[Intro music]
Martha Tsutsui Billins (host): Hello, and welcome to Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork. I’m Martha Tsutsui Billins.
Laura Tsutsui: And I’m Laura Tsutsui.
MTB: And this is the final episode of Field Notes.
Laura Tsutsui: Congratulations!
MTB: Thanks. So to start, Laura, patrons will know who you are because you’ve been on many Patreon bonus episodes, and everyone else may recognize your voice from the outro, but do you want to explain who you are?
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah, also that’s funny because the outro is now a couple years old, and sometimes I’ll listen to audio of other people and be like, “They sound younger.” But I’m Martha’s sister first and foremost, but beyond that, I’m one of, I guess, the producers on your show, so I, like, help assist where needed, which is also my real-life job, has been being an audio reporter and producer and now do a little bit more in the digital content space, but all the same, audio is what I do, so I’m here to help Martha do that.
MTB: Yeah, I’m very lucky to have a sister who already had expertise in what I needed when I started Field Notes, so I appreciate you so much. So yeah, so for this final episode, I thought it would be fun if you interviewed me and we talked about Amami. I’ve talked about Amami on the Patreon quite a lot, and I was also interviewed by Lingthusiasm. I was on their Patreon to talk about my work, but I’ve never done a main episode on Field Notes about Amami, so yeah, I thought that would be a way to go out with a bang.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah, a Field Notes-style interview of yourself, so…
MTB: That’s right.
Laura Tsutsui: Instead of Martha hosting, in a way, I am asking the host questions.
MTB: Yes, you are asking the host questions.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah. So let’s get started. The question you always open with, how did you become a linguist, and where did your interest in linguistics even come from?
MTB: Okay, so when I was in high school at Fresno High, I was really interested in Spanish. I took Spanish for all four years of American high school, and then I also studied it in university. It’s embarrassing to admit now because my Spanish has become so poor, but I really loved Spanish, and I think like a lot of people, I thought that linguists just learned lots of different languages. So one of our mutual family friends, she had a, or she has a master’s in linguistics and she encouraged me to pursue linguistics at Fresno State. She knew I was going to Fresno State. So yeah, so I enrolled in linguistics at Fresno State, and I really enjoyed it and I also realized that it was different than what I had imagined. I think what I had envisioned was more like anthropology. So I ended up double majoring, and I also did anthropology. Yeah, but that’s how I first got interested in linguistics.
Laura Tsutsui: Was there a course or moment where you were like, “Oh, I think this linguistics thing, though, is more where my heart, future career, etc., is going to be”? Was there some moment where you were like, “Oh, this is what this is”?
MTB: Yeah, I think I had… I knew that I wanted to work with communities and work with speakers, and I was interested in endangered languages. I was interested in minoritized languages, and so double majoring in anthropology allowed me to have that kind of like community-focused training where even though I wasn’t doing linguistic fieldwork, I went to the archaeology field school that Fresno State runs called Grandad where we had local consultants advise us and help us understand things with the proper cultural context. So that training was really valuable. And then when I lived in Japan, I heard about indigenous Ryukyuan languages, and so that kind of sparked my interest in doing language documentation in Japan.
Laura Tsutsui: Gotcha. Let’s get into your fieldwork biography. Where and with whom have you worked?
MTB: So when I was at SOAS in London doing the MA on language documentation and description, I wrote my MA dissertation on Uchinaa Yamatu-guchi, which is a mixed language of Okinawa. So there I conducted fieldwork in London. I worked with speakers of Uchinaa Yamatu-guchi who were already living in London, so they were like diaspora speakers. For an MA dissertation, you can’t really do like a whole lot of far-flung fieldwork; you just don’t have enough time. And in the UK, an MA is only one year. So it was really like I had about six months to really work on this project. So I worked with members of a Taiko group who met at SOAS, and that was really interesting. It was a really great opportunity for me to use my language documentation training to make all the mistakes with all the equipment, forget to turn the mics on and, you know, lose the SD cards and all the things, all the horror stories.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah, been there. Been there as a reporter.
