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Arienne M. Dwyer
non-exclusive licenses for appropriate research and educational use for use
in different language documentation situations (Whalen /SALSA 2001).
Fortunately, excellent resources are available on copyright, e.g. the Na-
tional Library of Australia (n.d.), the U.S. Copyright office (2004), and
Nimmer (1998).
2.4. “Moral rights” – non-economic rights
Independent of an originator’s copyright (economic rights) there are non-
economic, so-called moral rights to a given work. The Berne Convention,
which was established to protect artistic works, states in part: “Even after
the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim
authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other
modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the said work,
which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation.” (WIPO Interna-
tional Bureau 1886 –1979: Article 6 (1), emphasis added). This convention
ensures at least theoretically that a data originator (e.g. storyteller, speaker,
singer) will always have some legal rights to his or her work. Whether or
not these rights can be exercised over the work in the absence of economic
rights remains a largely untested question, at least for language data origi-
nators. Until the legal strength of “moral rights” is evaluated empirically,
the interests of both communities and researchers are usually best protected
by ensuring that the economic rights are secured by the most appropriate
parties. Data originators and analysts or one of the two are often the most
appropriate choice; another possibility would be a data archive.
2.5. Access
During fieldwork, it may seem far from the concern of researchers to inten-
sively ponder the uses of a data set in future years and decades, but the time
to ask speaker/singers’ permission for access is precisely at the moment of
recording, when researchers are still in the field.
Concerns about the privacy or, conversely, the recognition of data con-
tributors apply not only to these speakers and singers, but also to all other
people mentioned in the recording. (Thus, if a person talks about her sis-
ter’s wedding and uses her sister’s name, then the sister should be involved
in decisions of access.) Furthermore, access concerns apply also to all re-
Chapter 2 – Ethics and practicalities of cooperative fieldwork and analysis
49
searchers and helpers on site, including e.g. local researchers and facilita-
tors.
Disputed questions of access very often create ethical issues. One such
example is when villagers allow full access including crediting recordings
to their name, but local coordinators, possessing an overview of social is-
sues, suggest anonymity for political reasons. Generally, it is best to err on
the side of caution and make the names anonymous.
An archive mediates between its collections and the public. The concept
most central to this mediation is graded access, which allows different de-
grees of accessibility of materials and to users. The best currently available
reference point is AILLA’s (n.d.b) graded access system. Types of graded
access generally include:
– Fully
open;
– Partially
open:
speaker-based/materials-based/user-based;
– Speaker-based: e.g. texts from Speakers 1–20 are open, those from
Speakers 21–25 not;
– Materials-based: e.g. taboo or secret material is closed; general mate-
rial is open;
– User-based: e.g. only open to researchers, not commercial firms;
– Fully
closed.
Most researchers are creating digital repositories, even if these are often ad
hoc. These data must be accessible to the native community. Whether the
data are deposited in an established archive or on an office shelf, it often
falls to the researcher to make relevant material available in a format that the
native community can use, which is often not internet-based (see Section
3.5 below).
2.6. Legal requirements for research
In addition to the legal requirements of the researcher-consultant relation-
ship (informed consent) and of the collected and annotated data (e.g. copy-
right and access), project planning must include obtaining legal permission
for personal logistics, the most important of which are:
–
Appropriate visas (e.g. tourist/student/research/visiting scholar)
–
Residence permits
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Arienne M. Dwyer
–
Health exams (for longer-term foreign residents many countries require
testing for chronic illnesses such as HIV or tuberculosis)
–
Research permits (national and/or local) – permission may in some
countries or locales require employing certain people not of the re-
searcher’s choice, e.g. bureaucrats, known local authorities, and/or
“minders.”
2.7. In sum: ethics and rights
For planning fieldwork and especially for archiving and disseminating data,
being informed of the national and international treaties is very useful, even
if national or international treaties on data ownership may not seem to af-
fect a research project.
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 a documentation
meeting the standards of the academic community and the funding agency.
The latter requires ensuring quality (observational adequacy) as well as
quantity (working with reasonable efficiency and having adequate cover-
age) (Krauss 2005); the former entails a duty to consult, to share benefits as
well as the management and control of data (Castellano 2005).
3. Practicalities I: How to find a community and develop a cooperative
relationship
Two factors are crucial for successful outcomes in linguistic fieldwork: a
good relationship between researchers and indigenous partners, and a well-
organized work plan based on knowledge sharing and mutually negotiated
goals. The more researchers understand both the local culture and their in-
digenous partners’ goals, and the more indigenous consultants understand
the researcher’s goals, the more nuanced the research results (cf. Chapter 3).
When a researcher lacks a previous working or personal relationship
with a specific community of speakers, he or she must identify one, estab-
lish contact, and build a cooperative working relationship to that commu-
nity. Even for a researcher with prior connections, protocols and participant
roles must be negotiated cooperatively for each new project. Both kinds of
researchers undergo a process of establishing “the five C’s”: criteria, con-
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