From comparative descriptive linguistic fieldwork to documentary linguistic fieldwork in Ghana

This paper surveys linguistic fieldwork practices in Ghana from the earliest times to the documentary linguistic era. It demonstrates that the most profound effect of the documentary linguistic turn in the language sciences on fieldwork in Ghana is in the rise of "insider" and "insider-outsider" field-working linguists. This goes against the definition of prototypical fieldwork as something done by remote outsiders. The challenges and opportunities of this development are reflected upon. It is argued that relevant fieldwork methodologies should be further developed taking the emerging features of different "insider" practices into account. Moreover, it is hoped that characterizations of documentary linguistic fieldwork would move beyond the outsider and accommodate the different types of "insider" fieldworkers. National Foreign Language Resource Center ldc-sp15-ameka.pdf