Linguistics a Practical Guide to Researching Language
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PROJECTS IN LINGUISTICSLINGUISTICS This page intentionally left blank Second Edition PROJECTS IN LINGUISTICSLINGUISTICS A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO RESEARCHING LANGUAGE Alison Wray Cardiff University Aileen Bloomer York St John University College Hodder Arnold A MEMBER OF THE HODDER HEADLINE GROUP First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Arnold. This edition published in 2006 by Hodder Education, a member of the Hodder Headline Group, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH www.hoddereducation.com Distributed in the United States of America by Oxford University Press Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY10016 © 2006 Alison Wray and Aileen Bloomer All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency: Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. The advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of going to press, but neither the authors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions. Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge ownership of copyright. The publishers will be glad to make suitable arrangements with any copyright holders whom it has not been possible to contact. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN-10 0 340 90578 6 ISBN-13 978 0 340 90578 4 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Typeset by Phoenix Photosetting, Chatham, Kent Printed and bound in Malta What do you think about this book? Or any other Hodder Education title? Please send your comments to the feedback section on www.hoddereducation.com. Any ancillary media packaged with the printed version of this book will not be included in this eBook. CONTENTS Preface to second edition xi Why we wrote this book xi Who the book is for xi What the book does xi What the book doesn’t do xii The second edition xii Acknowledgments xiii International Phonetic Alphabet xiv 1 Introduction: starting on the right foot 1 Choosing an area 1 Getting organized 3 Using resources 5 Being a researcher 7 Theory-only projects 10 Setting up data-based research 10 Being streetwise: keeping on the right side of your assessor 14 PART I AREAS OF STUDY AND PROJECT IDEAS 2 Psycholinguistics 17 Textbooks and major journals 17 Central themes and project ideas 18 How psycholinguists conceptualize language 19 How we understand language 19 Psycholinguistics and grammatical theory 21 Lexical and structural ambiguity 22 How we produce spoken language 23 How we produce writing 26 Language and thought 27 vi Contents 3 First-language acquisition and development 30 Approaches to research 30 Terminology 31 Textbooks and major journals 31 Things to think about 32 Accessing children 32 Working with children 33 Central themes and project ideas 34 Longitudinal case studies 34 Prelinguistic development 35 Over- and under-extension: lexical and semantic development 35 Children’s morphology 36 Development of phonology and intonation 36 Comprehension of complex grammatical structures 37 Children’s metalinguistic awareness 38 Colour terms 38 Carer language (or child-directed speech) 40 Conversational development 40 Sources of variation in child language 41 Literacy development 41 Developmental problems 43 Later language acquisition 43 4 Second-language acquisition 45 Terminology 45 Textbooks and major journals 46 Things to think about 47 Central themes and project ideas 48 Developmental sequences and the process of acquisition 48 Comparison of L1 and L2 acquisition 48 Language-learning targets 49 Motivation 50 Grammar-based and communication-based teaching 50 Vocabulary acquisition 52 Different concepts expressed in different languages 52 The learner’s approach and experience 53 Interlanguage, error analysis and contrastive analysis 54 Language assessment and testing 54 Bilinguals, multilinguals and polyglots 55 Language teaching policies 56 Effect of the year abroad 57 Role of the social and political status of English as L2 58 Contents vii 5 Structure and meaning 60 Textbooks and major journals 60 Central themes and project ideas 61 Pragmatics 61 Metaphor 63 Sentence structure 64 Words in isolation and in combination 66 Morphology and etymology 69 Punctuation 70 ‘Correct’ grammar 71 6 Style in spoken and written texts 75 Textbooks and major journals 76 Central themes and project ideas 77 Sound patterns within texts 77 Lexical choice within texts 79 Grammatical structure within texts 80 Interpersonal function of texts 82 Formality and informality 84 Ideology and power 85 Authorship 87 Oral texts 87 Electronically conveyed texts 89 7 Sociolinguistics 92 Terminology and central concepts 93 Textbooks and major journals 94 Central themes and project ideas 95 Quantitative approaches 95 Social networks 96 Qualitative approaches 97 8 Language and gender 102 Terminology 102 Textbooks and major journals 103 Central