Essentials of Language Documentation

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    Arienne M. Dwyer 

 

(c) When deception is an integral feature of the design and conduct of re-

search, sociologists attempt to correct any misconception that research par-

ticipants may have no later than at the conclusion of the research.  

 

(d) On rare occasions, sociologists may need to conceal their identity in order 

to undertake research that could not practicably be carried out were they to 

be known as researchers. Under such circumstances, sociologists undertake 

the research if it involves no more than minimal risk for the research par-

ticipants and if they have obtained approval to proceed in this manner from 

an institutional review board or, in the absence of such boards, from an-

other authoritative body with expertise on the ethics of research. Under 

such circumstances, confidentiality must be maintained unless otherwise 

set forth in 11.02 (b).  

8. A 

legacy recording is a recording made a number of years previously, usually 

on a project that is no longer active. 

9.  A former journalist named Bernard Krisher heads a successful solution to In-

ternet access problems in impoverished areas. WiFi base stations mounted on 

motorcycles in northern Cambodia allow drivers to exchange email with net-

worked schools and health clinics. Data is then posted on the Internet via satel-

lite (Japan Relief for Cambodia 2003). 

10.  In North America, the process is often known as Human Subjects Consent, ob-

tained from a so-called Institutional Research Board (IRB) (known elsewhere 

as Research Ethics Boards, Institutional Ethics Committees, Human Investiga-

tion Committees, or Human Research Committees). This process was insti-

tuted in the mid-20th century as a belated reaction to egregious medical ex-

perimentation. The IRBs therefore generally have a medical bias, so that the 

process typically requires the linguist to explain social-science consent proce-

dures to the IRB, establishing alternatives to written consent. For example, it is 

assumed that research occurs in the home country (and therefore legal system) 

of the IRB, in a clinical setting, and that all participants are literate, and have 

no reason to mistrust legal contracts. None of these assumptions is true in most 

endangered-language fieldwork settings.  

 

  Researchers in many European countries are not yet legally bound to obtain 

consent of any kind. Increasingly, however, academics from European institu-

tions are ethically bound to do so.  

11.  “In 38 of 50 [U.S.] states, the consent of only one party is required to make it 

legal to record a conversation. This is also the Federal law…” (Reporters’ 

Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) 2004). 

12.  Neither scholars nor local officials are on every occasion completely immune 

to possessively viewing an academic topic or a place as our own “turf,” or per-

sonal territory. 

13. As one student was about to depart for doctoral fieldwork, her friend com-

mented, “Oh, you’re going for two years? That should be just about enough time 

to make some contacts.” The student laughed at the time, but the friend was 

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Chapter 2 – Ethics and practicalities of cooperative fieldwork and analysis    

63 

right: it took over a year to have the contacts to really do productive field work, 

and seven years passed before the student and an indigenous colleague were 

able to record a particularly rare form of love song – trust simply requires time. 

14.  A significant number of grammars written on highly sex-segregated societies 

have been produced only by interviewing men, simply because the researcher 

was male. Since female speakers maybe tend to be more conservative of older 

features and since female language can differ in e.g. discourse significantly 

from that of men, these “androgrammars” can be considered inadequate, in-

deed, half-grammars. Even if the original objective is a gender-based study, 

some comparative data from the opposite sex is presumably required. 

15. When I first investigated Salar, a southwestern Turkic language spoken in 

northern Tibet, I did a full syntactic survey of the local Chinese dialect in order 

to identify contact effects in Salar syntax.  

16.  Cold calls is a term from telemarketing or advertising, when a person with a 

service to offer calls another business or a customer without any prior contact. 

17.  Many people, including the vast majority of academics, have favored software; 

some software such as Microsoft Word gets a lot of bad knocks from computa-

tional specialists. Project partners may well be willing to learn a new program, 

and if they are not, programs that do not structure data well can be forced to do 

so (e.g. by using the Table function in MS-Word). 

18.  Some countries have disincentives embedded in their copyright laws. If a U.S.-

based researcher is planning to make a documentary film, for example, any 

clip which has been “distributed” (including as common-courtesy compensa-

tion) can, according to the law, never  be included in a publicly- or commer-

cially-distributed documentary film. A researcher will therefore not be able to 

obtain funding for or submit a film to a public television station or a film festi-

val with that clip in it. Nonetheless, most documenters are not intent on mak-

ing documentary films and have no legal barriers to sharing the data. 

19.  Indigenous people may also find themselves in the role of outsider-academics. 

 

 

Web resources and unpublished papers on ethics and rights 

 

African Studies Association   

 

n.d. 

Guidelines of the African Studies Association for Ethical Conduct in 

Research and Projects in Africa. http://www.africanstudies.org/ 

asa_guidelines.htm 

AIATSIS  

 

2000 

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 

Guidelines for Ethical Research in Indigenous Studies. http:// 

www.ling.helsinki.fi/uhlcs/agreements/agreement-data.html 

 

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