Sociolinguistics Survey 719/819

Assignments

Remember that you may do your homework assignments with another student. 

Assignments are due on the Tuesday after they are assigned (the Tuesday after the one on which the assignment is listed on the syllabus).

HW1   HW2   HW3   HW4   HW5   HW6   HW7   HW8   HW9   HW10  HW11  HW12

Assignment #1

Make a list of 10 linguistic variables that you have observed.

For each one, indicate:

what factors make them vary:
social (be particular-- age, gender, socio-economic status, ethnicity... )
geographic (where the speaker is from)
stylistic (how formal the situation is, who the speaker is talking to, what type of discourse the speaker is engaged in)
what linguistic level the variation is (phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic)

Assignment #2

Respond to the following questions at the end of Patrick Cooke's article, "Are accents out? Hey dude! Like neh-oh way": Question 1 of "Topical Considerations" AND either Question 1 or Question 2 of "Writing Assignments."  There is no specific length limit for this assignment, about a page should be adequate for each question.  (This article is in Blackboard, in COURSE DOCUMENTS > REQUIRED READINGS NOT IN COURSE PACKET .)

Assignment #3

The population of the small village of Sheshatshiu, in Labrador, Canada, numbers less than 600 persons. A linguistic study of it, carried out in the 1980s, included people from 3 original dialect areas of Montagnais (Southwest, Northern, and Southern), an Algonquian language related to Cree. (See map of eastern Canada (Labrador is the mainland part of the province labeled "Newfoundland," all the way to the east) and map of Labrador.)  The village was only settled on a permanent basis some 30 years ago, prior to which the current residents had a nomadic lifestyle, hunting over very large territories. In the study, 87 residents of Sheshatshiu were surveyed, carefully sampled to represent the three original dialects as well as age and sex.

Deletion of word-initial [a] is a feature originally characteristic of the Southwestern dialect. Table 1 represents the average deletion of [a] by age and dialect origin of the speakers. In addition to this feature, 13 other features that were originally particular to one of the three dialects were studied. Some of these were increasing in use among younger speakers, whereas others were stable or decreasing. Table 2 shows the distribution of all 14 of these features according to dialect origin.

1. If the data presented in Table 1 are interpreted according to the notion of "apparent time", what appears to be happening in terms of the continuing separation of dialects vs. a process of dialect levelling (speakers of different dialects sounding more the same)? Can you think of an alternative explanation for the data of Table 1 (i.e., if "apparent time" is not be the appropriate explanation).

2. If indeed change is going in this community, what do the data of Table 2 show in terms of the source of dialect variants involved in change? Can you think of any reason why this dialect source should predominate? (Look at the maps, perhaps find some other information about the region-- see links at end of assignment.)

3. Are the data in Table 3, on one of the other linguistic features, consistent with your explanation of the situation in general? What appears to be happening with respect to nasalized word-initial [a]?

(Note: Nasalized-a is a different phoneme from the [a] discussed in #1. You don't need to make connections between them.)

Table 1. % deletion of word-initial [a] by age and dialect origin.

Dialect Group

Age 15-19

Age 21-44

Age 46+

Northern

95%

81%

41%

Southern

95%

79%

52%

Southwestern

79%

82%

71%

Table 2. Number of dialect features (out of 14) showing age differences among speakers, according to the dialect origin of the features.

Southwestern variants Other variants Total

Usage increasing among younger generations

5

2

7

Usage stable or decreasing among younger generations

2

5

7

Table 3. % non-nasalized word-initial [a] by age and dialect origin.

Speakers

Northern

Southern

Southwestern

Age 14 - 19

99%

99%

69%

Age 21 - 44

99%

76%

85%

Age 46+

72%

75%

99%

More info about the region:

Assignment #4

1) What "speech communities" or "networks" do you find in your school (or some sub-set thereof), workplace, or place of residence (choose one)? Select one to describe in detail.

2) Think about how you could divide the community into linguistically similar subgroups, based on social relations among the members. What criteria would you use? Design a measure of network and/or community membership that is not linguistic, but that would allow you to show the network/community memberships in the community that you described in (1).

3) Give some examples (use made up or real people in the community) to show how you would apply your measure.

4) Is it possible to apply the measure systematically and appropriately account for everybody?

ALTERNATIVELY, IF IT MAKES SENSE, YOU MAY ANSWER THE ABOVE QUESTIONS FOR THE SPEECH COMMUNITY THAT YOU ARE CONDUCTING RESEARCH ON. This could become part of your term paper.

