LINGUIST List 12.2660

Wed Oct 24 2001

Review: Newman & Ratliff, Linguistic Fieldwork

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  • Gary Holton, Review of Newman and Ratliff, ed., Linguistic Fieldwork

    Message 1: Review of Newman and Ratliff, ed., Linguistic Fieldwork

     Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 15:19:21 -0800
    From: Gary Holton <Gary.Holtonuaf.edu>
    Subject: Review of Newman and Ratliff, ed., Linguistic Fieldwork


    Newman, Paul, and Martha Ratliff, ed. (2001) Linguistic Fieldwork. Cambridge University Press, xii+288pp, hardback ISBN 0-521-66-49-1, $69.95; paperback ISBN 0-521-66937-5, $29.95.

    Gary Holton, Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

    SYNOPSIS A recent resurgence of interest in linguistic fieldwork has been reflected in the appearance of several new "how-to" manuals (e.g. Payne 1997; Vaux and Cooper 1999). Yet this book stands apart. It does not purport to describe fieldwork methodology but rather presents a series of personal reflections on fieldwork from some of the leading practitioners in the discipline. While some of these human aspects of fieldwork were addressed in Shopen (1979) (particularly Craig 1979), the present work presents many fresh voices and perspectives.

    The "Introduction" by the editors Paul Newman and Martha Ratliff makes a noble attempt to weave the diverse stories together. This is not always an easy task. Fieldwork is not a single entity to be defined in one stroke. Rather, different linguists, different subfields, and even different tasks will require different approaches. These essays are largely personal anecdotes reflecting the authors' personal experiences with linguistic fieldwork.

    And yet, in spite of the personal differences many common issues arise. The editors identify five basic issues which are addressed by many of the contributors (p. 2).

    - the role of native speakers - the role of language learning - structure and flexibility of the research - personal difficulties and rewards - ethics

    The editors then infer, correctly I believe, that these issues are important to any discussion of the "human aspect of linguistic fieldwork" (p. 2).

    The contributors are: Larry M. Hyman, Marianne Mithun, Gerrit J.Dimmendaal, Ken Hale, David Gil, Nancy C. Dorian, Shobhana L. Chelliah, Daniel L. Everett, Fiona McLaughlin, Thierno Seydou Sall, Ian Maddieson, Keren Rice, Nicholas Evans. Each essay is discussed below.

    DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS Larry M. Hyman's "Fieldwork as a state of mind" strives first toward a definition of fieldwork. In recent years linguists have been willing to label activities conducted as part of an academic field methods course as "fieldwork". Hyman emphatically stresses that this is not prototypical fieldwork, which he characterizes as having an elicitee other than oneself; oneself as observer; occurring far from one's domicile; small (rural) setting; long in duration; exotic language; language in its cultural context; naturalistic data; and languages-driven motivation (p. 21). While not everyone will agree with this definition of field work, the last parameter of motivation is an important one, recognized by other contributors elsewhere in the volume. In Hyman's view fieldwork is not so much a set of activities or methodologies but rather an approach to doing linguistics. Many linguists may only visit the "field" during an intense period of research associated with dissertation work. However, this "rite of passage" plays an important role in shaping one's approach to linguistics beyond the field. A fieldworker remains a field linguist well beyond the field.

    In "Who shapes the record: The speaker and the linguist", Marianne Mithun begins by stating an important but often overlooked fact. Namely, for many languages "what we choose to document may be the principal record of an entire linguistic tradition" (p. 34). Given this warning it is important to pay attention to the choice of fieldwork methodology, the role of the speaker in fieldwork, and the "preparation and sensitivity of the linguist" (p. 34). Mithun does not merely advocate for a particular methodology. Instead, she presents copious examples demonstrating that different types of methods yield different types of data, and hence may be used to address different types of questions. Mithun compares elicited and natural data from Central Pomo in order to clearly demonstrate what can be missed if the linguist's methodology is too narrowly circumscribed. This point seems intimately linked to Mithun's other two points, regarding the speaker's role and the linguist's sensitivity. In order to provide natural data, the speaker must "be given the opportunity to choose what to say and how to say it" (p. 51).

    Gerrit J. Dimmendaal's "Places and people: Field sites and informants" provides a practical step-by-step guide to preparing for the field, setting oneself up at the field site, selecting speakers, and conducting research. Dimmendaal emphasizes the importance of making official contacts and ingratiating oneself into the local language community. Dimmendaal draws on personal experience to provide advice on choosing speakers to work with and dealing with sometimes delicate issues such as payments to speakers. The section entitled "Indigenous knowledge systems and problems in interpretation" picks up a theme addressed by many contributors to this volume, namely, the importance of letting the language speak for itself rather than imposing on it some preconceived categories. Finally, Dimmendaal notes the importance of "listening to peoples' conversations" and "try[ing] to speak the language oneself" (p. 72). While Dimmendaal presents this as an alternative strategy, it seems to be a very important recommendation.

