LDSS presentation, 15 July 2024

Linguistic fieldwork: theory and practice

Peter K. Austin
Department of Linguistics
SOAS, University of London
© Peter K. Austin 2024
Creative commons licence
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND

www.peterkaustin.com
Overview

▪ A bit of history
▪ Some terminology and definitions
▪ Relationships
▪ Kinds of researchers and contexts
▪ Conclusions
A bit of history
◼ In the 18th and 19th centuries the study of language was
dominated by historical and comparative considerations
(diachrony), especially the reconstruction of past histories
of languages and their classification into families
◼ Dominance of ‘tree model’ of relationships (cf. ‘wave
theory’)
◼ Data primarily came from books (especially classical
languages, e.g. Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Gothic Bible)
◼ Interest in ‘exotic’ languages with data from missionaries,
explorers, travelers, colonial officers (cf. ‘armchair linguists’)
◼ Following Frazer, Morgan et al. use of questionnaires and
written correspondence with data collectors
Daisy Bates,
Western Australia
vocabularies
A bit of history
◼ Some researchers became interested in local folklore and
‘dialects’, which were seen as disappearing in the face of
national (standard languages and cultures), e.g. Grimm
brothers
◼ Beginnings of fieldwork with face-to-face interviews with
“best speakers” NORM (non-mobile old rural men) –
dialectology. Method: long questionnaire to elicit single
word answers. Goal: creation of linguistic atlas showing
geographical distribution of forms
◼ Began and flourished in Germany, France, Italy in 19th
century
My personal hero
A bit of history
◼ Edmond Edmont 1896-1900 surveyed 639 rural
locations in French-speaking areas of France,
Belgium, Switzerland and Italy using 1900 item
questionnaire
◼ for Jules Gillieron’s Atlas Linguistique de la
France (published in 13 volumes 1902-1910)
◼ Became a model for dialectology data
collection elsewhere, not seriously challenged
until 1960s
 Our next hero – Papa Franz

Read more in King 2019

Language documentation 1

◼ Term widely used in late 19th and early 20th century to refer
to the study of indigenous languages in the Boasian
tradition, characterised by:
❑ brief summer fieldwork in remote locations (reservation)
❑ collection of dictated texts, vocabulary, and grammatical forms
❑ part of broad anthropological enterprise to ‘save’ disappearing
cultures
❑ part of a humanistic enterprise to understand the nature of human
beings and societies, combatting racism and discrimination (King
2019)
❑ training and engagement of native speakers as data producers and
co-authors
❑ use of latest technology
• goal: production of ‘Boasian trilogy’: text collection,
grammar, dictionary
• (much material ends up in archives but not as a goal)
Language documentation 2

▪ “concerned with the methods, tools, and theoretical

underpinnings for compiling a representative and lasting
multipurpose record of a natural language or one of its
varieties” (Himmelmann 1998)
▪ Features:
▪ Focus on primary data and analysis
▪ Accountability
▪ Long-term storage and preservation of data and analysis
▪ Interdisciplinary teams
▪ Cooperation with and direct involvement of the speech community
Language documentation – outcomes

▪ Narrow view: outcome is annotated and translated

corpus of archived representative materials on use of a
language, cf. DoBeS/TLA, ELAR – separate from
description (language as system)
▪ Broad view: outcome is transparent records of a
language (“for philologists in 500 years time”), with
description and theorisation dependent on them
(Woodbury)
▪ See more in Thursday’s class
McGill Cicipu corpus
Cicipu annotations
Cicipu archival deposit
Language documentation 2 – drivers

◼ developed since 1995 in response to the urgent need

perceived by researchers to make an enduring record of
the world’s many endangered languages and to support
speakers of these languages in their desire to maintain
them, fuelled also by developments in information, media,
and communication technologies

◼ concerned with roles of language speakers and

communities and their rights and needs

◼ is not limited to endangered languages – can be applied to

any linguistic variety with any level of vitality
Language description
◼ Looks at language as a structural system,
abstracted away from use
◼ Is concerned with questions like:
o What is a language system/grammar?
o To what extent are languages alike and to what
extent are they different?
o What does this tell us about the human mind?
o What does this tell us about human
communication?
o How does a language system work and how is it
acquired?
Linguistic fieldwork in 21st century
◼ Read Rozhinsky Ch 1, 2, Meakins, Green & Turpin Ch 1
◼ Definitions range from 1. broad (Everett & Sakel) to 2.
more narrow (from Crowley):
1. “the activity of a researcher systematically analysing parts of a
language, usually other than one’s native language and usually in
a community of speakers of that language”
2. “fieldwork at home in the comfort of your living room involves
insufficient levels of self-deprivation … for your grammar to be truly
worthy, you must have suffered at least one bout of malaria – or
some other impressive-sounding tropical ailment”
3. Cf. ‘urban’ vs. ‘non-urban’ vs. ‘cyberspace’ vs. ‘post-Covid’
fieldwork
4. FiFo vs. long-term (in situ or repeated contact)
That’s not a morpheme – THIS is a morpheme
Types of linguists
◼ ‘armchair’ vs. ‘dirty feet’
◼ ‘insider’ vs. ‘outsider’
◼ Meakins et al. p4
“What makes a good field linguist is someone who has an
interest in understanding other languages and cultures and
enjoys working with people. The qualities of patience, humility,
humour and the ability to think laterally also help to make a good
fieldworker. A good ear, a knack for seeing patterns and a
respect for data – even obsession – without losing sight of the
big picture, are other abilities that also serve the field linguist
well.”
◼ Importance of ethical and humanistic worldviews
Components of fieldwork
◼ Planning – language/group, funding, location &
people, equipment, approvals, negotiating roles
◼ Recording – of language use via media and text
(including metadata) in context
◼ Transfer – to data management environment
◼ Adding value – transcription, translation,
annotation, notation and linking of metadata
◼ Archiving – creating archival objects, assigning
access and usage rights
◼ Mobilisation – creation, publication, and
distribution of outputs
Outcomes of fieldwork
◼ Corpus for current and future study by self and others
◼ Description of some:
❑ structural linguistic feature(s)
❑ functional (sociolinguistic, cultural, or pragmatic) characteristic(s)
❑ acquisition paths
❑ diachronic developments
◼ Sociolinguistic analysis to understand who says what to
whom how when and why (cf. Hymes, Labov)
◼ Linguistic ecology to understand what codes (co)exist,
how they are used, speaker evaluations, dynamics (cf.
trans-languaging)
◼ Beliefs and ideologies account of what speakers believe
and say about language (in general) and about particular
languages
Outcomes of fieldwork
◼ Applied products for use by community and others:
❑ Language policy and management

