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Teaching fieldwork skills
Friederike Lüpke
Fl2@soas.ac.uk
Three relevant components
Analytical
skills
Methodological
skills
Fieldwork skills
Practical
skills
How these are
understood and taught
differs considerably.
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Analytical skills

Often understood as the core linguistic skills
necessary to arrive at descriptive statements
based on empirical data:
– Building an analysis based on paradigm elicitation or from a text.
– Generally starting with phonemic analysis because of its
importance for understanding morphology.
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Methodological skills

The knowledge to employ
varied and adequate data
collection techniques in
order to arrive at a valid
analysis of a given linguistic
domain.
– Potential and limits of corpus data
– Benefits and challenges of elicitation
– Knowledge of stimulus-based data
collection techniques
– Expertise with the collection and
analysis of quantitative data
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Practical skills

The skills necessary in
order to conduct a fieldbased research project:
– Getting accepted by the
speech community
– Setting up a field base
– Selecting, using,
maintaining and repairing
equipment
– Collecting, editing, digitising
and analysing primary data
– Dealing with health and
safety issues
– …
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Crucial: interdependence of the components
Analytical
skills
Methodological
skills
Fieldwork skills
Practical skills
Art
Craft
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What can be taught in class?

The format of field method courses should be
expected to have consequences for their content:
–
–
–
–
Number of consultants
Choice of language
Length of course
Availability of equipment and technical and IT support and
expertise
However, there is less variation than one
would expect between the basic setup and
focus of field method courses.
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Number of consultants
This setup
entails limits
regarding the
nature of
linguistic
information and
interaction.
Courses generally work with one consultant,
one or more instructors, and a group of
students of varying size.
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Choice of language

A number of courses work
with speakers of any
‘exotic’ language, even if
there is a wealth of
information on it available,
e.g. Korean, Swahili, etc.
This setup entails
more scope for indepth investigation of
specific areas of
grammar.

Other courses insist on
selecting a language for
which little or no linguistic
information exists.
This setup is more
similar to the initial
situation in the field,
where all areas of
grammar need to be
understood before
specific areas can be
researched.
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Length of course


Courses vary dramatically in length, from a whole
academic year to a trimester.
However, depending on the language chosen, the
analytical and methodological task for a course of
twelve weeks in length can be as big as that for a
course spanning two semesters
Maybe only longer
courses should focus
on un(der)described
languages?
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The old ELAP LDD model
Term 1
Issues in LDD – ‘artsy’
practical and
methodological skills
Term 2
Field methods –
focus on analytical
skills
Technology and LDD –
‘craftsy’ practical and
methodological skills
Problem: practical and methodological skills are
learned through working with language data, so
should ideally use the data collected in field methods.
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The new ELAP LDD model
Term 1
Term 2
Field methods – focus on analytical skills, but more
inclusion of practical and methodological skills
Issues in LDD – ‘artsy’
practical and
methodological skills
Technology and LDD –
‘craftsy’ practical and
methodological skills
Problem: skills learned in the Issues and Technology
courses don’t build up on each other but are needed
simultaneously, ideally at the beginning of Field
methods.
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No more field methods course?
Term 2
Project work
finding a language
community in
London and
collecting first
sociolinguistic data
Assessment
Term 1
Issues in LDD – ‘artsy’
practical and
methodological skills
Project work: student
groups investigate
different areas of that
language and
exchange data and
findings
Technology and LDD –
‘craftsy’ practical and
methodological skills
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Your vote

Please vote for one of the course
layouts:
– Classic (one speaker, focus on analytical skills)
– Old ELAP LDD (Issues and Technology precede
Field methods)
– New ELAP LDD (Field methods alongside
Issues and Technology)
– No more Field methods course, but integrated
project work
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Challenges



The more controlled the teaching of field work
skills is, the more it is removed from the reality of
working with a language under field conditions.
However, the setup of higher education requires
modularity and effectiveness of assessment, more
difficult to achieve in integrated setups.
In addition, integrated setups are more difficult to
realise because skills and approaches across
teaching staff are not identical.
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Description vs. documentation

“For description, the main
concern is the production of
grammars and dictionaries
whose primary audience are
linguists… In these products
language data serves
essentially as exemplification
and support for the linguist’s
analysis.” (Austin 2006: 87)

[..] Language documentation,
on the other hand, places data
at the center of its concerns.”
(Austin 2006:87)
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If we are serious about the centrality of data, the
skills associated with their collection and analysis
should be a central part of the curriculum, be it in
a designated course or distributed over the
syllabus.
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