MTB: Yeah.
Laura Tsutsui: So bad. Sucks too.
MTB: Yeah, it was really bad. So it was a good way to kind of dip a toe, I think, in the UK where I was living there. And when those things happened, I could usually have a second chance with those people because they were also already living in London and they were very generous and patient and kind to me.
Laura Tsutsui: Okay. Okay. So that was like your MA. And then I think we all know you’ve done beyon… outside of Europe.
MTB: Yes, and then for the PhD, I did work in Setouchi town, mostly in Koniya village on Amami Ōshima, so Amami, big island in Kagoshima Prefecture in Japan, what we think of as Japan. Yeah, so most of my fieldwork has been on Amami Ōshima, with a sprinkling of urban fieldwork in London.
Laura Tsutsui: Very cool. So then what does your current research focus on?
MTB: So my research has mostly been sociolinguistic. My PhD thesis examined Amami honorific verbs and speaker politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment, and for the PhD, I only looked at verbs, but going forward, I’m excited to explore the entire system. I think anyone who is near the end of a PhD or has done a PhD knows when you start, you have really grand aspirations about the amount of things you’ll be able to do and get done, and then as the PhD goes on, you get more and more realistic about what you can actually achieve. So originally, I thought I could do more of the full system, and then I was humbled, and by the end, it was only verbs, but I knew that… I know that there are other parts, there are other honorifics that speakers use. There’s honorific prefixes, honorific nouns, adjectives, so I want to dig deeper into that in the future.
Laura Tsutsui: So you’ve clearly explained this. There’s a lot of ripe research to be done, but to take a brief step back, why did you even choose Amami as a language you wanted to focus on?
MTB: As I mentioned, I knew I wanted to do an Indigenous Ryukyuan language. And there’s maybe six or seven different languages. People get very passionate about what is a language, what is a dialect, where should we draw the lines between languages. And these are also islands. So the archipelago has hundreds of lang… Sorry, hundreds of islands. And where does one language end and the next begin? It’s all very fraught. But there’s at least six or seven. And so…
Laura Tsutsui: And these are not Japanese.
MTB: Not Japanese. No, no, no. Indigenous Ryukyuan language, separate indigenous Ryukyuan languages. So Okinawan or Uchinaguchi is the biggest one that most people may have heard of, and I didn’t want to do that one because it just seemed like there were already a lot of people working on that. And not that there’s not still a lot to do — there definitely is — but it just seemed like, “Oh, maybe it’s too crowded for me,” so I crossed that off the list. Some of these reasons are so superficial as well. Like, I just needed to pick one.
Laura Tsutsui: But I’m sure also it’s balancing the, “Well, what’s going to be not done before and still interesting to me and maybe something to build a career out of and also have mentors?”
MTB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And then the smaller languages, so like Yonaguni and Yaeyama, Madoka Hammine, who’s been on the pod, she is a heritage speaker of Yaeyama. Those two languages also looked very interesting, but the number of speakers was reported to be very small, so, again, having not been there before and really just starting out, not having a great network yet, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find any speakers. I had heard about that happening where their whole PhD is hinging on being able to find speakers and find people who want to work with them and have the ability to do so, and they’re just getting doors shut in their face. So I was worried about that, “Oh, maybe there’s not enough speakers for me to work on either of those languages.” And then with Miyako, I don’t remember why I decided not to go for Miyako, but that got crossed off the list for probably some simplistic reason. And then somehow I ended up meeting someone who had lived in Amami, had lived on Setouchi as a JET, so as a Japanese English teacher, and I had also done the JET program, so we kind of had this connection. And he was also a linguist, and so he really hooked it up. I feel like I owe him my life. He introduced me to people in my field site before I arrived, and through him, I was able to find my host families. So shout out to Shannon Grippando. You’re the best.
