Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work.

Abstract

This book has few predecessors. The best of them are two small works published over twenty years ago, Bloomfield's Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages (1942) and Bloch and Trager's Outline of Linguistic Analysis (1942). There were at that time a few books about general linguistics, but not one of them was designed for the investigator taking up for the first time the study of a hitherto "unknown" language. Methodology was an important subject of discussion, but it was treated almost exclusively in technical articles. One learned how to describe languages, as it was then termed, by working with people who had already grappled with problems of analysis. To meet the need for more guidance among the growing number of field workers, Nida produced his Morphology (1946, 1st edition) and Pike his Phonemics (1947). Although these volumes were acclaimed for the contribution they made to linguistic pedagogy, they were not, strictly speaking, field guides. Linguistic researchers have been extraordinarily silent-in print-about the field aspects of their investigations. In the preparation of this book I tried vi Preface Preface Vil is not identical with discovery procedures, but it is also true that linguistics cannot do without them.In a book of this type it is easy for an author to be more prescriptive than he means to be. One needs to give advice, but one must not give the impression that there is only a single way of doing something when there may be equally good alternatives. There is no more a best way of studying a language in the field than there is a best way to survive if stranded on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But it does help to have had some coaching in survival techniques, and it does help to go prepared with a survival kit. Ultimately, however, the survivor is one who can cope with his situation. This is equally true of the field worker as my last field trip to Africa reminded me. Carefully designed research projects may have to be jettisoned under circumstances beyond one's control.Here and elsewhere in this volume I may give the impression that field work is more awesome than it really is. A field worker should take his work seriously, but he need not do it lugubriously, for an exciting and lifeenriching experience awaits him. Field work is characterized in one wordat least for me; it is fun. It is fun to be intimately involved with people of different linguistic (and therefore cultural) backgrounds; it is fun to respond to challenges never confronted at home; it is fun-simple and exhilarating fun-to try to work out the puzzle of some aspect of linguistic structure. There is pleasure indeed in solving an analytical problem in the privacy of one's study, but to me there is more pleasure, because it is more exciting, in working at something step by step with an informant.Many people have contributed to the making of Field Linguistics. It gives me real pleasure to publicly acknowledge their help.

An Analysis of Lexicons in Costumes of Baris Gede Dance at Penuktukan Village

“…The interview was conducted by asking questions to three informants who are Baris Gede dancers and have a deep understanding of the dance. The informants are selected based on the characteristics of ideal informant suggested by Samarin (1967). In conducting the interview, the researcher used interview guide and interview sheet as instruments to collect the data.…”