Course materials
for/by Peter L. Patrick. May contain copyright material used for educational
purposes. Please respect copyright
Initial Task:
Stranger Self-Report
OR
Naïve Interview
For LG554, Univ of
This
assignment is not assessed. Please do it and hand in by Friday of the second
week of classes (Week 3).
Length: 1-2 pages maximum.
Many of the things we do in here may seem
embarrassing or even silly to you, but believe me, there's a reason for them.
Please choose only one of the two tasks below.
Task 1 - the
Stranger Self-Report - will help you learn how people may see
you when you do fieldwork, and how their expectations limit and shape what can
go on in an interview or conversaton.
1a) First,
write me a brief self-report. Take one page (no
more!) and tell me about yourself. You can interpret this any way you want -
demographic information, your professional background, your family, your
psychological makeup, whatever you think is important. At the end of the page I
should know some important things about you. It's not a joke - don't make fun
of the task - but it's not for publication in a journal, either, so don't think
it has to be academic in flavor. I want this so I know not only who you are,
but more importantly, who you think you are - how you think you ought
to be understood by someone new you're coming in contact with.
It's very important to DO THIS
1b) Second,
go out and find a stranger. Ask them for
a few minutes of their time. Choose someone pretty different from you -
definitely not a friend or someone who already knows about you. A stranger, ok? Tell them you need
their help briefly for an assignment in school. You need them to tell you
who you are. Try not to answer their questions or confirm them in any
information. You want their first impressions based completely on what they can
see, hear and guess about you. If they don't say very much, ask them more:
"What am I like? Where am I from? What has my life been like up till
now?" etc.
As soon as you're through with them, go
write down what they said. Also, who they were and what they seemed like to
you. Don't make it pretty - don't make it more in line with what you'd like to
think about yourself!
Keep your report to 1-2 pages maximum - no
more than one sheet of paper, and it could well be less.
Task 2 - the
Naïve Interview - will help us explore ideas about a
native speech event, the interview, that plays a significant role in much
sociolinguistic fieldwork.
2) This task is really simple! Do an interview with someone. It can
be anyone (but be advised that the closer you are to someone - family, partner
or friend - the harder this is!), but I strongly recommend it be someone
outside the
What should you say? What is the topic of
the interview? What kind of an interview is it? What is an interview, anyway?
These are all good questions! But you are to make the decisions entirely on
your own. Please, don’t get together with other class members
and decide what is being asked for - don’t go off and read new
literature on the topic - figure it out yourself. Don’t spend hours preparing
or carrying it out, either.
After
you've done it, go immediately and write down what happened. Tell me
what it was like and what was important about it, and what made it an
interview. Was it a good or bad one? Why? I want to know in 2 pages, max.
* When is it appropriate? We’ll talk about recording methods,
interviewing techniques, permissions and ethics later in the term. For now, if
you do record it, you must (1) tell the person you’d like to record before
you turn on your recorder; (2) get their oral permission on the tape
recording at the beginning; and (3) tell them truthfully why you are
doing it.
Now,
whichever one you have done, email your report to me at patrickp@essex...
etc. Also, print it out and hand it in to me. Please don’t bother to hand it in
to the main office – it is not being assessed, so they do not need to receive a
copy.
Please do not do BOTH tasks
Thank you!
Details of
Assessment for LG554
LG554 Sociolinguistic Methods page
Page last updated on 10 October 2011