Course materials for/by Peter L. Patrick. May
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LG 554: Sociolinguistic
Methods I
o Defining a
Linguistic Variable
o Analysis of
Personal Narratives
Since
this is a course about learning to do, it isn’t
assessed by the usual essay. Instead you’ll perform several of the
research tasks described below.
Ideally,
you should integrate these tasks across the year, to inform your own research
project – make them a first step
in the planning and execution of your
MA or PhD thesis research. Think of it as a pilot
stage, a chance to try things out, to see where you need to revise, change tack
or abandon ship. It is not necessary to actually succeed in producing
good research in these tasks – though that is a fine result! – rather you
should succeed in learning from their performance.
You’ll perform
several tasks in term 1 which involve designing research, collecting and/or
analysing data. You’ll complete
them in time so you can move on to the next. Please bring all
your materials to class, every week; we’ll discuss
your efforts & results weekly in workshop style. We can’t do this unless
you reliably bring your notes, recordings, etc.
Some smaller tasks are required, but not assessed; these will not be laborious, and I expect you to do them. I’ll tell you more about those as we go along. The first of these is due in the second week of class (Week 3), so please start now!
· Naïve interview or Stranger Self-report. You must choose one of these two and do it.
The second and third are due a few weeks later – see the weekly schedule for details. They are:
· The Taping Game, an introduction to your chosen recording machine.
· Module Development, an exercise in developing linked interview topics and questions
Tasks for assessment
Choose 2 out of the 4 listed here. Do at least one from the
"Research Design/Data Collection" group, i.e. you must do either the Sampling Design or the Descriptive Report. (You may do both of
these, if you choose.)
Each chosen task will be worth
50% of the course mark. Your first
choice of assignment is due on Fri 18 Nov 2011 (Week 7). Your second choice of assignment is due on Thurs 15 Dec 2011 (Week 11). Be sure you hand in one assignment in
Week 7, and one in Week 11, if not before.
You may actually do more than 2 if you like, and be assessed on
the best 2; the more you do, the more you will learn. Choice of tasks is
discussed in class; details will be linked from this page. Each assignment
should be at least 1500 words (not
less, but can be more if you need to). No assignment should be longer than 3000
words, maximum.
The four assessable tasks are as follows:
Research Design/Data
Collection: Do at least 1 of (a) or (b)
for assessment
|
50% |
|
a.
|
Sampling Design of a survey or experiment
|
Due Week 7
|
b.
|
Descriptive
Report of Sociolinguistic Interview(s)
|
Due Week 7
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
Data
Collection/Analysis: You may do either (c) or (d) for assessment
|
50% |
|
|
c. |
Defining
a Linguistic Variable (quantitative) |
Due Week
11 |
|
d. |
Analysis
of personal narrative(s) (qualitative) |
Due Week
11 |
Comments on the choice of assessed tasks
a) The Sampling Design asks you to select a Research
Question for a variationist speech community survey,
and design a sampling plan to answer it. You will need to consider various
social parameters (sex, age, class, ethnicity, etc.) in defining your survey
population. You will need to reject some and select others as you propose and
justify your sampling methods. You will consult the sociolinguistic literature
(see esp. our textbooks by Macaulay 2009, and Milroy & Gordon 2003, as well
as the assigned readers) for relevant models, details and advice. You will write a minimum 1,500-word report on the
sampling design you propose. If you are relatively far along in your planning for your own
dissertation, this is an especially good choice. You may wish to consult me on
the readings first.
b) The Descriptive
Report
requires you to collect spoken data, in the form of
one or several Sociolinguistic Interviews, and to reflect on them. (You will
need to use several Interview Modules developed in class, so it can build on
the unassessed Modules task; but you may also choose
to do the Descriptive Report without filing a Modules task report.) It is qualitative
in nature, but allows room for elementary quantification, and serves as good
preparation for variation analysis – but can also be useful for e.g. a
discourse or attitudes/perception study. As it explores existing data you will
have gathered, it is a good way to locate or refine ideas for a dissertation topic. This assignment requires you to collect new
data. We will discuss Dept. and University standards for ethical
data-collection in class, in advance.
