Final Research Project

 As the culminating activity for this course, you will be conducting original research on some aspect of Canadian English that interests you.  You are strongly encouraged to work in groups of 2-4 students for this project.  Some time will be made available in class for organizing and brain-storming, but you will need to work on this primarily outside of class. So choose research partners with compatible schedules.

You might observe natural speech occurences and take notes, or conduct a survey or interviews, or you could examine language use in literature, movies, etc. It will be important to narrow in on some very specific elements to examine. You will also need to formulate a hypothesis (or several) about the use of these elements by specific groups of speakers that you examine.

You will be expected to demonstrate that you have acquired knowledge of the both the content and the means of investigating variation in Canadian English. If your research involves observing people talking, or interviews, surveys, or other means of collecting data from people, then it must follow the Ethics guidelines provided.

 Please make a note of important dates for this project, which appear on the syllabus. You must meet the deadlines for:

• Proposal due (via "Survey" in Blackboard)
• Abstract due in class
• Presentation during last two weeks of class
• Final paper due in my office

• Meet with the professor to discuss your plans: in January or February
  • It is essential that you (meaning your research group) come to discuss your project with me.
  • Make an appointment. Keeping this appointment will constitute part of your grade for the project.
  • You are certainly welcome to come talk to me more than once -- this required meeting is a minimum requirement.

You will give an oral presentation, with appropriate visual (and audio?) aids during one of the last two class sessions.

Further details will be made available about the presentations later in the semester.

You will also submit a written paper.  NO CREDIT will be given for late papers. I am not setting guidelines for length, but will be happy to discuss what needs to be included. Use the research papers that have been assigned as readings as models.In general, your paper should follow the outline below.

Your oral presentation will be less exhaustive and may only briefly touch on some of these elements in order to give you time to focus on what you consider your most interesting findings.

Outline for a Sociolinguistics Research Paper

 Abstract  (see HW 4)

I. Introduction

Present your research question(s) carefully.

Describe the speech community to be examined in your project.

Who is part of the community? Who isn't?  That is, how will you decide who can/can't be an informant for this project?  Do they all share some social factors?

Why do they form a cohesive group worth studying?

What can be learned by studying this community?

How are you qualified to be the investigator?

 II. Methodology

 Explain the method you used to locate possible informants and get them to participate. 

              What did you tell them?  What was their reaction?  (Did your method work well?)

If you are not collecting primary data, then explain how you accessed and reorganized existing data.

 Describe what they were asked to do, or what you observed them doing.

 Then describe how you organized, analyzed and interpreted the data.

III. The Variables (check back to HW 1 for guidance)

Define the (dependent) linguistic variable(s).

What are the possible variants of each variable?  Describe them using IPA if appropriate, or using  theoretical linguistic apparatus (e.g., trees or brackets for  syntactic variables).

Is it clear that all the variants mean the same thing?  (If not, why do you consider them as one variable?)

 Define each of the social factors that are relevant to your project.

              Explain how each informant is to be coded for each factor.

                             Is the criteria objective?

                             If not, do the informants or the investigator make the necessary decisions?

What steps did you take to make sure that you can evaluate the effect of each factor?

Provide a table showing how you coded each informant for each social factor.

 Are there stylistic variables?

              If so, how will each token be coded for style?  Give some examples.

              If not, are you taking steps to control for stylistic variation? Why or why not?

              How many different styles will you consider? What are they? Why?

 Define any independent linguistic variables.

Explain what the possible variants are for each.  What method(s) will you use to code each variable?

What effect did you expect each variant to have?  Why? Were you right?  If not, why not?

Provide a table/list that summarizes all the relevant linguistic variables and their possible variants, with examples from your data.

Either provide examples of some coded tokens in the text of your paper, or an appendix with all of the coded data.

IV. Analysis and Discussion

 Now you get to the part that is familiar from your earlier assignments: analyze the data and discuss the patterns found.  You know how to do this!

V. Bibliography

  Cite all the sources that you reference in your paper. Look back at your HW 4 for guidance.

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