Chapter 3 – Fieldwork and community language work
83
At the same time, Siimaa and Vaabero worked on example sentences and
monolingual definitions for the dictionary, while two graphic artists,
Neville and Rodney, made illustrations for the legends and the dictionary.
8. Workshops
In so-called Third World countries, workshops are frequently conducted by
foreign aid agencies and non-governmental organizations in order to dissem-
inate information, skills, or new technologies. The community might there-
fore expect you to run a workshop. However, before you enthusiastically
agree, carefully consider the following issues:
1.
What is the purpose and the envisaged outcome of the workshop?
2.
How much money do you have at your disposal? How much do you
have to calculate for transport, food, and accommodation for each
participant per day?
3.
How many participants can be invited on
the basis of this calculation,
and for how many days?
4.
Who decides on the selection of participants? What are the selection
criteria?
5.
Who will help with the organization (i.e. invite the participants; organize
food, stationary, and accommodation)?
6.
Who decides on the agenda?
7.
Who writes a report?
8.
What kind of rituals are to be observed (e.g. opening ceremony, farewell
party)?
The less you are involved with organizational matters the better, because
that gives you more time to concentrate on the content. On
the other hand,
not being involved may marginalize your professional input and be coun-
terproductive to the original goals of the workshop.
There are several kinds of workshop that are useful in the context of
language documentation projects, for example:
1.
introductory workshops;
2.
workshops on the standardization of the orthography;
3.
workshops for the training of community language workers;
4.
workshops for the training of school teachers.
84
Ulrike Mosel
Content, structure, and logistics of workshops are so much dependent on
the sociocultural context and the resources in terms of money, time, and
manpower, that only some very general points can be discussed here.
At the beginning of the project, a half-day or maximally a full-day work-
shop can be useful to introduce the researchers, to inform the community
about the project and what language documentation is all about, and to dis-
cuss the expectations and wishes of the community as well as those of the
researchers. This workshop can also help to recruit local language workers
and may be visited by many people.
The second type of workshop is of a very different nature and needs to
be planned with utmost care. As already mentioned above, orthography is a
sensitive, often a political, issue as the written form of a language is literally
“seen” as representative of the language and a symbol of cultural identity.
Practical issues like learnability or linguistic adequacy often play an inferior
role, especially when there are already two or more competing orthographies
in the community; more important in decision making are the societal
standing of the people involved, and perhaps rivalries between various
groups in the community (see also Section 2 in Chapter 11). To avoid con-
flicts and disruption as far as possible, it is advisable to keep the number of
participants small and leave their selection to the elders of the community.
If you have the funds, the equipment, and a team of three or more lin-
guists, you can also run longer workshops or a series of workshops in
which members of the community are trained in the linguistic and technical
skills needed for language documentation and revitalization. A detailed de-
scription of workshops for community language workers is found in Florey
(2004).
The fourth type of workshop is better conducted by school inspectors or
senior teachers so that the linguists’ role may
only be to assist in the pro-
duction of workshop materials and make suggestions for how they can be
used.
9. Concluding remarks
Working with a team of native speakers in the community is a most fasci-
nating enterprise, intellectually, socially, and personally. Each day you dis-
cover interesting linguistic phenomena and learn more about the people’s
culture. Nowhere else can you find people showing so much enthusiasm for
linguistic work. During your university studies, you may often have been in
Chapter 3 – Fieldwork and community language work
85
doubt whether you
are doing the right thing, especially when relatives and
friends keep asking what linguistics might be good for. But once you have
started with language documentation work, you know the answer.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to all my Samoan and Teop colleagues with whom I had the
pleasure to gain experience in community language work. Special thanks
go to Ainslie So’o, Fosa Siliko, and Agafili Tuitolova’a, who were my
counterparts in the Primary Education Materials Project in Samoa (1997–
2000), to Ruth Saovana Spriggs, who introduced me to her people in Bou-
gainville and works on the documentation of the Teop language, and to the
team of the Teop language workers. In particular, I would like to express
my gratitude to my host and teacher Siimaa Rigamu of Hiovabon in Bou-
gainville.
Note
1. For a critical overview of elicitation techniques, see Himmelmann (1998:
186 ff.).