Multilingualism in Society: Data Collection
For this assignment, you must:
1) Collect a 30-minute sample of naturally spoken language; the sample can be a recording of an
interaction (e.g. group of friends, peers), or a compilation of media broadcasts (e.g. stand up; talk
show; documentary), etc.
2) Transcribe the sample of naturally spoken language and either:
a. Identify a re-occurring linguistic feature (e.g. ethnic-speech markers in interaction);
b. Identify a series of code-switching junctures
3) Code your collected sample for the feature/junctures of interest in preparation for subsequent analysis (for this assignment, you are not required to actually do the analysis, this is just to prepare your data for later analysis.
For 2(a):
Choose three factors to look at when coding: for example, one factor might be linguistic (i.e. what constrains the variable), two factors might be stylistic [topic, audience] or social [gender, age]).
Coding:
By ‘coding’ we mean the translation of a spoken or written text into an analyzable format. Coding requires you to think about the different things that could affect the realisation of your variable and then to organise your data in a way that will allow you to test your hypotheses.
Say, for example, you are interested in auxiliary-verb deletion in Black British English and you draw
from a 30-minute recording of an interaction with a Black British English speaker (or multiple speakers).
Coding your data would entail listening to your recording, and identifying all the instances in which the feature could appear (these are called tokens). You would also want to think about the various parameters that could influence whether an overt auxiliary is present or not: linguistic factors (tense, following syntactic environment, person, etc.); social factors (sex, education, social class, age, etc.; and stylistic factors (topic, audience, genre, etc.).
For each token, you would then take down the relevant information for all the factors that you previously identified. In other words, for any given token you would determine whether there is an overt copula; what the tense, following syntactic environment, person, etc. for that token is; what the sex, education, social class, age, etc. of the speaker who uttered that token are; and what the topic, audience, genre, etc. of the token are.
Note that this is just a hypothetical example: you will need to determine what kinds of linguistic, social and/or stylistic factors are important to consider for your variable (and what kinds of things it will be possible for you to examine based on the data you have). Remember, you are exploring just three of these possible factors.
Your choice of feature will influence the way that you code your data. You will still need to think about
the various linguistic, social and stylistic factors that could influence the realisation of your target
feature.
Your submission for this assignment will contain:
Your transcription (word document) and coded data (excel spread-sheet).
Your mark will be based on
1) whether you have selected an appropriate feature/variety,
2) whether you have the required amount of (good) data, and
3) whether your raw data is transcribed and coded correctly.
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