Ethics

ELA follows best practice ethical guidelines in its research and conforms to the ethics statement put forth by the Linguistic Society of America. A substantial portion of our work is explicitly collaborative, shaped from the beginning by community or speaker initiative and interest. Language consultants are compensated for their time, and resulting recordings and materials are shared only with the explicit permission of all involved. While most speakers and communities choose to share their language and culture with the general public, whether through the ELA website, Youtube channel or some other means, we remain sensitive and responsive to issues of access, use, and intellectual property. Those recorded also have the right to make their recordings private retroactively. We extend our responsibilities not only to our own documentation but also in helping communities gain access to previous linguistic literature on their languages.