Laura Tsutsui: Indebted. Yeah, that gets into my next question, which was like, how do you even meet people to work with? But I want to clear up briefly, you (and I, for that matter) are not native Amami speakers. This is not even like…
MTB: No, not even a little bit.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah, so you were also coming in just… And you’ve had many native speakers of endangered languages on the pod, but part of this was also like, you had to come in as an outsider and figure this out.
MTB: Right. Yes, that is correct. So yeah, we don’t have any connection, like any heritage or anything. Our dad is Japanese American. We do have Japanese heritage, which probably people know from our last name, but we didn’t have any kind of connection to the Ryukyus. So yeah.
Laura Tsutsui: Anyway, so but back to how you met people to work with. So you mentioned your JET friend, but you talk to a lot of people for your research, and I don’t know, is it just, and then the next person and the next person introduces you? How did that work out for you?
MTB: Yeah, so similarly to how I’ve run the podcast, I use Milroy’s friend of a friend method, and so Shannon introduced me to the people who ended up hosting me, and they were… I stayed with two families on my first trip, and they were… Both of those families were like, are very well known and well liked in the community, and through them, I was able to basically meet everybody else. So they would introduce me to their neighbors, and then their neighbors would say like, “Oh, I have this like social group that I meet with every Tuesday. You should come to the social group,” so then I would go to the social group, and there I met like 10 other people. And then they would say, “Oh, but you should really talk to my husband, and my husband is a really good speaker of Amami,” and then… So on and so forth. Everybody would know someone, and they would recommend who they thought might be interested in the project, who, yeah, might have like something to contribute, and who also had time to work with me. So that’s how I did it.
Laura Tsutsui: And I guess a little bit of maybe I just don’t really understand what defines an endangered language, but, you know, so there are still clearly quite a bit of people who speak the language that you were examining, and was it like a whole community where pretty much everyone still spoke it, or was it really, it just depends on if you were older or younger, how much you have, how much [unclear 14:09].
MTB: Yeah, that’s a good question. That’s a good question. So in Amami, it’s mostly only older people, so the younger generations do not speak Amami that fluently, and it’s not something that’s being passed on to the new babies, so the transmission link has been broken. The generational transmission link has been broken for quite a long time, several generations. So at this point, who I was working with were mostly retired people. And I also did a lot of work at the retirement homes. That was a really good source of, you know, people who had both the time and were interested in the project were people who either they… Not everyone lives at the retirement homes in Setouchi, so they… They might just go for like their weekly pottery class or craft class, [unclear 15:08].
Laura Tsutsui: It’s almost like an American senior center.
MTB: Yeah, kind… Like lots of people do live there, but lots of people don’t. They just go for their social events and or their different hobbies. So that was a good resource.
Laura Tsutsui: And do these older people you were talking to say the seniors exclusively speak Amami, or they’re bilingual?
MTB: Everyone is bilingual. Yeah, everyone is bilingual.
Laura Tsutsui: Gotcha. And you speak Japanese. So that’s how you talk to them.
MTB: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Although, like, I tried very hard to improve my Amami, which is something I feel like I can only really do when I’m in the field because I don’t have like that many people.
Laura Tsutsui: There’s not Amami Duolingo.
MTB: There’s no Amami Duolingo, and I mean, I guess I could try harder to practice Amami when I’m not there, but yeah, to be honest, it’s something I mostly do when I’m in Amami, [unclear 16:03] Amami.
Laura Tsutsui: No, I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I don’t even know where I would start if I didn’t have any resources, just me and a book. That’s hard. Okay. So we’ve talked about your research and why you got into linguistics, but also now, the reason we’re doing this in part is because this pod is coming to an end, so can you share for your broader listenership, what’s next?
