1. Undertaking A Basic Variationist Analysis Dr Emma Moore
Sociolinguistics
Undertaking A Basic Variationist Analysis
Dr Emma Moore

2. The key to a good project…
Planning and structure!
Producing an ethical project
Understanding the research area
Using reliable methods
Undertaking a systematic analysis of results
Providing an informed discussion of findings
How can we apply these to projects you are asked to complete?

3. Producing an ethical project
PREPARATION
Producing an ethical project
Why?
Responsibility, Rigour and Respect…
Also, helps you to think through your ideas
Understanding their requirements and application of your project
Planning the data collection
Devising a hypothesis

4. Demands of Ethics consent
*The Application form
*The Information sheet
Ensure that you understand your university’s ethics process. You may need to apply for consent to undertake your research.

5. Understanding the research area
PREPARATION
Understanding the research area
Review the literature
Lecture notes
Required reading
Suggested reading
Consider additional resources…
Remember that your project should demonstrate your knowledge of the research area.

6. You should consider how objective a website is before you use it
PREPARATION
Can I refer to websites?
Yes, if necessary, appropriate and scholarly
Some good examples:
Dialect collections on-line
University of Edinburgh Sound Comparisons site
British Library’s Sounds Familiar? pages
BBC Voices project
You should consider how objective a website is before you use it

7. Devising a hypothesis & aims
PREPARATION
Devising a hypothesis & aims
What do you expect to find?
Predictions should be based on previous research and findings
What will you investigate and why?
What do you already know about your chosen topic? What remains unknown?

8. Collecting data Consider: Methodology and implications on the data
PREPARATION
Collecting data
Consider:
Methodology and implications on the data
How will any interviewing be undertaken?
Do the techniques comply with usual sociolinguistic methods?
What kind of data is it?
What can you do with it?

9. PREPARATION
Transcribing the data
Most sociolinguistic studies transcribe all the data they collect
Easier to have an overview
Easier to search
Incredibly time-consuming!

10. Analysing the data What variable are you looking for?
PREPARATION
Analysing the data
What variable are you looking for?
How will you identify it in the sound files and the recordings?
What variants can you find?
How will you record the differences in variants?

11. Example: Definite Article Reduction (DAR)
PREPARATION
Example: Definite Article Reduction (DAR)
Variable:
the pronunciation of the definite article the
Variants:
Full-forms:
/ðə/, /ðɪ/
Reduced forms
/ʔ/ before consonants;
/θ/ before vowel
Example reference to DAR:
Britain, David (2007) “Grammatical variation in England”. In: Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: CUP.

12. Searching the data Open the transcript
DOING THE ANALYSIS
Searching the data
Open the transcript
Find/highlight all variable contexts
Use the ‘find and replace’ function in Word (Edit > Find)
Enter the feature you are looking for e.g. ing or h or the
Highlight every instance of this feature
You will now know the location of all of the tokens of your variable

13. DOING THE ANALYSIS
PREPARATION
Listening to the data
Now listen to the sound files and record what you hear for each token of the variable
Line Number
Token
Variant 5
some of the teachers
/ðɪ/ 6
with the kids 8
go to the toilets
/ʔ/
see the point …

14. DOING THE ANALYSIS
PREPARATION
Analysing the data
Repeat the same process for each piece of data you are analysing
How are the variants distributed for each of your informants?
Do you notice anything about the linguistic constraints on variants?

15. Thinking about linguistic constraints
DOING THE ANALYSIS
Thinking about linguistic constraints
We already know about common linguistic constraints:
Full-forms:
stress?
Reduced forms:
following sound (consonant/vowel)?
preceding sound (e.g. consonant cluster deletion: with the kids)?
Is there anything about the linguistic environment that might affect the variants you find?

16. Thinking about social constraints
DOING THE ANALYSIS
Thinking about social constraints
Consider the biographical information you have about your informants
Do differences between the informants correspond with different variant use?
What differences would you expect based on your knowledge of the sociolinguistics literature?

17. Writing up your findings
Your write-up should include the following:
Clearly identify the variable and variants that you have studied, giving relevant examples from the transcripts;
Show the linguistic contexts in which the variants occur;
Show the ways in which the variants correlate with at least two social factors using tables and/or graphs as necessary;
Attempt to explain the social and linguistic distribution of the variants you have discovered with reference to the sociolinguistic literature.

18. WRITING UP YOUR FINDINGS
Things to include
At some point in your write-up, you ought to say something about work that been done on some or all of the following:
The language variety you have studied
The variable you have chosen to study
The social factors you will analyse
Be selective: you probably won’t be able to talk about everything
Use appropriate formats
Graphs, pie-charts, tables?
Don’t just describe your findings, say what they mean
Write critically: what are the shortcomings of the analysis?