184 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE In interview, the words on the SRNs are read aloud, thus eliciting a more formal speech style from informants. Participants are then encouraged to think and note down other words during the interview encounter itself, through more informal conversation. The successful nature of the SRNs as a lexical data elicitation technique was proved in an early pilot study (see Llamas 1999), where, in interview, from the 80 standard notion words on the three SRNs, 272 lexical dialectal variants were produced and recorded, thus show- ing the fruitfulness of adopting such a multi-method approach for lexical variation alone. After the informant has read out the words they have recorded on the SRNs around the standard notion word, the interviewer then guides an informal conversation around the specific lexical variants that informants have written down, with the over- all aim of eliciting a more informal phonological production, as well as grammatical language variation and attitudinal information. If conducted effectively these informal interview conversations can also produce a wealth of information on language attitudes, including attitudes relating to the crucial sociolinguistic variables of speaker age and gender as well as participants’ views on word etymologies and their own perspectives on language change over time. A whole range of different sociolinguistic aspects of language study can thus be elicited by using this multi-method. Using SRNs q To get a good sense of how an SRN works, take time to fill in your own dialect words or phrases in the three SRNs given above. q In order to test the potential usefulness of the multi-method approach described in this unit, select two informants from a particular geographical area (use friends or family members if you wish) and apply the SRN data collection method (also including the questionnaire above in your initial, pre-interview data pack). Ensure you give your informant the required time before the interview takes place and conduct the encounter in an informal setting where they will feel most comfortable. Ensure you audio record your interview (see B12). q Once you have completed the data collection process, assess the effectiveness of the method by answering the following questions: m How much language data you have managed to collect? m How many different lexical variants have you elicited? m Have you managed to elicit phonological variation in both formal and infor- mal speech styles? m Have you found data where you can compare and contrast grammatical lan- guage variants? m Have you managed to gain details of language attitudes? m Critically consider your role as interviewer and how the formality and infor- mality of the interview shifts. q In addition to distributing the language questionnaire to your two informants as part of your pre-interview pack, devise a sampling technique for distributing this questionnaire to a larger group of individuals. You should then send this out (you can either use the questionnaire as it stands, or adapt it for the local area where you are planning to use it). Activity 12.1 J COLLECTING DATA 185 q How successful is your rate of return? q How useful are your findings? q On the basis of your practical experiences, consider the advantages and disadvantages of questionnaires as a data collection technique for eliciting English language data, both as a stand-alone method and as one part of a multi-method approach. Different data collection scenarios Consider how you would attempt to collect data for an English language project from the contexts listed below. Make a note of your responses, as you will need to refer to these later on in D12. When developing your response, ensure that you have thoroughly addressed the following questions, drawing on the knowledge you have gained from A12 and B12. q Would your study be quantitative, qualitative or mixed method? q What access problems could you potentially face? Would you be able to resolve these problems? q What recording equipment would you use and where would you locate it? q What ethical barriers/dangers might be faced? q Do any ethical permissions need to be obtained? q Are there any of the situations listed below where you would not attempt data collection? q Would you consider participant observation? q Would the observer’s paradox be an issue? q If so, how would you try to minimise its effects? q Could an experimental setting be created to elicit similar data? Language in informal settings a) A conversation between your friends in your living room b) A conversation between your friends in a café or pub c) An intimate conversation between lovers on the telephone d) An intimate conversation between lovers in their own home e) An argument between a couple in a supermarket f) An argument between a couple in their own home Language in online settings a) Email correspondence between friends b) Email correspondence between an intimate couple c) Online social networking public ‘wall’ message postings d) Online social networking private email postings e) Discussions in chat rooms with friends f) Discussions in chat rooms between lecturers and students g) Blog postings on a national newspaper website h) Blog postings on a specialised website for members only Language in educational settings a) The language of primary school children in