I'm teaching a class called Writing in the Social Sciences this semester. We're using a book called "Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research" by Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizbeth Chiseri-Strater. It's aimed at a general undergrad audience, but it provides a good basic overview to the process I've used in linguistic fieldwork.
There's also Tagliamonte's (2006) Analyzing Sociolinguistic Variation.
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From: Variationist List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Damien Hall [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 2:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [VAR-L] Practical aspects of fieldwork
Another thought: I don't know about publications which actually set down
good data-storage protocols, but the simple protocol which has never failed
me is this one.
- Never have fewer than two copies of your data.
This includes during the transfer process from recording device to storage,
so a typical path is: 1. Record data; 2. Copy it to your hard-drive; 3.
From there, make your backup copy (after this, three copies exist); 4.
Check the integrity of each file in each copy of the data by listening to
bits of it, if not also inspecting it phonetically, just to see that the
waveforms look right (I have a Praat script for this, or you can just do it
through whatever media player you use); 5. Delete the original copy from
your recorder, to free the space for next time.
- (Assuming your data is digital) Have your primary copy on a hard-drive
which is reserved for only that, and your backup on recordable discs
(whether they're CDs or DVDs will depend on the length of your interviews).
- Keep your backups physically separate from your primary copy.
For my PhD data, the primary copy and the backup are physically separated
by the Atlantic Ocean, which may be a little extreme, but it can't hurt. It
actually does make me nervous that I only have access to my primary copy,
since I'm not planning to go to the US soon. For the data I work on at the
moment, the primary copy is on my Department's server, and the backup DVDs
are in a locked filing-cabinet.
The locked filing-cabinet also helps with informant confidentiality. We
actually guarantee to our informants that their personal details (including
what they say in the interview; only researchers in the team can listen to
whole interviews) will be kept confidential at all times, and you may have
to do the same.
I have never transcribed a corpus that I was working with; if you are going
to do that, others may have tips about how to store it well and
confidentially, but they will probably be quite similar to these!
Hope that helps -
Damien
--
Damien Hall
University of York
http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb
http://www.york.ac.uk/language/staff/academic-research/damien-hall/
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