Course materials
for/by Peter L. Patrick. May contain copyright material used for educational
purposes. Please respect copyright.
For LG554, Univ of
The task
In this assignment, you will
· Locate an example of linguistic variation
· Refine your understanding of its parameters (i.e., of the “envelope of variation”)
· Report on your efforts.
Length: As with all our assignments in LG554, you should write a report
of 1500 words or more. I will not penalise reports of up to 3000 words, but if
you can express yourself clearly in 1500, please do. Under-length (ie, under-1500 words) reports may suffer from lack of
content and be marked accordingly.
Details of Task:
You will start
from scratch, trying to develop ideas and raise useful questions.
In the first stage, it’s best if you don’t read anything for it that you haven’t already
read; don’t search the literature!
Let
me repeat this, because many students ignore it: DO NOT read about your variable!
Just
do steps (1-6). The idea is to find something
new. Afterwards you may discover that it has already been studied,
and may be able to compare what you have hypothesised with what others have
found; or it may indeed be new. Our emphasis at the moment is not on reading
the literature, but going through the process of discovery.
1) Find a new linguistic variable.
“New” means “new
to you”: you haven’t studied, read or heard about research on it in any
detail. It can even be entirely
new, i.e. not previously studied by anyone, though that isn’t necessary. Use English
or any other language you have access to adequate data in.
At this point, if you have not
already, come
discuss your ideas with me in office hours before going any further.
2) Describe it.
What
is it? Is it part of your own speech? How did it come to your attention? You
will need to make certain that the feature actually is variable. What variants
did you notice? Is it a phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic,
discourse variable? How is it attached/ related to a purely linguistic meaning?
Is there an element of social meaning/evaluation too? what is it?
3) Collect some
naturally-occurring tokens.
Collect
enough to examine for systematic variation. Use impressionistic transcription,
audio- or video-recording. Select 2
modes, speakers, texts, styles or settings to observe it in (e.g., conversation,
video/TV, class lecture), so that there are contrasting environments. Why did
you choose the setting/mode you did? What's a reasonable number of tokens for
your variable? If it’s plentiful, stop
at 35. If it’s rare, why is it rare?
Where did you look? Are you surprised that it’s not more frequent? How could you get a larger number of tokens?
e.g. by altering existing elicitation techniques, or devising new ones (spell
out details). You will need to hand in a
transcribed list of all your tokens with the assignment. Do NOT just
have 2-3! You need e.g. 15-35. Consider
sampling carefully, and come discuss it with me if you are in any doubt as to
whether you have selected the right speakers. (Ex: a student investigating
L-vocalization in
4) Look for a
pattern. Consider how you’d investigate it further if you had more time/data.
Your sample is small, merely suggestive,
a starting-point -- but do you see
anything that suggests a hypothesis? anything you’d want to explore further?
Try describing the pattern informally in prose. Would you need to change your
methods of data collection? Would it
alter the envelope of variation? Explain how. (E.g., “Get more data” is not
detailed enough!)
5) State the
environment and variants. Write a rule for it.
Based strictly on your sample, where does
it occur? Define the envelope of variation. Label and discuss the variants that
occur. How many are there? (How did you decide how many?) List them in a fairly
rich notation (e.g. narrow IPA phonetic transcription). Choose a label for the
variable itself. Try writing a rule to describe the pattern. Do you think
you’re missing possible variants or environments? Which? How could you test
this with a couple of well-chosen elicitation questions/searches?
Be
sure to demonstrate
the variability of your chosen variable – i.e., do not simply illustrate a
single “non-standard” form.
6) Other comments and
considerations.
Has your approach been focused on
describing social and linguistic covariation, or analysing linguistic
processes? (cf. Wolfram 1993 on these points.) What seems to be the
relation of the variants to each other? … to the overall unit of the linguistic
variable? Was it easy to tell the
variants apart? the environments? What else needs to be considered in
investigating this variable further? Do you know of any studies of the
variable, or related phenomena? If so, cite them in a list
of references. What problems did you encounter in doing this exercise?
Beware,
for phonological variables, of confusing (a) the articulatory
basis for a feature with (b) its acoustic manifestation and/or (c) a listener’s
impressions and perceptions. There is no one-to-one transparent relation here,
and your methods must discriminate.
Beware,
too, of mixing up the variants with the variable, or the contexts,
or the rules.
Now please see the more detailed “Notes”
section at the end of the Vernacular Index assignment (not an assignment option this term,
but notes will still be helpful), some of which apply here.
Collaboration:
You may collaborate on this assignment with (an)other class member(s). However,
you must describe one variable per person and hand in a separate report on
each variable.
Mini-presentation:
A week before the report is due, you will come to class with a half-page of
notes. You will tell the rest of us briefly about your variable, and take a few
questions (though you may not have all the answers yet).
The written
report need not be over 1500 words – as long as it deals adequately with the
items above. Your chosen variable may present its own difficulties – feel free
to consult me about them. You may even have to abandon your first choice, e.g.
because it doesn’t vary after all, or you are not able to describe it
adequately for one reason or another. This happens in real life too – go find
another one!
Vernacular Index
assignment (notes)
Details of
Assessment for LG554
LG554 Sociolinguistic Methods page
Page last updated on 10 October 2011