the classroom b) The language of primary school children in the playground Activity 12.2 J 186 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE c) Teacher–pupil classroom interaction d) Teacher–pupil playground interaction e) The language of teachers in a staff meeting f) The language of teachers in the staff room Language in judicial settings a) Police–suspect interview b) Police–suspect arrest on the street c) The language of witnesses in a courtroom trial d) The deliberations of a jury when discussing a verdict Language in healthcare settings a) Nurse–patient interaction on a hospital ward b) Nurse–patient interaction in a private consultation c) Chaplain–patient interaction on a hospital ward d) Doctor–doctor interaction in the canteen Language in the workplace a) The language of corporate managerial business meetings b) The language of emails in a multinational company c) The language of factory floor workers on a production line d) The language of a sales representative to customers in a retail outlet Language in the media a) The language of radio broadcast interviews b) The language of televised political debates c) The language of men’s lifestyle magazines d) Letters to a local newspaper e) The language of advertising billboards f) The language of radio commercials THEORY INTO PRACTICE A neurolinguistic virus Language was one of the first, and probably the most important, enabling technolo- gies that humans acquired. It has been the focus not only of analytical linguistic study but also of fantastical and science fictional speculation. Of course, any perspective on language is a view of language, with inbuilt assumptions about the nature of language itself. Much science fictional discourse on language (such as in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- Four: see B13) is deterministic in its assumptions, expressing a strong Sapir- Whorfianism and a hard linkage between expression and thought. C13 Activity 13.1 J THEORY INTO PRACTICE 187 In Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, speculation about the historical evolution of languages leads eventually to this conversation ‘I’m here on the Raft looking for a piece of software – a piece of medicine to be specific – that was written five thousand years ago by a Sumerian personage named Enki, a neurolinguistic hacker.’ ‘What does that mean?’ Mr. Lee says. ‘It means a person who was capable of programming other people’s minds with verbal streams of data, known as namshubs.’ Ng is totally expressionless. He takes another drag on his cigarette, spouts the smoke up above his head in a geyser, watches it spread out against the ceiling. ‘What is the mechanism?’ ‘We’ve got two kinds of language in our heads. The kind we’re using now is acquired. It patterns our brains as we’re learning it. But there’s also a tongue that’s based in the deep structures of the brain, that everyone shares. These structures consist of basic neural circuits that have to exist in order to allow our brains to acquire higher languages.’ ‘Linguistic infrastructure,’ Uncle Enzo says. ‘Yeah. I guess “deep structure” and “infrastructure” mean the same thing. Anyway, we can access those parts of the brain under the right conditions. Glossolalia – speaking in tongues – is the output side of it, where the deep linguistic structures hook into our tongues and speak, bypassing all the higher, acquired languages. Everyone’s known that for some time.’ ‘You’re saying there’s an input side, too?’ Ng says. ‘Exactly. It works in reverse. Under the right conditions, your ears – or eyes – can tie into the deep structures, bypassing the higher language functions. Which is to say, someone who knows the right words can speak words, or show you visual symbols, that go past all your defenses and sink right into your brainstem. Like a cracker who breaks into a computer system, bypasses all the security precautions, and plugs him- self into the core, enabling him to exert absolute control over the machine.’ Stephenson (1992: 369) q What do you think of the assumption that the brain and language are analogous to a computer and its software program? q Is there any validity in thinking about language as programming? q What other assumptions about language underlie the discussion articulated here, and what do you think of these assumptions? The Babel fish For many years, science fiction has made convenient use of the imaginary gizmo of the ‘universal translator’ – which will allow spacefaring humans to converse with aliens in their own languages. In practice, of course, it is difficult to imagine how the universal translator machine could ever work. There are three big problems. Firstly, it would have to work out the grammar on the basis of hearing only a small selection of utterances that it encountered. Secondly and similarly, it would only be able to build a lexicon of the words which were used in its presence, so it would take a while to be exposed to a wide vocabulary. Thirdly, it would only be able to understand pragmatic matters and other non-denotational utterances involving, for example, metaphor, irony, jokes and politeness by having an extensive understanding of the alien culture encountered. Activity 13.2 J 188 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE In The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams evades the universal translator problem by having his characters wear Babel fish in their ears: ‘The Babel fish’, said The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, ‘is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all uncon- scious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the con- scious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by the Babel fish.’ Adams (1979: 49–50) q Why is the Babel fish as far-fetched and impractical as the universal translator? q You might consider the theoretical assumptions that Adams makes about the pre-linguistic nature of consciousness and thought. Do you think in language? Do you feel emotions, moods and dispositions in language? Can one language be translated exactly into another (even when both languages are terrestrial rather than alien)? Some cogitations Consider the following questions, which draw on the material presented across this book. Discuss your thinking with your friends and colleagues. q The different general approaches to language (structuralist, functionalist, generative, cognitivist, and so on) all have their advantages and disadvantages. Each prioritises different facets of language. Do you think it will ever be possible to produce a definitive and comprehensive model of language, or is there a defining limitation on linguistics for two main reasons. Firstly, language is too complex and multi- faceted to be accounted for by one perspective. Secondly, it is impossible to take a view of language without taking a view of it, and so it is impossible to be objective. Even if you agree with these arguments, why might linguistics still be worth doing? q It is said (by cognitive linguists) that language is the way it is because of our em- bodied human condition. In other words, we articulate and understand language as extensions of our physical circumstances: our sense of spatial and visual orien- tation is the basis for abstract relationships as expressed in prepositional phrases; our capacity for finding our way around a room is drawn on when we need to find our way around a text; our view of the world is mediated through underly- ing conceptual metaphors that structure our understanding. Assuming this is the case, how might different bodies (male, female, child, elderly, disabled, black, white, tall, small, fat, skinny) embody language differently? Or is the notion of embodi- ment more abstract than this – and if so, how useful is it then? Put facetiously, do fat people have a different articulation of the world? q Some linguists (structuralists and generativists) insist that the only thing that can be studied is language without regard to the interfering complexities of society, Activity 13.3 J THEORY INTO PRACTICE 189 context and performance. Do you see an advantage in this position which makes a principled virtue of necessity? Do you think the object of study of a formalist linguistics can still be said to be language in any communicative sense? q The main conceptual metaphors that have delineated thinking about language consist of the following: m language is a set of laws m language is a computer program m language is a game m language is a virus or disease m language is a building or territory m language is a family Can you think of examples for these, from the work of linguists that you know? Which metaphor seems to you to be the most productive and offer the most useful insights? q Much of the difficulty in theoretical linguistics is a consequence of the observer’s paradox. In other fields of investigation, it is possible to minimise the observer’s paradox by replicating experiments on the object, by engaging in several different approaches to the same object, or by using a system of measurement that is universally accepted. When the object of exploration is language itself, however, the difficulty is that the object changes with any form of contact. Furthermore, the means of thinking about language is articulated in language itself. In linguistics, then, is the observer’s paradox insurmountable? q Is linguistics a science or an art? q You have been reading a textbook, in which we have mainly and necessarily presented ‘facts’ about language in an authoritative way. We have suggested in various places that there are different and contentious views on what the facts of language are, and whether there are in fact any facts at all. Even where we have presented as straightforward a picture as possible, in almost all cases there are debates and discussions in the field, and all statements in language study should be treated with proper scepticism as being provisional. For each unit and across each strand, explore the Further Reading we provide at the end of section D, and decide for yourself whether you agree with our assumptions about language. . INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE c) Teacher–pupil classroom interaction d) Teacher–pupil playground interaction e) The language of teachers in a staff meeting f) The language of teachers in the staff room Language. The language of a sales representative to customers in a retail outlet Language in the media a) The language of radio broadcast interviews b) The language of televised political debates c) The language. interaction in the canteen Language in the workplace a) The language of corporate managerial business meetings b) The language of emails in a multinational company c) The language of factory floor