Teaching linguistic fieldwork and sustainability

The Department of Linguistics at SOAS and the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies are jointly organising a workshop on teaching linguistic fieldwork and sustainability on Friday 4th December 2009. The workshop is intended for both experienced and novice lecturers and students of Field Linguistics, and will introduce them to knowledge and skills from a wide range of areas in linguistic theory and practice, with a focus on learning about “real world” language problems and solutions.
The workshop is aimed at students interested in learning more about fieldwork, and staff who are considering how fieldwork might fit into the linguistics curriculum. There will be two strands – one for beginners who are interested but have no experience of fieldwork, and one for advanced who have some fieldwork experience or have participated in a field methods course. For beginners, we will cover a range of fieldwork types, including language documentation and urban sociolinguistic fieldwork. For the advanced group topics will include language and culture documentation, sustainable documentation methods and phonetic fieldwork.
Presentations will be given by staff and post-graduate students from SOAS, Queen Mary University, Manchester University and Edinburgh University.


Timetable
9:30-10:00 Registration/coffee – SOAS main entrance
Beginners
10:00-11:00 Why and how linguists do and teach fieldwork – Peter Austin, SOAS
Advanced
10:00-11:00 Documenting culture in the field – Friederike Luepke, SOAS and Serge Sagna, Manchester
11:00-11:30 Tea/coffee
Beginners
11:30-12:30 Remote location fieldwork – Oliver Bond, SOAS
Advanced
Fieldwork and sustainable data – David Nathan, SOAS
12:30-14:00 Lunch and equipment demonstration
Beginners
14:00-15.00 Sociolinguistic fieldwork – Sue Fox, QMU
15:00-16:00 Revitalisation and language sustainability – Julia Sallabank and Jennifer Marshall, SOAS
Advanced
14:00-16.00 Phonetic fieldwork – Bert Remijsen, Edinburgh
16:00-16:15 Tea/coffee
16:15-16:45 Final wrap-up and discussion
There is no charge to attend this event for employees and postgraduate students of publicly funded UK higher educational institutions and other institutions with a subscription to the Higher Education Academy. There is a charge of GBP 40 for employees and postgraduate students of private institutions/organisations and non-UK institutions to attend this event.
For more information and to register go to the Subject Centre website.