    Ken Hale's essay, "Ulwa (Southern Sumu): The beginnings of a language research project", takes a somewhat different approach. Rather than drawing on myriad experiences from his many years of fieldwork experience, Hale presents a case study from a single fieldwork project, beginning with its origins in the desires of a language community to preserve their language and continuing through the evolution of an ongoing (if tenuous) project to document and revitalize the language. Hale describes in exacting detail all of the procedures necessary to prepare for and carry out his Ulwa fieldwork. Hale even includes a copy of the first page of his Ulwa field notes and proceeds to dissect each line of the notes, elaborating on his motivations for eliciting one form or another.

    David Gil's "Escaping Eurocentrism: Fieldwork as a process of unlearning" points out the hazards of using predefined ("Eurocentric") categories in analyzing non-Indo-European languages. Drawing on fieldwork with Hokkien, Tagalog, and Malay, Gil provides numerous examples of what he labels "macrofunctionality", in which a given linguistic form may encode what would in European languages be labeled as more than one distinct function. Some may take issue with Gil's claim that Tagalog "simply does without the traditional parts of speech" and has no distinction "between lexical categories and their phrasal projections" (p. 114), but Gil nevertheless presents a persuasive argument that field workers must approach a language without preconceived categories.

    Nancy C. Dorian's "Surprises in Sutherland: Linguistic variability amidst social uniformity" is another very personal account, which begins with her choice of field language as a student, her search for a field site, and continues through the evolution of her research project as she came to know the linguistic situation at her field site. For Dorian--perhaps more obviously than for other contributors to this volume--fieldwork is a personal journey. In her words, "fieldwork is simultaneously a professional and a personal experience" (p. 148).

    Shobhana L. Chelliah's "The role of text collection and elicitation in linguistic fieldwork" cites many examples from her fieldwork with Meithei (Tibeto-Burman) to show how the use of textual data can overcome the limitations of direct elicitation and grammaticality judgments. She advocates a "text-based elicitation" approach whereby one speaker provides a text, a second assists with transcription and translation, while a third works through questions raised by a text.

    Daniel L. Everett's "Monolingual field research" directly addresses the question of what degree of language learning is required of the fieldworker. In most fieldwork scenarios a linguist works through the medium of a "contact" language. While the linguist may be actively learning the target language, that is often tacitly considered to be secondary. Everett argues for a different approach to linguistic fieldwork, based on first learning the target language to a sufficient degree to conduct the research in the medium of the target language. Language learning facilitates a holistic approach to fieldwork and is a "natural, enjoyable, and maximally productive way to gain familiarity and understanding of the interactions between different components of the grammar simultaneously" (p. 170). Everett provides advice on techniques for language learning in a fieldwork situation, establishing the monolingual approach as valid methodology with distinct advantages over the traditional contact language method.

    In "The give and take of fieldwork: Noun classes and other concerns in Fatick, Senegal", Fiona McLaughlin and Thierno Seydou Sall present parallel essays from the respective viewpoints of fieldworker and consultant. McLaughlin presents one of the darkest perspectives in the volume, dwelling at length on the difficulties of life in the third world and the awkward nature of monetary transactions between linguist and consultant. The linguist's role as employer is one that few come to the field prepared for. Sall's parallel essay provides insights into this issue from the perspective of a consultant who engages in cooperative fieldwork out of interest for the language but who nevertheless is happy to be paid.

    Ian Maddieson's "Phonetic fieldwork" is the most pragmatic essay in the volume. Written from the perspective of a linguist who takes fieldwork for granted, there is no angst in this essay. Rather, Maddieson presents a practical guide to doing phonetic fieldwork, including a concise discussion of equipment. Especially useful is a table comparing the advantages of various recording media (p. 227). Maddieson's careful exposition is intended to motivate field workers to include more detailed phonetic description in their work, which he notes sometimes contains "nothing more than a list of symbols" (p. 228). Indeed, we think of "grammatical description" as including phonology and discourse, but not usually phonetics. But if field workers are truly dedicated to "whole language" (as stated explicitly in the essays by Hyman and Gil), then phonetic description must of necessity be included in their field work.