c)
The Definition of a Linguistic Variable is an early
stage in linguistic variable analysis. It is also a good follow-up to the Descriptive
Report, investigating one feature in some depth. It’s a good choice if you have a
particular feature in mind to study and/or have sample data towards your
dissertation already. It
is quantitative, but requires little or no calculation – rather it focuses on
delimiting the envelope of variation before “counting in context” takes place -
and serves as good preparation for variation analysis work. If you have not
collected interviews yet, this assignment
will require you to collect new data. We will
discuss Dept. and University standards for ethical data-collection in class, in
advance.
d)
The Analysis of Personal Narratives applies the approach to narrative developed by Labov & Waletzky to your own materials. The key here is having a recording of a genuine
personal narrative to work with. It
is a qualitative task which requires you to consider deeply the function as
well as the structure of linguistic elements in a well-known vernacular genre.
Such analysis may be an end in itself, or may be the prelude to asking other
questions of either a qualitative or quantitative nature. It’s a good choice for study of a language variety that you
know well or have good access to. Read up
early to find out what constitutes a good narrative. This
assignment may require you to collect new data.
We will discuss Dept. and University standards for ethical data-collection in
class, in advance.
Remember: You only need to do two of these
for credit!
Please
do make sure you are familiar with the University and Dept. advice on and rules
for post-graduate assessed work, and follow them carefully. They can be found
online in the current departmental PG Handbook
and the
Research Students Handbook. You should
come and ask me, or other Dept. staff, if you are unsure about them.
Ethical permission for Assignments
The assignments for
LG554 that require data collection from human subjects (e.g., Descriptive Report,
Linguistic
Variable, and Narrative
Analysis)
have been submitted by the instructor and cleared for ethics permissions. You
do not need to submit a separate ethics application for your assignment.
However, you are required to obtain
consent from each person you collect data from by means of a recording
(e.g. an interview). To do this you should use an appropriate consent form. You
may use the one designed by me for this module, which is available here; please
also see the explanation on how to use it here. Note
that several of these assignments can be done on the basis of the same
interview(s); each interview or recording only requires consent to be given
once.
It is also possible for
you to design an appropriate consent form of your own following the principles
required by the University, see this
page and the discussion on the Dept.
ethics webpage. If for example you are collecting data for assignments
which you know you will use later in your MA or PhD research, you might be
better off submitting an ethics permission application for your MA/PhD research
now; that would require you to design a consent form, as part of the process
explained in class in Week 2.
Note that some
assignments (e.g. Sampling
Design) do not require you to collect data from human subjects, so no
consent form is required from them. Other sorts of assignments and research
(e.g. Rapid and Anonymous Elicitation, in which you do not find out identifying
personal data about the subjects) may require consent but avoid some of the
issues of those which do produce personal data. See the Dept.
ethics webpage for more info.
Presenting non-English language data
You
are encouraged to work with data other than varieties of English in your
assignments, including varieties you speak natively. However, be conscious that
you are presenting it in English to linguists that probably do not speak your
variety. Thus there are a number of things you will need to do. You must
present it carefully, with attention to issues of orthography, glossing, and
translation. These are separate levels, each one representing the same excerpt
of speech in a different and complementary way. You may need to highlight
briefly the ways in which you do this.
§
If it is normally written in non-Roman
characters (e.g. Greek, Chinese, Russian etc.), use them.
§
You will also need to represent it on the orthographical level using Roman characters (the kind normally used
to write English). This may be done in the translation
(see below).
§
If there is a standard orthography, use it; if there are several,
select an appropriate one and mention why you used it; if there is none, you
will need to represent it on the orthographical level in a consistent fashion
using Roman characters.
§
For most of our assignments, you will also need to present part or
all of it in phonemic transcription
(using phonemic slash notation, /abcd/) or in phonetic transcription (using IPA, in
brackets [ɑɞɕɖ]). It may be
appropriate to use both judiciously, e.g. to put most of it in phonemic
notation but highlight a few key bits in IPA. In appropriate cases, a mixture
of phonemic notation plus standard orthography, or IPA phonetic notation plus
standard orthography, will also be fine. (You should explicitly tell the reader
about such mixtures! And explain why you use them, briefly. NB: Phonemic
notation uses Roman characters.)
