Fieldwork session planner

Data replicability and transparency are becoming a standard in Science and it is slowly reaching Linguistics. As field linguists, we need to be reflecting on ways for implementing these principles, whilst being aware of all the privacy, consent and ethical issues, which are also part of our work. For these reasons, I would like to share with any field researcher working with human participants the template I use for my grammar elicitation sessions. It is very simple, and probably there are more detailed versions available out there. However, its simplicity and systematicity motivate me to fill it in every day, before and after each session. Apart from keeping the data organised and easily tracing its origins, it is intended to be a space for reflecting on one’s performance as a researcher and journal our progress. Most of the templates disregard the human dimension, yet it sometimes has a big influence on the development of the session and the data we obtain as a result. It provides some evidence if we have to make decisions about the reliability or acceptability of different forms in the future. It also sets a basis for acknowledging our possible flaws and inaccuracies in the data for other people checking it (or even ourselves when we review it in 6, 8,… months).

Section 1 includes the objectives of each session. Those expected outcomes very often do not adjust to the final outcomes, so it is okay to strikethrough them (once the session is over), just to leave some evidence on what you tried, and help you calculate time management for next times (which often varies considerably from one participant to another). This is supposed to be filled BEFORE the session (although to be honest, sometimes, I had an idea of a session, run it, and only then included the data… but this is a bad practice, so don’t follow it!)

Section 2 is a personal feedback or review of the development of the session. The first aim is to record any possible factors that may have blurred the data (from the speaker being tired or having problems for articulation (because of bad teeth), to power cuts). The second aim is to criticise our own performance and see what can be improved for next sessions (including choosing a different speaker, who may be very kind but a bad language assistant). I strongly recommend filling this RIGHT AFTER the session (so you can better remember how everyone was feeling).

Section 3 is left for answers. This can be filled anytime AFTER the recordings. For a better traceability of the data, I like dividing my recordings into subsections (specified at the heading of each of them). I recommend including the time stamp for the examples, although I understand this is hard work.

Some remarks:

This template is designed for linguistic fieldwork. There is an earlier version of this template that was more fitted to my immediate context at that time (Slavic dialectology). After more experiences with other contexts and having used the templates for a while, I have come up with some improvements. In any case, feel free to adjust it to the needs of other particular field.

I have attached a (shortened) sample of one of my sessions. As you will see, there are blanks in many answers (Section 3), and I have not tried to hide it, as this tends to be the case.

If you have any suggestions, doubts or corrections, please feel free to email to the following address: ronceroATshh.mpg.de

Kristian Roncero, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History