MTB: Yeah. So we’ve talked about this on the Patreon, but I’ll be doing a National Science Foundation, so NSF, fellowship for the next couple of years, and my project is called Social Dynamics and Hierarchy in Grammar and Language Use: Documenting Amami Ōshima Honorifics. And I’ll be splitting my time between Amami and UC Santa Barbara here in California.
Laura Tsutsui: Yay! Congratulations. Getting your grant is hard.
MTB: It is hard. Yes, it is hard, and I want to be very transparent about the fact that this was the third time that I had submitted this grant application.
Laura Tsutsui: Wow. I didn’t know that, actually.
MTB: Yeah. No, this was the third try. So…
Laura Tsutsui: So this is a big deal. And how many people even get it every year? How often do they even give this out? Annually?
MTB: It is annually. I don’t know how many people. I have no idea. I could probably look that up, but I don’t know. But the only reason I kept trying is because I had had so many great friends and mentors around me in academia who also just were very open about their rejections and how many times they had to submit job applications and grant applications and even things for publication before it was accepted. So I want to kind of keep that up.
Laura Tsutsui: Like, rejection is part of academia.
MTB: Rejection is part of academia. Yeah. I remember one time I was writing an article with, I think he won’t mind if I say, Patrick Heinrich. [laughs] And the first place we submitted it to got rejected, and Patrick was so fine about it. He was like, “Oh, yes, c’est la vie. This is the way it goes.” And I was just heartbroken. I couldn’t believe that they had rejected us. I was super sad about it. But seeing his kind of, I don’t want to say cavalier attitude, but just like, “Yeah, this is the game. This is the life we live,” really helped put into perspective that even the great Patrick Heinrich gets rejected, and it’s totally okay, like I shouldn’t let it bring me down. We just, you know, on to the next. And eventually that article did get published, so… Also with Gijs van der Lubbe. But yeah, so…
Laura Tsutsui: All right. Okay. So you now have this postdoc grant and you said you’ll split the fellowship time between UC Santa Barbara and Amami. So can you tell us a little bit more about, how does that work? Are you teaching? Clearly you’re doing fieldwork. Can you talk more about that?
MTB: Yeah. So it will be a lot of fieldwork. It’ll be about half the year in Amami. So it’ll be kind of like a fall in Amami, winter in Santa Barbara where I’m teaching one class. I’m going to teach a field methods class with my sponsoring scientist and then back to Amami after that, and then rinse and repeat. There’s a shorter field trip at the end, which will just be to kind of like tie up loose ends and make sure like there are no hanging questions or anything, but generally that will be the schedule. So, so yeah.
Laura Tsutsui: And out of this, you will come out with like a real big paper?
MTB: Actually, so the… The deliverables from the project will be hopefully three papers.
Laura Tsutsui: Wow.
MTB: So it’ll be not one huge paper, but three smaller papers. And then also continuing to add data to my deposit at the Endangered Languages Archive, which is open. People can see what I’ve put in there so far, but I’ll continue to add the data from this project.
Laura Tsutsui: I have more questions about like an endangered language. Are you concerned there’ll be a time when you get to, you know, a point in your career slash in the future and all the speakers will be gone?
MTB: That is so sad.
Laura Tsutsui: I’m sorry. And like, but then, you know… What then?
MTB: Yeah, I mean, okay. So this is like a really sad thing about working with speakers of endangered languages. Between the first and second field trip, there was one speaker who I worked with extensively who passed away, and his… I also worked with other members of his family. And he was just a legend. He was the coolest guy. I still think about him a lot. And he was also maybe the closest thing to a monolingual Amami speaker I met in the field. But yeah, so he passed away, and that was really hard to… You know, it was hard to kind of be, you know, confronted with that situation. You know, there’s probably like so much that he saw and he knew and like, you know, not just linguistic data, but like so much that, like, he, you know, now that he’s gone, we’ll never be able to get that or experience that. But I’m sure… I think I have told this story on the podcast before, but the second trip, I was able to give the recordings to the people that I had worked with the first time, because the first time I gave them recordings in like a very, just like… just the files, but then I was able to give them something more substantial on the second trip. I think I gave the family… I’m trying to remember how they asked for it. I think they wanted a CD. So I was able to give that to the family, and I remember them being so happy to have that, you know, that…
Laura Tsutsui: Like record of [unclear 22:26]
MTB: That record of him, and it was conversations of him talking to his grandson. So that was really special. And his grandson is actually my same age, and he’s a pretty good speaker of Amami, so we used to say like, “Oh, I’ll always be able to work with Amami because Tomoki and I are the same age…”
Laura Tsutsui: Aw, that’s sweet.
