First steps in ethno-linguistic fieldwork

The purpose of the present paper is to provide an overview over important topics to be considered when it is planned to carry out linguistic fieldwork among a smaller local speech community with its own ethnical identity. We are not trained specialists in this topic, but we hope that our own experience with field work could be useful to those who for the first time plan to do this kind of linguistic research. Nevertheless, the size of this paper is much too limited to give an introduction into linguistic fieldwork. (There are quite a few books and articles that focus on linguistic fieldwork, and the reader is referred to them.) Rather, this paper could be used as a checklist. Reflecting on each point we address could, as we hope, avoid some of the most common pitfalls and lessen some typical problems in the field situation