Documentary Linguistics and Community Relations

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing focus in linguistics on community-based research. In this paper, I summarize how community-based research is defined, and then address community-based research from two perspectives. I begin with a perspective that is sometimes heard in universities, and sometimes by colleagues in linguistics as well: that community-based research is not really research, but rather community service. I discuss some of the fallacies in this conclusion, examining how traditional types of linguistic research can grow out of community-based work as well as addressing the types of new research topics that might emerge from this type of paradigm. I then switch the focus and ask what community-based research might mean from the perspective of a community, and who controls the research.