Assignment #5

Choose any 3 of the questions at the end of Chaika Chapter 7 and respond to them. The questions are at the end of the PDF posted in Blackboard (Course Documents > "Required readings not in packet"), and also in the "Materials for HW assignments" section of Blackboard. And they are here:

  1. Suppose you wanted to discover how people ranked your accent-- or that of an acquaintance. How would you go about setting up a study to do this? What uses might such a study have? How would you design your study so that it could be used for these uses?
  2. How would you go about getting a sample of subjects? From what populations would you choose your subjects? How is this population related to the purpose of your study?
  3. You want to find out whether or not males are more likely than females to try to solve problems rather than sympathize with someone's problem, or to find out if males are more competitive in their speech than females. How would you set up a study to investigate any such problems? What pitfalls would you anticipate and how would you try to avoid them?
  4. Take a five-minute recording of anybody speaking. Try to transcribe it. How long does it take? Have someone else check your transcription. Do they find you have transcribed something wrong? Or differently from how they would? Were there any portions of the tape you couldn't transcribe? What does this experience tell you about dealing with large amounts of oral language in a study?
  5. Make up an informed consent form that you might use in a study of your own. Also make up a questionnaire that asks for relevant background information. See information about UNH's Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, including tips on designing informed consent forms.

Assignment #6 (This is also posted in the "Materials for HW assignments" section of Blackboard.)

from Chaika Ch. 8, # 2,3,4 (p. 304-5)

1) Make up a list of words which you think have dialectal variants. Make up a definition for each word. Then poll your friends to see what they call them. For instance, "What do you call the square of toweling that you wash yourself with?" Alternatively, ask people if they know what a "facecloth" or "hoagie" (or any other dialectal variant) refers to.

2) Ask several people what kind of "accent" they have. How many say something like "General American" or "Vanilla English"? Ask them where they were raised. Can you detect differences in their speech? Who is likely to say that they have an accent? Where were they raised?

3) Ask those who said they have a "General American" accent in (2) how they would pronounce the following pairs.

1. talk  tock
2. orange  coffee
3. cot  caught
4. sense  cents
5. tournament  turn
6. hurry  her
7. right  ride 

Add any other items you think will be pronounced differently by your participants. Do all of the General American speakers pronounce these the same way?

Assignment #7

1. Data set

Kansas City is located in an area on the borderline between the South Midland dialect, characteristic of the rural areas located to the south of it (in Kansas and Missouri), and the Inland North or Northern Cities dialect, characteristic of cities like Buffalo, Detroit and Chicago. In the Northern Cities, /æ/ (low front vowel 'ash') is rising (toward [e]) (mid front tense vowel) as part of the Northern Cities chain shift.

(See Map showing Kansas City and a U.S. regional dialect map that shows the South Midland and Inland North regions.)

In 1980 Melanie Lust studied the distribution of the low front vowel /æ/ before nasals in Kansas City in terms of a scale of height ranging from 1 [ae] to 9 [e]. The index values for (ae) were obtained by multiplying the mean value for the group by 100 (to avoid dealing with decimals). Here is the information she presents:
Age 60+ 40-59 20-39 < 20
Sex Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female
Social Status
High  345 163 347 575 --- 365 416 697
Mid  429 442 509 388 400 417 475 592
Low  384 358 232 353 326 594 269 486
 

N.B.: Lust had a rather small sample of speakers, which caused some perturbation in the data, but the overall trends of her findings are still interpretable in the light of other studies.

(1.A) Draw the most revealing graphs you can to sort out what is going on here.

(1.B) Comment on your graphs, making sure to answer the following questions:

(a) Is this variable socially stratified? That is, do the different social classes exhibit different speech patterns? Hint: It might be helpful to consider which of the two dialects in contact here would likely be the more prestigious.

(b) Is there any evidence of an ongoing change? If so, what is its direction and which group(s) appear(s) to be leading the change?

(c) Do the two sexes show any differences in their behavior with respect to this variable?

Assignment #8

Choose one of the following two projects (from Chaika, Ch. 10, #1,3).  In your write-up, describe your Hypothesis, Method, Findings, and whether or not they met with your expectations.  (More details on writing up a sociolinguistics project.)

1. Examine how girls and boys are portrayed in children's books. Peferably select books for a certain age group and make a table of who does the talking in each, what kind of talking each does (advising, complaining, informing, comforting, rebelling, etc.). How much talking to men, women, girls, and boys do relative to each other? Does your research suggest that children are taught at an early age to value male speech more than female speech?

