Sample Data

Sample Data

This data was collected by Judith Baxter from an experiment which am I am going to recreate for my investigation but with some changes. Her experiment involved having two separate groups, a girls group and a boys group and then gave them both the same stimulus which was a task involving ordering objects by usefulness if they were all you had and you were stranded on a desert island. The speakers in Baxter’s study were between the ages of 14-15 and at first I was thinking of doing a younger year group but I think participants of the age range she used would give significant data however the risk of the observer’s paradox would be greater.

Group A

S: wouldn’t you need the sunglasses?

C: yeah, that’s what I think

S: because it would be really hot and protect yourself from the sun and you’d be able to see more

G: yeah, but if you’re trying to live, does it matter [whether you can see?

C: [you could go blind

G: exactly, but if you’re trying to survive, does it really matter?

C: (sounding irritated) I wouldn’t [want to go blind

S: [it does, because if you were blind you wouldn’t be able to see what you were doing and you would end up dying anyway. You’d have less chance of surviving anyway.

G: yeah, but you’re not likely to go blind unless you’re looking right up into the sun.

Group B

C: (pointing) right, what did you put?

M: compass

C: (pointing) what did you put?

T: I put sunglasses

C: right, I put the parachute (gives long explanation for choosing it)

Other voices: mirror, mirror… the torch

C: and you could use a gun, couldn’t you? You could shoot-

H: you could shoot the pilot

C: right. So has anyone changed their mind? (pointing) What do you think?

H: I say compass

T: I say sunglasses are quite important because you have to be able to see what it says on the compass for a start (laughter from the group)

H: you could just go like that (mimes shading eyes) shut your eyes for a moment

C: right. You go (pointing) Say why you thought the first aid kit.

Judith Baxter just looked to see which of the groups cooperated and which competed more. From the results I get in my experiment I intend to look at all the aspects of Deborah Tannen’s Difference Pairs that include cooperative and competitive speech. From Baxter’s data it could be said that Group B shows more status because speaker C is directing everyone in the group, however it could be argued that he is not trying to gain status but is trying to be supportive and that Group A is trying to establish status because all the speakers within that group are arguing and being competitive in order to gain status. Speaker C in Group B seems to be giving orders to the others which is common in male conversation according to Tannen. Group A seems to have the most conflict because in their conversation they seem to overlap competitively the most whilst in Group B the speaker C who had the most air time was only interrupted once. Contrastingly, Group B seems to comprise more because the dominant speaker seems to allow everyone to state their opinion and reasoning behind it and then allow them to change their mind after hearing what everyone else had to say.

I am hoping to do a mini investigation myself soon in order to find out whether my investigation idea will work and give me good evidence to analyse for my coursework and whether there are any pitfalls I need to fix before I do the real experiment.

Practice Methodology - Language Change

I was looking at Language Change in the lesson and my practice methodology is based on the hypothesis that the Language used in children’s books has changed over time. My chosen corpus of data would be the works of Hans Christian Andersen and particularly the works that are aimed at children. I would do a Longitudinal study. In the data I would be looking for changes in the use of phonology, lexis and grammar. I would also look at the frequency of particular words in relation to social context. I would also look at the use or absence of stereotypes in his work because many of his pieces are fairy tales so they may or may not be evident in his writing. To sample the data I would systematically choose every 3rd text when all of the texts are ordered chronologically. All the texts in my pool of data would be texts with a primary audience of children. If any significant pieces in my final sample that may affect my results then I will study them but I may exclude them from my final results and explain the reasons why in my evaluation and analysis. The comparability factors are that all the data in my pool are written by the same author and for the same audience. It might be hard to operationalise what texts are considered to be written for a primary audience of children so I might hand out a list of my sample data and ask the general public in a questionnaire which pieces are more suitable for children in order to help overcome this issue however more issues could arise e.g. some people may not have come across certain texts in my corpus of data. My data pool is large because Andersen has plenty of texts suitable for my investigation so even if there are anomalies it should not affect the rest of the data. There are no ethical issues with this investigation since Andersen's work is open to the public and informed consent is not necessary.

An Idea For My Language Investigation

One idea that I have for a Language Investigation is based on an experiment that I read about in the book, "The Myth of Mars and Venus". The experiment done, by someone whose name escapes me, was in short, a focus into the Language & Gender of children by getting them in two small groups, one a boys group and one a girls. The researcher then provided each group with a stimulus which was a list of items that each group had to order in terms of necessity in order to survive on a desert island. The researcher wanted to find out whether the boys would be competitive about how to order the list and whether the girls would be much more understanding of each other and be more tentative in the discussion. The researcher’s results however were quite the opposite and the researcher also conducted interviews with the children and the teacher who was present to find out why the girls were so argumentative and why the boys were quite co-operative. I would like to re-create this experiment in order to find out whether this was just an anomalous incident or whether our beliefs of gendered conversation are wrong and that the previous evidence is proof that genders do not follow stereotypes in language. I would also like to conduct to a questionnaire in order to find out what people think the evidence that I will collect and look at their answers in comparison to the data I’ve collected. I would like to do an investigation into Deborah Tannen’s Difference Pairing in Gendered Conversation and I hope my proposed research will shed some light onto this topic.