LIN 201 CANADIAN ENGLISH

ASSIGNMENT 3

 

Collecting and organizing data

 

For this assignment, you will collect and interpret some data. If possible, ask native English speakers for data. Do not ask students in this class for data.   Try to get a good representation of the three age groups listed in the table below. You can ask the question in person, by phone, or by e-mail.  Some informants may give more than one answer -- record the first one they mention.  Record any comments respondents make about the differences they perceive between these two terms. Include that information in Question 4.

 

Collect at least 25 answers to the question:  What do you call the knob you turn to get water in a sink?

 

If you have another lexical or phonological variable that you are particularly interested in, you may examine that instead, following the same method. If your variable is not included in the Dialect Topography survey, then you must find another published source to which you may compare your data. Substitute that for Question 5 below.  [This could jumpstart your final research project.]

 

1.  Summary Chart. Create a table such as the one shown. (You may wish to create it in a spreadsheet program such as Excel and then copy it into your assignment.) For each response show the number of people in each age category that gave that response (#) and the percent (%) calculated as the number of people in that age group that gave that response divided by the total number of people in that age group.

 

response

age: under 30

  #                 %           

age: 30-50

   #                 %

age: over 50

  #                 %

tap

 

 

 

 

 

 

faucet

 

 

 

 

 

 

other

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total

 

100%

 

100%

 

100%

 

2.  Line Graph: "(what we turn the water on with) and Age.  Create a line graph (not a bar graph) that shows the responses for tap and faucet with respect to age.  Label the graph carefully so that all the information is readily understood. You may draw your graphs by hand or use a program such as Excel to create them.

 

3.  Response & Age.      Did you find any relation between response and age?  Explain with reference to your graph.

 

4.  Comments.  What do you say? Did your respondents make any comments about the differences in use or meaning between the two pronunciations?

 

5.  Comparison with Dialect Topography Results.

(It's question 4.)

a.  Using the Dialect Topography website, create a line graph showing the top two responses for this question for the Golden Horseshoe region of Canada. If a different region is more comparable to the location where YOU collected data, then also make a line graph for that region. You'll probably want to keep Age as the Independent variable on the x-axis of your graph, since that is how your own speakers are grouped. Attach the graph(s) to your paper (or paste them in). (Review HW 2 if you don't remember how to make graphs.)

 

b.  With reference to these graphs, compare your own results to the Dialect Topography results.

 

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