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Student Guide for Fieldwork in American Folklore The body of the term paper should include:
You may follow this outline for assembling your paper, or you may manipulate it to suit your preferences. The final paper, however, should contain information and writing about each of these four areas. The term paper should be written as prose exposition Use the first person, instead of anything else that might occur to you, since you are the only one who can report your fieldwork experience. This is an exercise in objective exposition, but you should also be aware of and responsible for your subjective point of view. Avoid sentimentality, exoteric stereotypes, nostalgic reminiscences, patriotic glorifications, sweeping generalizations (especially as opening sentences or paragraphs). Avoid using the word "unique. The finished paper should include:
Will I need to use footnotes? If you have used no sources other than those you documented in the field (taped conversations, photographs of production, line drawings of objects, etc.), your paper will not need footnotes. You will have identified your sources for information in the paper itself and you will have provided the documentation along with the paper. However, if you have used a map from a reference book, a poem from a church bulletin, a cartoon from Newsweek, information about anything you have paraphrased or quoted from a printed source . . . then you must use footnotes to properly acknowledge your source(s) and you should follow the MLA style for citation. See: MLA Style Manual, Achtert and Gibaldi, or The Concise English Handbook, Kirkland and Dilworth, eds. Variety of Field Contexts There are several types of field situations. Be aware of which type you encounter and conduct your conversations accordingly. on site, natural contexts e.g., grandmother actually making the birthday cake recipe for your cousin's party the next day you may be either an observer or, more likely, a participant-observer. on site, induced natural contexts e.g., a telling of the legends of the Cotten Hall ghost which you have requested from informants and set up in a dorm room; here again, you may observe and not participate as teller, or you may offer a tale yourself as participant. on site, memory contexts e.g., the former moonshine still operator takes you on a tour of the place where his still used to be and describes its operations from memory; you can neither observe, nor participate in what is being remembered, so you have to question the informant more particularly about physical details. off site, memory contexts e.g., the banjo player born and raised in Ashe County is being interviewed in Greenville at the Joyner Library television studio; here you and the informant will have no familiar context for reference and your conversation with him will need to be extremely descriptive of physical and social details which can not be observed or remembered with any reference to the natural context. Dealing with tape recordings As soon as you can, after recording a tape, write a headnote for it and log it. As you log the tape (tape logs are described below), listen for the parts you think you might want to transcribe verbatim and include in the body of your paper. After logging, you can go back and begin the much more time-consuming process of transcription. Don't transcribe everything you taped. Use transcription only for those portions of taped material you want to include in the body of your paper. Let everything else be represented in the tape log. Tape Logs and Headnotes You will log the contents of each side of each tape you've made to document your fieldwork. A log lists the contents of each tape and begins with a headnote briefly describing the context in which the tape was made. The
following examples are from: Example of Headnote Tape 12, Side A Recorded 5/30/72 after supper in the summer kitchen of Roscoe and Rheva Solley, Grampian, PA. Sound of television from living room in background. Rheva [RRS] leaves room to wash dishes at one point and hollers from the kitchen into the conversation Roscoe [RFS] and I [LKB] continue to have. No others present. Tape on at approx. 6 p.m. Tape off at 7:15 p.m. Example of Tape Log (which uses the headnote above)
Example of Verbatim Transcription The following is a verbatim transcription of the story of the "Long Distance Toad" referred to in the above tape log. Notice how verbatim transcription attempts to represent spoken language in a written form reasonably easy to read.
The first two listed below are the preferred forms. verbatim entirely the word-for-word transcription of your resource person's statement, tale, description, with no interruptions or omissions edited verbatim entirely the words of your informant in the sequence they were said, but with sections edited out for reasons of a briefer presentation, indicating those omissions in parentheses where they occur. Two other techniques are possible, but should only be used in special instances. summary and verbatim your own words as "translator" for sections of your resource person's speech which you wish to present more briefly along with word-for-word quotations from your informants summary no quotation; everything in your own words; your own restatement of the resource person's tale or description. Using verbatim transcriptions in your paper For
verbatim transcriptions with fewer than 20-25 words ("short" quotes),
use quotation marks to set off the speech of your informant and incorporate
those quotations in your double-spaced essay text Both
styles of presenting verbatim quotations are illustrated in the following
passage from: block quotes do not require use of quotation marks, except as indicating special terminology Fancy quilting is a label promoted by quilting books and newsletters, but the women of the region also call themselves and others "fancy quilters." Zenna Todd, for example, tried to describe a fancy quilt to me that same afternoon:
short quote embedded in author's text Next she went on to discuss the plain quilt. "The other kind," she said, "would be just something that you would need to keep the bed warm." The term "plain" then is used less often by the quilters to refer to women who make primarily utilitarian quilts. Submitting the completed paper and required documentation. See also the Checklist for Term Papers, listed on the American Folklore web site home page. Submit two copies of your paper. I will comment on one and return it to you. If you are not returning to school in the next semester, include a self-addressed and stamped envelope, large enough to hold the paper copy, in with the paper you are submitting. I'll return the paper to you via the mail. Make photocopies of heirloom photographs and other irreplaceable materials or scan photos, etc; use those copies or scans in your paper. Don't submit heirloom materials, unless you want to donate them to the ECU Folklore Archive. Submit your own original photographs, made for illustrations of your subject. Make your own copies, first, if you want them. Mount photographs on separate pages at the end of the essay. Use figure numbers (Figure 1) and captions with each photo, and indicate where each photo is relevant to your discussion by using the corresponding figure numbers inserted in the body of the essay. Submit your tapes. They can be returned, if you wish. Mark each tape with your name, date recorded, subject recorded, and tape identification number; indicate play sides with "A" or "B." Acceptable audio tapes are new, previously unrecorded, 90 minute, standard audio cassettes. Use
only tape recorders that work with standard size cassettes (i.e., 2.5"
x 4") Put all the materials in a new manila clasp flap envelope and write the title page information on the front in the upper left area. |