2. Carefully observe and record the number of interruptions in male-male, female-female, and male-female dyads. What tactics does each gender emply to deal with interruptions? Are there strong gender differences?  Do your findings support points that were read or discussed in class? 

Assignment #9

Write an abstract for your research project.  This is 1-2 paragraphs where your research questions are briefly explained. To the extent possible, also explain your findings and their significance. (You will surely have to modify at least the findings after you collect and analyze your data, but that's ok.) 

Here's the detailed assignment:

Step 1: Read 10 abstracts from sociolinguistics journals. The most relevant journals are:

Language Variation and Change P120.V37 L35
Journal of Sociolinguistics P40 .J685
Language in Society P41 .L34
American Speech PE2801 .A6

I’ve provided the call numbers so you can go look at them. You can either look at (recent) past issues in Bound Periodicals, or the latest versions (organized alphabetically, I believe) in the Current Periodicals section of the library. Alternatively, you can (at least theoretically) access these journals online through the UNH library website. Go to: http://search.serialssolutions.com to try this out.

Step 2: For practice in bibliography compilation, please submit a bibliography listing the 10 papers whose abstracts you read. Choose a format from any one of the above journals and use it to write your bibliography. Alternatively, if you know of at least 5 relevant sources for your project, you can prepare that bibliography instead. This might include some papers from our class packet, but would need to include others as well, for this assignment.

Step 3: Think about what’s in an abstract and how they are organized.

Step 4: Write an abstract for your research project.

 

Assignment #10

Respond to questions #1 and 3 at the end of Wardhaugh chapter 14.

 

Assignment #11

To be explained -- from Wolfram reading

 

Assignment #12

A. Eliciting style variation in the interview

(THINK ABOUT THIS QUESTION BEFORE AND AFTER YOU WORK THROUGH PART B.)

Much information about changes in progress and variation within a community can be gotten by examining variation across styles. Design a method to gather linguistic data that will show the effects of stylistic variation on a common phonological variable, such as (ing) or (t,d). What factors do you think most affect a speaker's style? Some to consider are: topic, interlocutor, and location. Think about how you can "manipulate" the informant's style while maintaining as normal a conversation as possible. Your answer can be in outline form, but it should include answers to the questions in these guidelines to writing a sociolinguistics paper.

B. Stylistic variation in a Northern Irish community

Two sets of recordings were made of 10 residents of a small village in Northern Ireland. All speakers had agreed to be recorded well in advance of the taping, but did not know they were being recorded at the time. The physical setting of the two series was the investigator's house, but the social setting was quite different. 

In Setting 1, people came in self-selected pairs for a visit to the investigator's house, and chatted with her for a couple of hours over refreshments. The investigator is a native of the village, and all of the people are described as being "good friends" of hers. 

In Setting 2, they returned for a similar visit, including refreshments, but on this occasion talked only with a male English colleague of the investigator who was previously unknown to them. In this second setting, 8 of the speakers returned individually and 2 (C and E) returned together. 

Discuss the relationship between pronunciation of (ing) as alveolar vs. velar and the factors analyzed in Tables 1-4. The numbers are (ing)-indices that can range from 0 to 100. Higher numbers indicate a greater frequency of the [n] variant. 

Some social information about the speakers:
Speakers  Sex  Education  Occupation
A F  left school at 15 sales clerk
B F  left school at 15 sales clerk/housewife
C F grammar school  secretary
D F university grammar school teacher
E F left school at 14  canteen asst.
F F primary  domestic help
G M primary  car mechanic
H M primary  bakery dispatch worker
I M grammar school farm owner (brother of J)
J M grammar school work-study officer in factory

Table 1. (ING) indices in two social settings
Speaker A B C D H E F G I J
Setting 1 015  025  049  075  084  091  094  098  100  100 
Setting 2 004  005  005  035  075  042  075  084  097  100 

Table 2. (ING) indices over two hours of Setting 2
Speaker A B C D H E F G I J
Hour 1 003  004  004  033  058  036  067  078  095  100 
Hour 2 005  006  006  037  092  048  083  090  099  100 

Table 3. (ing) indices for "occupation" topic compared with other topics during the first hour of the "Setting 2" recording.
 

Topic
Speaker Occupation Other
D 019 033
E 022 036
H 035 067

Table 4. Variation according to addressee. (ING) indices in Setting 2 in remarks to each other and to the English outsider.
 

Addressee
Speaker Each other Outsider
C 007 003
E 054 030

Return to the Sociolinguistics Survey syllabus.

  This page was last updated by Naomi Nagy on 09/18/06.