Data Collection

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Data Collection

• Field Work, Interviews and Elicitation

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Field Work

• Definition research activity involving the
  systematic collection of linguistic material
  directly from individual speakers can be carried
  out in distant places as well as in ones own
  city
• 3 areas influence field methodology
• 1. type of study being undertaken
• 2. type of speakers required
• 3. type of data required

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1. Type of Study Being Undertaken

• Dependent on different factors
• Ethnographic ( study of one individual or group
  over long period by direct observation) or
  Variationist Study ( investigation of causes of
  variation against social variables e.g. age, sex,
  )
• data collected qualitatively ( individual uses
  of language in special settings emphasized) or
  quantitatively ( analytical techniques large
  amount of data necessary)
• Participant observation ( sociolinguist is or
  becomes member of group) or synchronic study (
  snapshot)
• Apparent time ( different groups in same speech
  community) or Real time Study ( follows real
  change over time)

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2. Type of Speakers Required

• decision on sampling universe
• Random Sample ( selection of informants based on
  chance) or Judgement Sample ( researcher
  searching for required informant in advance)
• requirements of Speakers
• - language as mother tongue
• - use in daily life
• - good speakers
• - eager to help professional

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3. Type of Data Required

• involves the assembling of a corpus (collection)
  of spoken language or a dataset
• casual, natural and spontaneous
• Technique
• two versions of word Am I saying this
  correctly?
• if not, altering parts until correct
• later repeating words in reverse order

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Sociolinguistic interview

• technique of eliciting samples of speech data,
  developed by William Labov
• relatively less structured
• aim to elicit a sample, which is casual and to
  have a free conversation
• contra Interview clearly defined with formal
  speech style, Volume of Speech of Informant too
  small, Observers Paradox ( speakers language
  affected by presence of linguist)

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Labovs five speech styles

• two conversational styles
• a) Casual speech
• involving people emotionally
• Labovs danger of death
• avoiding that speaker pays attention to its
  speech
• Have you ever been in a dangerous situation
  thinking ltnow its overgt?
• speaker gets excited, forgets formality

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Labovs five speech styles Continued

• b) Careful speech
• monitored speech style
• characteristic for formal conversation
• three categories of reading
• a) Reading passage
• read a pre-selected passage from a text
  (formality)
• b) Word list
• c) Minimal pairs
• other idea for a good interview
• Sense Relation Network Notion words with space
  for local variants
• discussed in pairs
• variants of notion words in casual speech
  found

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Elicitation

• Definition method for investigating linguistic
  data through special strategies and collection of
  words and/or grammatical structures from a native
  speaker
• Experimental Structures in English (by Greenbaum
  and Quirk)
• division into Performance and Judgement tests

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1. Performance tests

• 1.1. Operation tests
• informants asked to change something in a given
  sentence
• a) Compliance tests
• deviation in sentence
• Example 1 He hardly could sit still. (task
  replace He by They
• prediction hardly in unacceptable position
• informants changed sentence

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Operation Tests Continued

• Example 2 turn He will probably stay late.
  into question
• not deviant, but how including probably in
  question?
• b) Selection tests
• sentence not deviant, but after task have to
  choose btw. Variants
• Example None of the pupils answered the
  question. task verb present
• singular or plural form (answers or answer)

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1.2. Completion Tests

• informants asked to make some addition to given
  sentence
• a) Forced-choice selection test
• limited set of items limited set of
  environments
• Example I the poem. and I have the
  poem. learnt and learned
• preference for form as preterite or past
  participle investigated

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Completion Tests Continued

• b) Word-placement tests
• subjects given sentence and word they should
  use with it
• Example My brother plays the guitar.
  usually
• c) Composition tests
• part of a sentence position in final form of
  sentence open end
• Example I entirely or I completely
  opening words
• interest in co-occurring verbs

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2. Judgement tests

• a) Evaluation tests
• evaluate sentence on 3 point scale
• Example judging acceptability of He hardly
  could sit still.
• b) Preference tests
• consisting of rating ranking
• c) Similarity tests
• 2 sentences, minimal lexical and syntactic
  difference judge similarity
• Example Some lectures are actually given before
  ten. and Actually, some lectures are given
  before ten.

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Bibliography

• Greenbaum, S., and R. Quirk, eds. (1970).
  Elicitation Experiments in English Linguistic
  Studies in Use and Attitude. London Longman
  Group Ltd.
• Ladefoged, P. (2003). Phonetic Data Analysis An
  Introduction to Fieldwork and Instrumental
  Techniques. Malden, Oxford, Carlton Blackwell
  Publishing.
• Llamas C., L. Mullany, and P. Stockwell, eds.
  (2007). The Routledge Companion to
  Sociolinguistics. Abingdon and New York
  Routledge.
• Milroy, L., and M. Gordon, eds. (2002).
  Sociolinguistics Method Style. Blackwell
  Publishing.
• Swann, J., A. Deumert, T. Lillis, and R.
  Mesthrie, eds. (2004). A Dictionary of
  Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University Press Ltd.