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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

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Summary Details


Query:   Human Subjects Requirements
Author:  Claire Bowern
Submitter Email:  click here to access email
Linguistic LingField(s):   Language Documentation
Anthropological Linguistics

Summary:   Regarding query: http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1324.html#2

Not long ago I sent a query to the list about the requirements of
universities in various countries for human subjects research evaluations.
Specifically, I was interested in how common it is for linguistic fieldwork
to require approval by a human subjects committee, and what experiences
researchers have had with these bodies. I was particularly interested in
responses from outside the US (since I am familiar with general procedures
here).

I received responses from scholars in the following countries:

Mexico
Canada
Australia
UK
Germany
Netherlands
Russia
Israel

(Apologies if I've forgotten anyone)

Most respondents said that they were not required to have their research
cleared by internal review boards/human subjects ethics committees. Some
mentioned that this is a problem when applying for international grants
(the Hans Rausing fund at SOAS, for example, required local ethics
clearance). Others in Germany and the Netherlands said that they had their
own internal review processes within their own departments.

Several mentioned problems with the inappropriateness of medical ethics
guidelines in linguistic research (one very worrying one was the
requirement for all raw collected data to be destroyed after seven years,
unless the researcher could justify keeping it). Several respondents
reported difficulties with anonymity requirements, where the relevant
ethics board required anonymity in all participants, which goes directly
against linguists' wishes to give recognition to their consultants.

Only one respondent (from Canada) felt that the rules they were subject to
were appropriate and protected both the researcher and the linguistic
consultants.

Thanks very much to all who responded. I would welcome further responses
and discussion on these issues as I will be doing further research later in
the year for a book on fieldwork methodology.

LL Issue: 16.1467
Date Posted: 09-May-2005
Original Query: Read original query


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