MTB: “…so we can just continue working together.” But yeah, I mean, he’s pretty unusual, the grandson is, to be like such a young person and such a good speaker. Generally, that’s not the case. But yeah, I mean, that is like a really sad reality of working with minoritized and endangered languages. If there aren’t revitalization, like major revitalization efforts, then these languages will eventually fall silent when the last speakers pass away. In Okinawa, there’s a lot of revitalization efforts taking place. Not so much in Amami. I would really like to see more, but… I mean, it’s not too late. Like there’s definitely… I don’t think the window is totally closed, and I think if people want to, that they can revitalize Amami. So we’ll see. Hard to say.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’ve talked about your research, and what more would you like to see done, you know, beyond that, or maybe if you had unlimited time?
MTB: Yeah. So I think it would be really cool if there were more young people in Setouchi who wanted to start documenting and revitalizing Amami and pursue linguistic research in Amami. As part of this postdoc, this NSF postdoc, I’ll run some workshops and language documentation workshops, and I’m hoping that maybe that might inspire some young people. You know, often endangered languages are kind of a hard sell from an economic perspective because, you know, part of the reason why Amami became endangered and the community went through language shift is because people wanted to pass on the language of economic upward mobility and, you know, the language of prestige, and that was Japanese. So… And this is the case in a lot of endangered language contexts that, you know, people don’t think that the endangered language is necessarily valuable from a money-making or a career perspective even though they may value it and think that it does have cultural value, like they also want their kids to have the best life that they can have. So, yeah, I mean, I think it would be so exciting to see some young Amamians be successful in academia, working on their own language. Of course, it’s hard to be successful in academia working on any language. So that’s like another, another obstacle that I don’t want to like… I don’t want to get too dark about it.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah. Do you know… I mean, you mentioned the person who’s a younger person your age who speaks Amami pretty well. Were there other like young people or even under-18 kids that you sort of interacted with when you were last in Amami?
MTB: So I did a lot of babysitting when I was in Amami. That was like one of the kind of favors I could provide for people. But yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I definitely interacted with like younger, younger people in the community. I, one of the families that I lived with had three children, junior high and younger, but, I mean, it really depends on the family. Like, I know a family, for example, who is really passionate about Amami, and they’re trying to teach their kids, their young babies, Amami, and this family is kind of unusual in a couple of different ways. One is, the mother also studied in England, so she already kind of has that like international perspective, and she speaks English. So I don’t know if they’re like a good example of like kind of the typical Amami family. Sorry, what was the question?
Laura Tsutsui: No, I just, do you know young people in Amami who you could envision will take up this mantle?
MTB: Yeah. I think cultural arts are still popular in Amami. So on the weekends I used to go to a, like, traditional dance group, and there were lots of kids there.
Laura Tsutsui: And is the language spoken or sung through that?
MTB: Yes. And they sing in Amami. So usually there’s an avenue through like traditional arts. Or if people play the shamisen, so like the banjo, a lot of the songs that go with that are in Amami. So, and I mean, that’s the case for Tomoki as well. He’s a very good singer and he’s kind of known locally for being a good speaker of Amami, and he’d sing the songs very well.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. Reflecting on the years of this podcast, what have you learned from doing it?