    In "Learning as one goes", Keren Rice presents a personal story of lessons learned during a lifetime of fieldwork with Slave (Athapaskan). Rice's insights are presented along with the data which led to them, so that the reader can share her "aha!" and see clearly how these insights could have been (or were at first) missed with a more constrained approach. But perhaps the most valuable part of Rice's essay--indeed of the entire volume--is the list of fieldwork slogans, beginning with "Pay careful attention to information ... the speaker ... wants you to hear" and ending with "Be open to learn" (p. 230). This simple nine-item list seems to summarize not only Rice's advice for fieldworkers but also the collective wisdom of all the contributors to the volume. If I could read only one page of this book, it would be this one.

    In "The last speaker is dead--Long live the last speaker!" Nicholas Evans draws on his Australian fieldwork to address the issues associated with what has come to be known as "salvage linguistics", namely, working with the last speakers of a moribund language. This type of work requires special care in order to generate valid results. The first part of Evans' essay is devoted to the process of identifying last speakers. This can be problematic, since it can be difficult to distinguish language knowledge from language ownership. While Evans construes this as an areal phenomenon, the problem of distinguishing competence from ownership exists in many endangered language fieldwork situations. As Evans notes, last speakers tend to be highly multi-lingual, and "affiliation to language is primarily a matter of social group membership rather than actual competence" (p. 253). Of course, identifying last speakers requires some concept of what constitutes fluency. And as Evans points out in the second part of the essay, fluency itself is an evolving concept which may change over time. The linguist needs to be aware of parameters which may affect the evaluation of fluency and be careful not to discount speakers who may "become fluent" in time, for example by practice or by a change in the potential speaker's personal life. Of special note here is Evans' concept of "amplifying", whereby "the death of one speaker precipitates a decline, rather than an improvement, in the abilities of another (special type of) speaker" (p. 274).

    EVALUATION One voice which is notably absent from this collection is that of mentored approaches to fieldwork, as exemplified by the Kaufman and Justeson's Mesoamerica work and Genetti and Noonan's Tibeto-Burman work. These projects bring together a number of student linguists to engage in fieldwork in a structured setting while being mentored by experienced fieldworkers. By removing some of the uncertainties and personal hardships, this boot camp approach may help fieldworkers avoid some of the pitfalls described by the contributors to this volume. Clearly this approach has its limitations, and most language documentation work will require an independent commitment. However, it should be recognized that many of the current generation of fieldworkers cut their teeth in mentored projects before striking out alone. The ramifications of this fact for fieldwork and the field of linguistics are unfortunately not discussed in this volume.

    One further criticism of the book regards the intended audience. The dust jacket notes that the book "covers a wide range of field areas" and "will be indispensable to fieldworkers in linguistics, anthropology, folklore, and oral history." While many of the essays do draw on writings about field work in other disciplines, this is clearly a book written by linguists about linguistic field work.

    These essays provide entertaining reading for experienced field workers, be they those for whom field work remains part of daily life or those for whom field work is a "state of mind" which shapes their approach to language and linguistics. Even armchair field workers will recognize the stories of their colleagues in these pages. While many distinct points of view are represented, readers will surely identify with some part of each of the personal experiences recounted in the essays.

    But the book seems most useful for those preparing to go into the field for the first time. The editors have done an excellent job of bringing together leading fieldworkers to address the human aspects of fieldwork. Ironically, these crucial issues are often treated cursorily in field methods courses. Perhaps for that reason fieldwork remains something of a black art which initiates approach with great knowledge of the theories and techniques of linguistic analysis but little preparation for the human dimensions. Indeed, there is a danger that this book may reinforce the feeling that these human aspects of fieldwork cannot be taught in a classroom but must be learned on the ground through direct experience. Nevertheless, this book fills an important gap in field methods training.

    One comes away from the essays convinced that every language does indeed have a story to tell. This book will provide inspiration and encouragement to those linguists willing to listen to those stories. To quote again from Rice's essay: "Be open to learn."

    REFERENCES Craig, Colette Grinevald (1979) Jacaltec: Field work in Guatamala. Languages and Their Speakers, ed. by Timothy Shopen, 2-57. Cambridge: Winthrop.

    Payne, Thomas Edward (1997) Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Shopen, Timothy, (ed.) (1979) Languages and Their Speakers. Cambridge: Winthrop.

    Vaux, Bert, and Justin Cooper (1999) Introduction to Linguistic Field Methods: LINCOM Europa Textbooks in Linguistics 1. Munich: LINCOM Europa.

    ABOUT THE REVIEWER Gary Holton is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the Alaska Native Language Center, from where he pursues fieldwork with the Athabascan languages of Alaska, particularly those of the upper Tanana river region. His interests are in the areas of language documentation, linguistic archiving, and language revitalization.