Fieldwork Ethics: The Rights and Responsibilities of the Fieldworker

Abstract

There has been a great deal of discussion in recent years on the responsibilities of the fieldworker with respect to the community whose language is being studied. As Dwyer (2006:50) puts it, “The ethical requirements of fieldwork-based investigation are complex, as they demand that the researcher attend both to a respectful and reciprocal relationship with the language community and produce documentation meeting the standards of the academic community and the funding agency.” In this chapter, we review what has been reported in the literature regarding the challenges of meeting these many demands.