LNGS1002 2024 Assignment 2 - Social Dialectology
RELEASED Wednesday 28th August
DUE Sunday 8th September, 11:59 pm via Turnitin
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You must complete this assignment by yourself. You may discuss the assignment with other students but you must turn in your own work. Turning in someone else’s work is a form. of academic dishonesty. Searching for any answers online (‘googling’) is also a form. of academic dishonesty. Your assignment will be compared with online
sources and other students’ assignments (from this and other years/universities!) via Turnitin.
Design a simple experiment on the model of Labov’s pioneering Department Store study in New York City. In this assignment, you only design the experiment; you do not actually run it. Here is what you need to do:
1. Identify a sociolinguistic variable that is binary i.e. has two possible values (e.g. the variable (r) in NYC has two variants): this can be in any language, in any speech community. Describe this variable in linguistic terms, and give at least five examples of words (or other relevant structures of the language) in which the variable can be observed (e.g. the words ‘fourth floor’ in the Labov study). If you chose to study a phonetic variable (and you do not have to), you must use IPA correctly. If you use a language other than English, you must provide translations and a version in Romanised script. (e.g. pinyin). Do not use second language speakers in your experiment.
2. State a hypothesis as to a social distinction (also binary: i.e., with only two possible values, e.g., older than 50 vs. younger than 50 or middle class vs. lower class, etc) that you think might correlate with the variable you identify in (1).
Clearly state your hypothesis (a) in informal prose, and (b) more formally in a 2x2 table, as in the following (again, based on Labov’s Department Store study):
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Middle class speakers
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Lower class speakers
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Post-vocalic [r] present
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Majority of speakers
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Minority of speakers
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Post-vocalic [r] absent
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Minority of speakers
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Majority of speakers
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3. Give clear and specific instructions for another person so that they could carry out the study themselves. This should include a precise description of the set-up of your experiment. Make sure that your experiment design avoids or minimises the observer’s paradox. Your experiment does not need to include all five words/structures you listed in step 1!
Notes:
Do not use a variable from English in New York City!
You cannot use the study you designed in tutorials!
Checklist (selective):
· Is your variable binary (one variable with two variants)?
· Are you addressing social variation (rather than regional, spoken/written, etc)?
· Do you include five words/structures in which your one variable can be observed?
· Do you use linguistic terminology and formal representations appropriately?
· Does your hypothesis link language variation with a social distinction?
· Is your experiment well-designed? (Does it avoid/minimise observer’s paradox, is it specific, practical, reliable, fast, natural, …)