Investigating the Language Politics of Houselessness Policy in Portland
Tips on Writing Fieldnotes

See also Field Commentary Guidelines

In this course you are asked to engage in the practice of participant observation, which is a central part of anthropologists' methodological toolkit. This practice helps ethnographers develop insight into their interlocutors and the cultural and linguistic phenomena that matter most to them.

Fieldnotes are an essential resource that help us document and organize the data we’ve been collecting. They are especially useful after having observed cultural practices and events over extended periods of time, and/or in different contexts. 

Fieldnotes should be written during the observation (unless prohibited), and augmented immediately after the observation. That is, after you leave a field site you should sit down in a quiet place and make all the necessary addendums to fill in any missing details of the field site, the relevant interlocutors (including your own roles there), as well your own impressions of the goings-on.

Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein (1997) have developed a list of what should be included in all fieldnotes:

  1. Date, time, and place of observation
  2. Specific facts, numbers, details of what happens at the site and who is involved
  3. Sensory impressions: sights, sounds, textures, smells, taste
  4. Personal responses to the fact of recording fieldnotes
  5. Specific words, phrases, summaries of conversations, and insider language
  6. Questions about people or behaviors at the site for future investigation
  7. Page numbers to help keep observations in order

We all develop deeply personal and distinct ways of writing fieldnotes – it’s important to start with a framework that makes sense to you, and to adapt it as needed for your particular style. In general, there are 4 major parts of fieldnotes, which should be kept distinct from one another in some way when we are writing them:

1) Jottings are brief words or phrases written down while at the field site or in a situation about which more complete notes will be written later. Usually recorded in a small notebook, jottings are intended to help us remember things we want to include when we write the full-fledged notes later. While not all research situations are appropriate for writing jottings all the time, they do help a great deal when sitting down to write afterwards.

2) Description of everything you can remember about the occasion you are writing about. While it is useful to focus primarily on things you did or observed which relate to the guiding question, some amount of general information is also helpful. This general information will help flesh out the setting and provide a more full picture when you write about the experience later. This is particularly important for linguistic anthropological research: pay careful attention not just to the content of what people are saying, but also to the ways they are speaking. Look for and describe non-linguistic behavior like gesture, pitch, body language, intonation, style/code-switching, pace, loudness, etc. This is something your research partner can help with: work together to flesh out the description; they may have noticed things you did not!

2a) Setting Diagram (for audio recordings) This is a simple diagram of the arrangement of the participants within the setting where the recording took place. It is useful for audio recording, but usually superfluous for video recording. Provide the standard header information about the recording, researcher, and date, and then draw a simple diagram, indicating location of speakers, microphones, relevant furniture, and other relevant items (from Du Bois)

3) Analysis of what you learned in the setting in relation to your research questions. This will help you connect the description more directly to the research themes / questions you’re working through. What themes do you see emerging in your field site, and how do they relate to your initial questions? What course readings and concepts might help you make sense of these themes?

4) Reflection on your impressions of the field site, and the interlocutors you observed. What did you feel while observing? What was comfortable and/or uncomfortable? Did anything surprising happen – and if so, why was it surprising? Are there any individuals that struck you in a particularly strong way? Was anyone dominating? Subjugated? How? What course readings and concepts might help you make sense of these relations?

References (and recommended further reading):

Chiseri-Strater, Elizabeth and Bonnie Stone Sunstein. 1997 Field Working: Reading and Writing Research. Blair Press: Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw. 1995  Writing  Ethnographic Fieldnotes.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sanjek, Roger, ed. 1990.  Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press.