themes and project ideas 103 The gender variable in linguistic research 103 Attitudes towards male and female language 104 Gender differences in accent and dialect 105 Differences in conversation and style of language use 106 Gay language 108 Explanations of difference 108 Language and sexism 109 Gender-differentiated language in first-language acquisition 110 Language, gender and education 111 viii Contents 9 Accents and dialects of English 113 Terminology 114 Textbooks, reference sources and major journals 114 Which accent/dialect to choose 116 Obtaining data 116 What to look for in an accent 117 What to look for in a dialect 117 Possible angles and project ideas 119 Comparing the speech of three generations 119 Comparing the accents of different non-native speakers 120 Explaining why a variety has come about 121 The political dimension of a variety 121 Accent and dialect in literature 122 Update study 123 Comparison of two varieties 124 Things to think about 125 10 History of English 126 Textbooks, reference sources and major journals 127 Central themes and project ideas 128 Researching words and names 128 Pronunciation and spelling 131 History of English dialects 133 The profile of a feature of English across time 133 Sociopolitical trends and influences on English 133 English as a world language 134 The influence of literacy on language 135 Things to think about 135 PART II TECHNIQUES FOR COLLECTING DATA 11 Audio- and video-recorded data 139 Places to get data 139 Audio or video? 139 Naturalistic data 139 Ethics and legality 139 Quality 140 How much data do you need? 140 Practicalities 141 What to submit 142 Things to think about 142 Contents ix 12 Experiments 144 What does experimentation involve? 144 Designing an experiment 146 Things to think about 148 Advantages of experimental research 150 Disadvantages of experimental research 150 13 Questionnaires, interviews and focus groups 152 Deciding if you need a questionnaire, interview or focus group 152 Common uses of interviews, focus groups and questionnaires 153 Subjects 153 Personal information, confidentiality and anonymity 154 Limitations of self-report 154 Ways of getting information 155 Things to think about 158 Questionnaires 158 Interviews 162 Focus groups 165 14 Observation and case studies 168 Observation studies 168 Case studies 170 15 Ethical considerations in research projects 173 Ethics policies and guidelines 173 The difference between confidentiality and anonymity 174 Data Protection Laws 175 PART III TOOLS FOR DATA ANALYSIS AND PROJECT WRITING 16 Transcribing speech phonetically and phonemically 179 The difference between phonetic and phonemic transcription 179 A few notes on phonemes 180 Phonetic and phonemic symbols in word processing 181 Hints on writing about pronunciation 182 Checklist of phonemes 183 17 Transcribing speech orthographically 185 How to organize the presentation of a transcription 185 Turn taking 187 Silence and non-verbal communication in conversation 188 Dealing with unusual pronunciations 189 Transcribing unclear utterances 190 Marking pitch, emphasis, volume and speed 191 x Contents External events 193 Presenting the transcription 194 Presenting the audio data 195 18 Using computers to study texts 196 What is a corpus? 196 Why is a corpus useful? 196 How do corpus searches operate? 197 How do you find a corpus? 200 What are the main text analysis tools? 202 Making sense of corpus annotation 202 Using corpora effectively in your work 203 Compiling your own corpus: potential problems 203 Limitations of corpora 204 Further reading 204 19 Statistics and your project 205 Do you need graphs and calculations in your project? 205 Descriptive statistics and basic calculations 206 Using statistical analyses 213 Textbooks 217 Help for the mathematically insecure 218 Key to the most common algebraic symbols used in basic statistics 219 20 How to reference 221 Basics 221 The Harvard system 225 The Humane system 234 21 Plagiarism and how to avoid it 237 What is plagiarism? 237 Will you get found out? 238 How to avoid accidental plagiarism: some strategies 238 22 Hints on writing good academic English 252 Before you start to write 252 As you are writing 253 After you have written 254 The uses of apostrophes 255 Using punctuation 255 Other common problems 256 References 258 Index 277 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION Why we wrote this book We wrote this book because you can’t learn how to write good essays and research projects just by reading the subject textbooks. There is a lot of knowledge that a student is expected to somehow ‘pick up’: what good research looks like; how researchers express themselves; where to start. The alert student will gather some of this information piecemeal from tutorials, feedback on written work, talking to other students and so on, but there is usually no way of being sure that you have done all the right things until the work comes back marked.