Field Research Cycle

Recording

The first step of any fieldwork project is the recording of the target material. A successful recording session should ideally yield audio and video data of high quality.

Photos from a recording session

In these photos we can see what this process might look like, as members from the Kera’a community are being recorded by Prof. Dr. Uta Reinöhl.

Stimuli for recording 

In order to gather linguistic data, linguists sometimes make use of pictures such as the Jackal and Crow series displayed here. The linguist shows a series of images one by one and asks the participant to describe what they see.

Analysis 

The analysis step of fieldwork is varied and often cumbersome. It includes the transcription, translation, annotation, and notation of previously collected data. This is a time consuming effort. It has been estimated that the transcription and translation of one minute of data can take anywhere from one to twenty hours, depending on the transcriber’s familiarity with the language.

Field notes

Here we may glimpse the very first part of this process, by looking at Naomi Peck’s notebooks from her research on Kera’a and Bumthang.

Archiving

Archiving involves the safe storage of fieldwork data along with the analysis material digitally. This is not simply a backup; what is stored should be as informative as possible and organised so that it is useful in the long-term for  multiple audiences.  

Open access archive

By clicking this link you can explore what such an archive might look like. This Andoke archive includes multiple language samples as well as transcriptions and further information in both Spanish and English.

Mobilisation

The mobilisation step involves all forms of publication and distribution of our fieldwork material. This does not only include the publication of research papers but also dictionaries, learning materials, grammars, and translations of stories and myths.

The Little Prince

Today it is common practice in dialectology to translate the book The Little Prince into newly documented languages and dialects. This can help in raising awareness of the endangerment status of a language. On display you can see the Pomerano, Pennsylvanian Dutch and Afro-Bolivian Spanish versions.