❑ Orthography development

❑ IT tools: spelling checkers, entry methods, interfaces

❑ Language learning and pedagogy: curriculum design,

materials development, testing and monitoring
❑ Reference materials: dictionary, grammar, literature
(stories, plays, podcasts, blogs, music performances,
oral history, orations etc.), TEK (traditional ecological
knowledge), teacher handbooks
❑ Broadcasts and narrowcasts – online text and media,
publications (radio, TV, journalism, social media),
performances
Over to you

Anything that members of the audience wish to

share about your interests or experiences in
linguistic fieldwork?
Thank you!
References
Austin, Peter K. 2013. Language documentation and meta-
documentation. In Mari Jones & Sarah Ogilvie (eds.) Keeping
Languages Alive: Documentation, Pedagogy and Revitalization, 3-
15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Austin, Peter K. 2016. Language documentation 20 years on. In
Martin Pütz & Luna Filipović (eds.) Endangered Languages and
Languages in Danger: Issues of ecology, policy and human rights,
147-170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Berez-Kroeker, Andrea L., Lauren Gawne, Susan Smythe Kung,
Barbara F. Kelly, Tyler Heston, Gary Holton, Peter Pulsifer, David I.
Beaver, Shobhana Chelliah, Stanley Dubinsky, Richard P. Meier,
Nick Thieberger, Keren Rice & Anthony C. Woodbury. 2017.
Reproducible research in linguistics: A position statement on data
citation and attribution in our field. Linguistics 56(1), 1-18.
References
Childs, Tucker, Jeff Good & Alice Mitchell. 2014. Beyond the ancestral
code: Towards a model for sociolinguistic language documentation.
Language Documentation and Conservation 8, 168–191.
Dobrin, Lise, Peter K. Austin & David Nathan. 2009. Dying to be counted:
the commodification of endangered languages in language documentation.
Language Documentation and Description 6, 37-52.
Dobrin, Lise & Saul Schwartz. 2020. The social lives of linguistic field
materials. To appear in Language Documentation and Description 20.
Gawne, Lauren, Barbara F. Kelly, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker & Tyler Heston.
2017. Putting practice into words: The state of data and methods
transparency in grammatical descriptions. Language Documentation &
Conservation 11, 157–189.
References
Grenoble, Lenore. 2010. Language documentation and field linguistics: The
state of the field. In Grenoble, Lenore A. and N. Louanna Furbee (eds.)
Language Documentation: Practice and values, 289-309. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics.
Linguistics 36, 161–195.
Himmelman, Nikolaus P. 2012. Linguistic Data Types and the Interface
between Language Documentation and Description. Language
Documentation and Conservation 6, 187-207.
King, Charles. 2020. Gods of the Upper Air. New York: Anchor Books.
Mosel, Ulrike. 2014. Corpus linguistic and documentary approaches in
writing a grammar of a previously undescribed language. In Toshihide
Nakayama & Keren Rice (eds.) The Art and Practice of Grammar Writing,
135-157. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No.
8.
References
Rice, Keren. 2006. Let the language tell the story? The role of
linguistic theory in writing grammars. In Felix K. Ameka, Alan
Charles Dench & Nicholas Evans (eds.) Catching Language: The
Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing, 235-268. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Seidel, Frank. 2016. Documentary linguistics: A language philology
of the 21st century. Language Documentation and Description 13,
23-63.
Wilbur, Joshua. 2014. Archiving for the community: Engaging local
archives in language documentation projects. Language
Documentation and Description 12, 85-102.
Woodbury, Anthony C. 2003. Defining documentary linguistics.
Language Documentation & Description 1, 35-51.
References
Woodbury, Anthony C. 2011. Woodbury, Anthony C. 2011.
Language documentation. In Peter K. Austin and Julia
Sallabank (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered
Languages, 159-186. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Anthony C. Woodbury (2014). Archives and audiences: Toward
making endangered language documentations people can
read, use, understand, and admire. Language Documentation
and Description 12, 19-36