A query...

Tue Oct 24 16:21:54 UTC 2006

Like many of us, I've served on and chaired Promotion and Tenure
Committees at several levels in my university.  The tenure implications
of this discussion strikes me as analogous, at least in their effects,
to the technology debates of the late 80s and early 90s, when many
faculty members were, for the first time, creating computer-based tools
for various of their classes and research projects.  A similar case was
made then for the necessity of this work, its relationship to
scholarship, and the need to reward it in the P&T process.  I worked
with colleagues at a number of universities at the time to explore ways
of doing this, and I finally had to report that unless a major activity
could be made to look like peer-reviewed scholarship it would not only
not help a junior faculty member towards tenure but would actually do
harm.  I saw a number of promising junior faculty members fail to win
tenure because they chose to devote time to developing pedagogical and
research applications.  In a few, later, cases, they did this against
the advice of their mentors and senior colleagues and so are to that
extent responsible for the consequences themselves.  We can't ask junior
colleagues like Claire to risk their tenure by breaking new ground in
areas that their colleagues in other fields don't understand as
recognized scholarship.  Those of us who are terminally promoted can
take those risks and break that ground for our younger colleagues, and
it's a responsibility that we have.

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University

-----Original Message-----
From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu
[mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Andrew
Koontz-Garboden
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:10 PM
To: Daniel L. Everett
Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] A query...

I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by
Claire.  Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible
documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have
invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted.  If the
kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it
seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing
the best documentation of a language, since these activities would
ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars.

Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure
committees to consider these kinds of activities.  In the short term,
though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does
what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no?  And
that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi...

Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on
endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all?  I don't like that
"solution" either...

Andrew

--
Andrew Koontz-Garboden
Department of Linguistics
Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2150

andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/

On 10/24/06, Daniel L. Everett <dlevere at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in
> progress for CUP.
>
> If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know.
>
> Dan
>
>
> On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote:
>
> > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does
> > fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do
> > this kind of archiving and data processing.
> >
> > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be
> > a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to
> > document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check
> > it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are
> > certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or
> > deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not
> > decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive.
> > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have
> > given less service in the past by not doing these things.
> > Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams,
> > not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would
> > rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if
> > it comes to that.
> >
> > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that
> > perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field
> > researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write
> > grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can
> > use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money,
> > personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer
> > science.
> >
> > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming
> > to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field
> > research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am
> > still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I
> > am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language
> > documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained
> > for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to
> > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this
> > regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to
> > take up the challenge.
> >
> > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made
well.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote:
> >
> >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe
that
> >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and
> >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would
> >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from
> >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available
> >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants
> >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of
> >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the
> >>> field.
> >>
> >>
> >> Dear all,
> >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea:
> >>
> >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant
> >> expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be
> >> disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for
> >> digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it.
> >> That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course,
> >> web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need
doing.
> >>
> >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the
> >> roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics
> >> grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more
> >> people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization
> >> component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to
> >> choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language
> >> Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web.
> >>
> >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials
> >> are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I
> >> can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even
> >> assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd
> >> give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that
> >> the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure
> >> chances, because it would take time away from doing work that
> >> counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I
> >> think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I
> >> want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than
> >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data
> >> available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an
> >> academic linguist.
> >>
> >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue.
> >> How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on
> >> the web from people who've never used a computer?
> >>
> >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some
> >> caution.
> >>
> >> Claire
> >>
> >> -----------------
> >> Dr Claire Bowern
> >> Department of Linguistics
> >> Rice University
> >
> > **********************
> > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and
Chair,
> > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
> > Campus Box 4300
> > Illinois State University
> > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300
> > OFFICE: 309-438-3604
> > FAX: 309-438-8038
> > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp
> > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/
> > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/
> >
> > and
> >
> > Honorary Professor of Linguistics
> > University of Manchester
> > Manchester, UK
> >
> >
>
> **********************
> Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair,
> Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
> Campus Box 4300
> Illinois State University
> Normal, Illinois 61790-4300
> OFFICE: 309-438-3604
> FAX: 309-438-8038
> Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp
> Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/
> Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/
>
> and
>
> Honorary Professor of Linguistics
> University of Manchester
> Manchester, UK
>
>
>