As a person with around a million different allergies and an aspiration to do linguistic fieldwork one day, I got extremely excited when I read the quoted passage from the title of this review: “Eat salad and die!”. For an experienced field linguist this might be obvious (what do I know?), but I have often wondered whether the number of food allergies I have would stand in the way between me and my possible future prospects of doing fieldwork one day. Luckily Lyle Campbell was able to prove me wrong and restore my hopes in his book “Linguist on the Loose – Adventures and misadventures in fieldwork”.
In his book, Campbell describes most aspects of linguistic fieldwork through his own eyes, and as the title suggests, he recounts his many good experiences as well as the not-so-good ones. Sometimes the not-so-good experiences start to outweigh the good ones so much that you start to wonder if the real purpose of this book is to discourage all young and hopeful linguists from doing fieldwork one day. The tales of snakes, scorpions, amoebic dysentery, angry dogs, rabies, broken busses and unstable bush planes are many, but so are the interesting encounters with people, cultures and languages. Campbell takes us through chapters with varying focuses, but all recounting his own experiences and giving advice so that others might be able to avoid some of the mistakes he made.
The book commences with a chapter of a general introduction to linguistics, which is something a big part of the target audience might not need. However, I can say that I found it very helpful. Especially if you, like me, are a young linguist always being met with “but why is it important?” and ignorance when you desperately try to explain to family members, what you want to do with your degree. Campbell explains very thoroughly, both in the very beginning and very end of his book, why documenting and describing endangered languages are important and why it is something we, as a society, should pay more attention to. So, if you want to get your argumentation in order next time you have to explain to John that it actually does matter that a language is endangered, and “no aunt Betty, Danish is not dying!”, I would highly advise you to read this book. At least the first chapter, and who knows, you might be so hooked that you must keep reading. Alternatively, you can gift the book to an ignorant relative as an attempt to make them understand that linguistics is not useless.
The next few chapters recount interesting experiences and discoveries Campbell has made before continuing to the tales that sometimes make you want to just stay home in your own warm bed. However, I really do appreciate having read this book, and though I am not exactly fond of snakes and scorpions, I am not yet discouraged from hopefully doing fieldwork one day. This book definitely gave me food for thought and useful advice as well as many interesting facts about languages I didn’t yet know.
A small critique might be the photos: The book is printed in black and white and so are the photos. Very obviously personal and very interesting photos from Campbell’s own experiences, but it feels like a lot of the details are lost in the black and white format. An example is one page that includes a picture of a foot. At first glance it just looks like a foot, and you wonder “why is there a foot on this page?”, but by reading the caption you find out that it is actually a photo of a foot with a Piranha bite. Very brutal but it makes perfect sense as an addition to the explanation of the productive suffix -wash in Nivaclé that means “wound” and hence the Nivaclé word wanja-wash meaning “piranha-bite wound”. It is interesting with such illustrations, but just unfortunate that the quality of the photo would seem to have been improved in colour.
All in all, Campbell’s book was an interesting read, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone with an interest in field linguistics – or students with a need for arguments to prove their hopeless relatives wrong. Oh, and my hopes to make it as a field linguist are definitely restored, as it turns out, most of the food Campbell advises against eating in the field, are the stuff I’m allergic to anyways. Happy days!
About the book:
Linguist on the loose : adventures and misadventures in fieldwork
Lyle Campbell
2022
Edinburgh University Press
Fanny Windeløv-Jensen is studying linguistics at Aarhus University, currently in her sixth semester and hoping to do linguistic fieldwork one day.
“Eat salad and die!” – en spændende og inspirerende beretning om lingvistisk feltarbejde 
Creoles, fieldwork and linguistic theory – an interview with Peter Bakker 
Dan Everett on the ethics of linguistic fieldwork 
Fieldwork in a maroon community in Brazil – an interview with Ana Paulla Braga Mattos 
Fieldwork in Saint Croix – an interview with Kristoffer Friis Bøegh 
Fieldwork in Nusa Tenggara Timur – an interview with Jeroen Willemsen