Data collection

This chapter deals with data collection within the field of sign language research and focuses on the collection of sign language data for the purposes of linguistic – mainly grammatical – description. Various data collection techniques using both introspection and different types of elicitation materials are presented and it is shown how the selection of data can actually have an impact on the research results. As the use of corpora is an important recent development within the field of (sign) linguistics, a separate section is devoted to sign language corpora. Furthermore, two practical issues that are more or less modality-specific are discussed, i.e. the problem of informant selection and the more technical aspects of video-recording the data. It is concluded that in general, publications should contain sufficient information on data collection and informants in order to help the reader evaluate research findings, discussions, and conclusions.

ISBN:978-3-11-020421-6

Jaar van publicatie:2012

Toegankelijkheid:Closed