The content of field methods courses
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Abstract
That training in field methods should be part of the training of every linguist appears to be no longer widely accepted. In recent years field methods courses have been dropped from the curriculum in a number of departments; in others field methods, while still offered, is not always taken seriously and is considered to be somehow peripheral to the 'real' work of linguistics. A quick survey of the catalogues of 48 lingustics departments and programs in the United States revealed only six which explicitly require field methods for Ph.D. candidates; many others do not even offer it. Informal conversations with colleagues around the country confirm this impression that field methods is no longer valued, as does its absence from the offerings of LSA Summer Linguistics Institutes for the past several years. There are interesting historical and sociological reasons for the recent neglect of field training, but it is the present-day justifications that people give for this neglect that we wish to address in this paper. We will argue that field methods deserves to be restored to a central place in the linguistics curriculum, because the field methods experience itself provides valuable, ESSENTIAL skills and insights about language and linguistics which are not acquired in other types of coursework.
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