Ethical approval for collecting linguistic data

[Claire Bowern]

There are a couple of issues. I'd suggest you meet with one or more 
members of your IRB and explain exactly what you're doing. IRBs tend not 
to have linguists or anthropologists on them so they might be assuming 
you're doing something quite different from your actual research. The 
rules can be quite different from country to country so answers for the 
US or Australia won't necessarily help you in Hong Kong (and presumably 
China has rules about researchers and what permits, etc they need too).

You should think about the ethics of *not* recording as well as the 
ethics of recording. If the language is endangered, records like this 
can be important, so rich data are vital.

Claire

Picus Ding wrote:
> Dear list members,
>
> In recent years there has been increasing awareness
> about the issue of research ethics involving human
> subjects, which is good.  In the case of
> anthropological linguistics, I take the view that
> fieldwork consultants are more like co-workers rather
> than 'subjects' for experiments in basic research
> projects (which don't include perception or
> psycholinguistic tests). Thus I wonder if they should
> be regarded as human subjects, by default. The
> proposed project I have in hand requires recording of
> word lists and kinship terms, but no texts, of
> minority languages spoken in China. The matter would
> be very simple if I would forgo the recording part,
> according to regulations for research ethics of the
> university in Hong Kong.
>
> I'd like to ask your opinion on the status of
> fieldwork consultants who provide linguistic knowledge
> of their native language, not personal data. Would you
> consider them as human subjects? Could they be
> classified as research assistants (if they're more
> like co-workers)? Have you run into similar
> situations/problems regarding approval of research
> ethics in basic anthropological linguistic project?
> I'd like to know what the current norm is in practice
> in general. Please write to me directly or to the list
> (which may like to see some discussion) to share your
> thought.
>
> Best regards,
> Picus
>
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