Читать книгу Living Language - Laura M. Ahearn - Страница 40

How do linguistic anthropologists actually go about conducting research? This question can be broken down into the following sub-questions, which are best addressed sequentially:

 What kinds of research questions do linguistic anthropologists formulate?

 What kinds of data do linguistic anthropologists collect, and with what methods?

 How do linguistic anthropologists analyze their data in order to find answers to their research questions?

 What sorts of ethical issues do linguistic anthropologists face?

Since methodological approaches vary greatly within linguistic anthropology, none of these questions will have a simple answer. Often, scholars in the field will make use of several different kinds of methods in order to obtain varying perspectives on the issues at hand. Many of these methods are also used by researchers in other fields, especially cultural anthropology. While linguistic anthropologists frequently borrow from methods closely associated with cultural anthropology, however, the reverse is not often the case – though maybe it should be. With greater familiarity with the tools and perspectives of linguistic anthropology, perhaps more cultural anthropologists and scholars in other fields will see the value of drawing upon the methods described below.