. 9.

    Interestingly, investing time in describing typologically similar adjacent languages is regarded as low priority for typologists. When discussing how to select a language to study, Dixon advocates looking for one which is typologically interesting: an isolate, for instance, rather than a language representative of a large group where many of the languages may share typological features. (Dixon 2010:312–313). Describing a new Oceanic language when good descriptions already exist for some of the 500 languages in this group would increase our knowledge of this language family only by filling us in on a few language-specific features. In Dixon’s view, time would be better spent describing a Papuan language of the Solomon Islands, of which less is known.

  10. 10.

    Mission projects are collective; missionary linguists work in an atmosphere of “institutional and mutual support and commitment to common goals” (Dobrin and Good 2009:627).

  11. 11.

    http://lsaethics.wordpress.com/2008/07/

  12. 12.

    The phenekis the traditional wraparound skirt worn by Manipuri women.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 76203-1307, USA

    Shobhana L. Chelliah & Willem J. de Reuse

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  1. Shobhana L. Chelliah
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  2. Willem J. de Reuse
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Correspondence to Shobhana L. Chelliah .

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Chelliah, S.L., de Reuse, W.J. (2010). Fieldwork Ethics: The Rights and Responsibilities of the Fieldworker. In: Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9026-3_6

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