MTB: Yeah, so it’s kind of crazy to think back. Like, my life looks very different from when I started. I think I launched the podcast when I was actually in the field on my second field trip in 2019, in May 2019. So it’s been almost five years. Yeah, I’ve learned a lot. Running Field Notes has allowed me to meet people and to learn about languages that I normally wouldn’t have any real research connection with. So at SOAS, where I went to grad school, most people are working in Asia, Africa, or Middle East. It’s very rare to meet someone who’s working outside of those three areas, but through Field Notes, I’ve had the chance to learn about languages in South America, Central America, Australia, Vanuatu, Mexico, Europe, etc., and to meet the people who are doing this work and to also talk to so many people who are working on their own languages, that has been really insightful and really inspiring for me. So like from a kind of, just a selfish personal gain perspective, I feel like I’ve learned a lot. And I hope that other people have too. I know that lots of schools don’t have language documentation programs or don’t have very robust language documentation programs, so that’s kind of what gave me the idea to start Field Notes, because SOAS has such a good language documentation program, but I still felt like I didn’t know anything about anything when I got to the field, so I wanted to kind of normalize that feeling and kind of reassure myself by hearing other people’s stories and hearing about like when other people dropped their backpack into the ocean, or when other people got their suitcase full of recordings seized at customs and like, you know, all of these worst-case scenario things that happened, but then you still are able to move on from that and you’re still able to do this work and, yeah, like have a successful career in academia.
Laura Tsutsui: Do you feel like you have fulfilled that?
MTB: I don’t know. What do you think?
Laura Tsutsui: Well, if you started the pod wanting to like meet other people doing fieldwork and feel less alone about the difficulties of fieldwork.
MTB: Oh, yeah, that for sure. Yeah, that for sure I have achieved, I think.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah, I have to say I’ve heard some wild stories on this podcast from people… Probably the most wildest being the one who said she, you know, it took her many days. I can’t remember the name of this guest, but you will. It took them many days to get to this field site, and then simply because they were from the Western world had more medical knowledge than anyone there, and that just was…
MTB: Oh, Kate Lindsey.
Laura Tsutsui: … wild. Yeah, real reality check.
MTB: Yeah, so that was Kate Lindsey, who works in PNG, but at first I thought you were talking about Sheena Shah, who works in Lesotho, because she also has like…
Laura Tsutsui: [unclear 31:16]
MTB: …a really… It takes her a while to get to the field, and then she lives in a tent when she’s there. Yeah, I think the picture on the Field Notes website is her with her van with solar panels. But yeah, I mean, which is so different from how I live when I do fieldwork.
Laura Tsutsui: You’re still in a house with a host family.
MTB: I am in a house with all of the comforts of… Like some of the comforts that we don’t have in the West, you know, like the Japanese toilet.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah, quality.
MTB: And like the Wi-Fi never goes out on me. I never even have to… I don’t charge anything with a solar panel.
Laura Tsutsui: Amazing.
MTB: So it’s cool to kind of hear how like we’re both in the same language documentation space, but we’re having such different experiences.
Laura Tsutsui: What has surprised you the most in your podcast journey?
MTB: Well, when I first started, I was definitely surprised by how generous people who I considered to be kind of like my linguistic heroes often were with their time. I remember I interviewed Lyle Campbell in season one when we were in, you and I, when we were in Hawaii at the ICLDC. And I hadn’t intended on interviewing him. I had interviewed another professor at UH at Manoa, and she was like, “Oh, I want to help you. Who do I know? Who do I know who could be on your podcast?” And she’s just looking around the room. She’s scanning the cafeteria, and she’s like, “Oh, I know Lyle Campbell.” And she purposely starts walking towards Lyle Campbell. And I was like, “Wait! Wait, like stop.” And I was like, “I don’t think Lyle Campbell…”
Laura Tsutsui: Has time.