§
It is also necessary to either gloss or translate, and you may need to do both. A gloss is a level which identifies and
labels grammatical and lexical components, rather than merely translating them,
e.g. “3sg fem” for the 3rd person singular feminine pronoun or inflection,
rather than “she” or “her”. Glosses keep the word and morpheme order of the
original language – they are not sentences of English. For more about gloss,
see the Wikipedia entry for "interlinear gloss"; for conventions for
glossing, and a list of standard abbreviations for grammatical category labels,
see the 'Leipzig Glossing Rules' at www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php.
§
A translation should be
fairly literal, especially if no gloss is provided, so that the reader can
identify the linguistic items used. E.g., do not give the meaning of a metaphor
– give the metaphor itself. However, if you do provide a gloss it will
accomplish the purpose of transparency of linguistic items, so your translation
may then be more colloquial. A translation is written in English – it uses
English items and word order, etc.
§
You may thus have up to 4
levels in your presentation: (1) Orthographic transcription in non-Roman
characters, (2) Phonemic/phonetic transcription using Roman characters/IPA, (3)
Gloss of grammatical and lexical components, (4) Translation (literal or
colloquial depending on whether you provided a gloss) into English. Some
languages' features may require other levels (e.g. relating surface lexical
tones to underlying ones).
§
Obviously this is more work
than required for presenting English data, which need only have an orthographic
transcription and level (2), and if appropriate (3). (In the case of English
data, a literal orthographic transcription is normally given, which follows
conventions for writing in English). Bearing this in mind, to encourage you to
work on such data, I will generally allow you to do less data than if you were working on English – check with me about
this.
§
An example of data
presentation of a non-English language which uses a standard non-English
orthography, primarily in Roman characters, followed by a gloss and literal
translation, can be viewed here. The example is taken from Comparative
Creole Syntax (2007, ed.
Your work
will be assessed in relation to the following specific criteria. You must be
able to:
§ Summarise: Demonstrate your understanding
by clear, concise summary of assigned research. Be able to accurately
summarise argumentation, facts (both in detail, and
at a general level), crucial concepts, and theoretical claims, and explain or
paraphrase technical terminology.
§ Analyse:
Make and explain distinctions; identify similarities
and contrasts; create and take readers through an argument, step by logical
step; and generally, use appropriate terminology precisely in analysis of the
relevant data.
§ Evaluate: Identify and assess
the underlying methods, assumptions and goals of a piece of research; appraise
the strength or weakness of a position, a theory, or a set of data. Are the conclusions supported
by the arguments? the data? Are the findings significant, and why? When you make evaluative claims, you must be able to
cite specific evidence to back them up.
§ Present your work
effectively: Communicate your (and others’) ideas with clarity, in
a logical and transparent structure, in a coherent fashion and appropriate
style, drawing on technical terminology as needed. You must be lucid, precise,
and original, while demonstrating a sense of balance among the parts,
controlling length to meet requirements, and attributing ideas to their authors
through good citation and reference practice.
General Notes and Advice on Writing Your Assignments in LG554
§
Be familiar with, and follow, the relevant Dept. Post-Graduate handbook
material on writing assignments.
§ Grammar:
o
Be consistent w/number, person and tense.
o
Write in simple, active sentences.
o
Do not use
plural number for yourself unless there is more than one of you writing a
report.
§
Citations and references:
o
If you must
use quotes from authors (I prefer you do not),
keep them few (2-3 max.) and very brief (1-2 lines max).
o
Unlike a good paraphrase (which is what I do prefer),
a quotation gives little evidence of your understanding – which is what
assignments are designed to demonstrate.
§
Footnotes:
o
If you must
use footnotes (I prefer you do not),
keep them few (3-5 max.; I once had a student put 57 in a 1500-word assignment,
and she thought it was a good thing!);
o
And put in them only NON-central references and
details – all essential info should be in the text, and everything in the text
should be essential info.
§
Dictionary definitions: Do not cite general dictionary definitions of concepts in your essays.
Even linguistics dictionaries are often not authoritative sources – after all,
it is us who write them… You should demonstrate a critical appreciation of how
concepts are used in the literature – not a willingness to defer to the
authority of dictionaries.
§
Web sources
are NOT to be preferred over established reference books. Some are excellent;
some are flawed, even though they appear to be decent sources; some are simply
crap. You can find examples of all three kinds on such well-known sources as
Wikipedia – best to avoid them entirely as unreliable sources.
o
If you do use appropriate web sources for information,
please see my guidelines for web citations.
o
The Dept PG Handbook has guidelines for this too,
please see them.