sources on fieldnotes in ling anth?

Colleen Cotter c.m.cotter at QMUL.AC.UK
Fri Aug 8 07:46:20 UTC 2014


Re fieldnotes and field practices, I use chapters from H. Russell Bernard's Research Methods in Anthropology ("Field Notes: How to Take Them, Code Them, Manage Them" as well as his chapters on interviews). I can also send you the one-page handout I've prepared for my students about how to structure their field notebooks (based on Bernard and Marcus), which I require for their short "Language and Life in London" one-semester local mini-ethnographies.

The field notebooks are also essential for my collaborative engagement with the students and their classroom peer field discussions. They can include data via all instrumentalities. I also do poster sessions at the end of the year -- another way for students to synthesize and present their work to the larger community, and demonstrate the utility of their field practices. My colleagues are always impressed by what undergraduates achieve.

Emerson's Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes is always on my "Recommended" list for grad students. Whether it's cultural or linguistic anthropology is irrelevant at this stage. Alta Mira Press's Ethnographer's Toolkit compendium might also be worth checking out. Natalie Schilling's Sociolinguistic Fieldwork provides another detailed approach to data collection and analysis as well as a nuanced understanding of culture, context, and language and how we account for it from a well-informed (mostly) variationist perspective.

More broadly, there's also Laura Ahern's excellent book (Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology -- which I find more relevant and practice- and theory-situated than the Blommaert one); Muriel Saville-Troike's extremely useful textbook (Ethnography of Communication) which covers alot of ground in terms of linganth subdiscipline context and linguistic range; and Michael Agar's short Speaking of Ethnography (Sage) -- which students keep telling me helps them make sense of their fieldnotes and their field endeavors. 

best,
Colleen
ps -- I can also talk about the differences between US and UK-Euro approaches and assumptions about linguistic anthropology/ linguistic ethnography/ethnolinguistics and the cultural-intellectual ramifications of the US four-fields distinction! This might be a good topic for the SLA blog/Anthropology News/Anthropology Today at some point...

==================================
Colleen Cotter
Linguistics Department
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
UK
email: c.m.cotter at qmul.ac.uk
 
________________________________________
From: Linguistic Anthropology Discussion Group <LINGANTH at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of King, Dr Alexander D. <a.king at ABDN.AC.UK>
Sent: Thursday, August 7, 2014 9:53 PM
To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: sources on fieldnotes in ling anth?

I really like the short book by Brice and Heath titled _On Ethnography_. It is a linguistic anthropology take on methods exploring writing practices and literacy as well as more general stuff. They address fieldnotes a bit. Blommaert has a book on ethnography that he co-authored with a phd student that is also interesting and accessible to undergraduates, although the project scale is bigger.

I am also a believer in fieldnotes. The language documentation sub-discipline in linguistics has been exploding with methodological articles. You could browse the issue of Language Documentation and Conservation (http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/), for example. That stuff is very comprehensive and systematic, so there may be something good for teaching. To be honest, I think they have just re-discovered Boas, so I don't find it as intellectually innovative as many of my colleagues in linguistics find it, but linguists are good about systematic approaches to "data" and "metadata" (their two terms for fieldnotes).

best,
Alex


On 7 Aug, 2014, at 7:57 PM, Evelyn Dean Olmsted <evelyn.dean at UPR.EDU> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm teaching an undergrad ling anth methods seminar this semester.  I'm
> familiar with several good sources on writing fieldnotes in cultural
> anthropology, but has anything been written on fieldnotes in linguistic
> anthropology, specifically?  The subfield has, of course, unique challenges
> and requirements related to documenting linguistic data and the details of
> verbal interactions.  I for one am a firm believer that fieldnotes remain
> an important data source, whether to supplement recordings or in their own
> right when recording is not feasible.
>
> Thanks,
> Evelyn
>
> --
> Dra. Evelyn Dean-Olmsted
> Catedrática Auxiliar, Departamento de Sociología y Antropología
> Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto Río Piedras
> evelyn.dean at upr.edu


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