MTB: Yeah, “I don’t think Lyle Campbell has time for me.” And she was like, “Oh, no, he’s very interested in helping students,” and so we went up to Lyle Campbell. And right then and there, he was like, “Oh, yeah, like sure, no problem,” and we just did the interview, I think, right there, like in his office.
Laura Tsutsui: Wow.
MTB: Yeah. And that has happened so many times where someone was just like so kind and, you know, really, really open to, like, sharing their experience with me and with the Field Notes listeners.
Laura Tsutsui: What has been the hardest part about doing this?
MTB: Well, similar to fieldwork, I feel like the tech difficulties have been abundant. And yeah, and after the pandemic, or during the pandemic as well, when I couldn’t do in-person interviews, and then I realized I could do interviews with people who were in other parts of the world. So that was great, but then I have so much less control over what is happening on the other side. So that has been a real learning curve to try to adjust for differences in tech. And I really sympathize with people who did remote fieldwork during the pandemic, because it’s tough. It’s really hard to try to manage those things when you’re not physically there.
Laura Tsutsui: So do you think this is actually the end? Many podcasts do bonuses forever [laughs] and then revive themselves. Clearly, you have other things to do in the immediate future, but is there a possibility of revitalization of this podcast?
MTB: Yeah, I mean, so I’m wrapping up the podcast because when I’m in the field, I like to be in the field and fully focused on it. And yeah, so the next two years, I feel like I’m totally booked, and I won’t be able to podcast, and I want to really focus on the work with the community in Setouchi. But after that, who knows what the future holds? I would really… I’m not ending Field Notes because I’m not passionate about it or because I’ve grown weary of it or anything like that. It’s not that way at all. So I could see in a couple years revamping it and maybe starting to do interviews again, but when I’m in a stable living situation where I’m not moving every few months and, you know, that kind of thing.
Laura Tsutsui: Save your patron dollars. [laughs] Where can people find you and follow along on your, I guess, research journey from here for the next couple of years?
MTB: So I’ve been avoiding making a personal website. Lots of people have them in academia, and I’ve always just kind of lent on the crutch of the Field Notes website because there’s an About section on that page where I have like a little bit about me posted and projects I’ve worked on, but now that Field Notes is ending, I think I will have to bite the bullet and make a actual grown-up website, grown-up academic website. So I intend to do that and I will link it in the show notes when it exists.
Laura Tsutsui: So it sounds like people can continue to check Field Notes website for info about you.
MTB: Yes. And I think you can also find things that I’ve written on Academia and ResearchGate, and I imagine I will have a profile on UC Santa Barbara’s linguistics department website, but TBD, I don’t know.
Laura Tsutsui: Very cool. Very cool. Well, very big congratulations. This is a really big undertaking, and I didn’t know that it would grow into this long or large of a thing that you were going to do. So well done.
MTB: Aw, thanks. Neither did I, but I’m pleased with it.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah, I think you should be. So thanks for letting me be a part of this, and also, like, seriously, this is a big undertaking.
MTB: Aw, thanks, Laura.
Laura Tsutsui: You did it.
MTB: And thank you to our listeners for following along for all these years.
Laura Tsutsui: Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Yeah. Are there other thanks that aren’t in the credits that are due at this time?
MTB: Well, quick thanks to Luca Dinu, who does all the transcripts, Claire Gawne, who also helps with production, you, my sister, Laura, of course.
Laura Tsutsui: That’s very good. I think this is a good note to end on.
MTB: All right, let’s end here.
Laura Tsutsui: Okay.
MTB: All right.
Laura Tsutsui: Talk to you all next time.
You’ve been listening to Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork. This podcast is hosted and produced by Martha Tsutsui Billins with production help from Laura Tsutsui. Claire Gawne is our editor, and Luca Dinu is our transcriptionist. Our music is by Lobo Loco, and our logo is by E.Vill Designs. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @lingfieldnotes. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening!
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