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This book is a collection of original essays on the practice of linguistic fieldwork and language documentation. Twelve leading linguistics have contributed chapters about the study of languages in a natural setting. They pass on lessons learned, best practices, and discuss a wide variety of topics including the attitude of the linguistic, the roles of native speakers, and challenges of doing research in an unfamiliar environment. The book is intended for fieldworkers in linguistics, anthropology, folklore, and oral history. The book's chapters are entitled: "Fieldwork as a State of Mind" (Larry M. Hyman); "Who Shapes the Record: The Speaker and the Linguist" (Marianne Mithun); "Places and People: Field Sites and Informants" (Gerrit J. Dimmendaal); "Ulwa (Southern Sumu): The Beginnings of a Language Research Project" (Ken Hale); "Escaping Eurocentrism: Fieldwork as a Process of Unlearning" (David Gil); "Surprises in Sutherland: Linguistic Variability Amidst Social Uniformity" (Nancy C. Dorian); "The Role of Text Collection and Elicitation in Linguistic Fieldwork" (Shobhana L. Chelliah); "Monolingual Field Research" (Daniel L. Everett); "The Give and Take of Fieldwork: Noun Clauses and Other Concerns in Fatick, Senegal" (Fiona McLaughlin, Thierno Seydou Sall); "Phonetic Fieldwork" (Ian Maddieson); "Learning as One Goes" (Keren Rice); "The Last Speaker Is Dead--Long Live the Last Speaker!" (Nicholas Evans). An index is appended. (KFT)