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Sociolinguistics

Undertaking A Basic Variationist Analysis Dr Emma Moore

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The key to a good project…

 Planning and structure!

– Producing an ethical project – – Understanding the research area Using reliable methods – Undertaking a systematic analysis of results – Providing an informed discussion of findings How can we apply these to projects you are asked to complete?

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Producing an ethical project

PREPARATION  Why?

– Responsibility, Rigour and Respect… – Also, helps you to think through your ideas  Understanding their requirements and application of your project  Planning the data collection  Devising a hypothesis

Demands of Ethics consent

 *The Application form  *The Information sheet

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Ensure that you understand your university’s ethics process. You may need to apply for consent to undertake your research.

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PREPARATION

Understanding the research area

 Review the literature – Lecture notes – – – Required reading Suggested reading Consider additional resources… Remember that your project should demonstrate your knowledge of the research area.

PREPARATION

Can I refer to websites?

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 Yes, if necessary, appropriate and scholarly – Some good examples:  Dialect collections on-line – http://sounds.bl.uk/BrowseCategory.aspx?category=Accen ts-and-dialects  University of Edinburgh

Sound Comparisons

site  – http://www.soundcomparisons.com/ British Library’s

Sounds Familiar?

pages – http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html

 BBC Voices project – http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/ You should consider how objective a website is before you use it

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PREPARATION

Devising a hypothesis & aims

 What do you expect to find?

– Predictions should be based on previous research and findings  What will you investigate and why?

– What do you already know about your chosen topic? What remains unknown?

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PREPARATION

Collecting data

 Consider: – Methodology and implications on the data  How will any interviewing be undertaken?  Do the techniques comply with usual sociolinguistic methods?  What kind of data is it?  What can you do with it?

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PREPARATION

Transcribing the data

 Most sociolinguistic studies transcribe all the data they collect – Easier to have an overview – Easier to search – Incredibly time-consuming!

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PREPARATION

Analysing the data

 What variable are you looking for?

– How will you identify it in the sound files and the recordings?

 What variants can you find?

– How will you record the differences in variants?

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PREPARATION

Example: Definite Article Reduction (DAR)

 Variable: – the pronunciation of the definite article

the

 Variants: – Full-forms:  /ð ə/, /ð ɪ/ – Reduced forms  / ʔ/ before consonants;  / θ/ before vowel Example reference to DAR: Britain, David (2007) “Grammatical variation in England”. In:

Language in the British Isles

. Cambridge: CUP.

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DOING THE ANALYSIS

Searching the data

 Open the transcript  Find/highlight all variable contexts – Use the ‘find and replace’ function in Word (Edit > Find)  Enter the feature you are looking for e.g.

ing

or

h

or

the

 Highlight every instance of this feature  You will now know the location of all of the tokens of your variable

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Listening to the data

 Now listen to the sound files and record what you hear for each token of the variable

Line Number Token

5 some of the teachers 6 8 8 … with the kids go to the toilets see the point

Variant

/ð ɪ/ /ð ɪ/ / ʔ/ / ʔ/ …

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Analysing the data

 Repeat the same process for each piece of data you are analysing  How are the variants distributed for each of your informants?  Do you notice anything about the linguistic constraints on variants?

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DOING THE ANALYSIS

Thinking about linguistic constraints

  We already know about common linguistic constraints: – – Full-forms:  stress?

Reduced forms:  following sound (consonant/vowel)?

 preceding sound (e.g. consonant cluster deletion:

with the kids

)?

Is there anything about the linguistic environment that might affect the variants you find?

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DOING THE ANALYSIS

Thinking about social constraints

 Consider the biographical information you have about your informants – Do differences between the informants correspond with different variant use?

– What differences would you expect based on your knowledge of the sociolinguistics literature?

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WRITING UP YOUR FINDINGS

Writing up your findings

 i.

Your write-up should include the following: Clearly identify the variable and variants that you have studied, giving relevant examples from the transcripts; ii.

iii.

iv.

Show the linguistic contexts in which the variants occur; Show the ways in which the variants correlate with at least two social factors using tables and/or graphs as necessary; Attempt to explain the social and linguistic distribution of the variants you have discovered with reference to the sociolinguistic literature.

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WRITING UP YOUR FINDINGS

Things to include

     At some point in your write-up, you ought to say something about work that been done on some or all of the following: – The language variety you have studied – The variable you have chosen to study – The social factors you will analyse Be selective: you probably won’t be able to talk about everything Use appropriate formats – Graphs, pie-charts, tables?

Don’t just describe your findings, say what they mean Write critically: what are the shortcomings of the analysis?