LING/ANTH 106


Dialect Study

Due: April 29th


For this study you will design your own dialect survey. You will need to decide what word features to study, and develop a method to study how different speakers produce or react to a word list. You will also need to decide what factors predict the word features that speakers produce. These factors may include age, gender, race or geographic region. You can consult the Kansas Dialect Survey or other dialect surveys for ideas.


More specifically, your survey should contain at least 10 items that focus on pronunciation, 5 items that survey lexical items and 5 grammatical items. Your survey should include forms that are used in Kansas as well as forms that are specific to other nearby dialect regions. You should get responses to your survey from at least 10 individuals.


You will need to turn in a 5-page write up of your survey results that lists the items on your survey, the specific dialect region that each item targets and the response you predicted to each item from a speaker from Kansas and a speaker from another dialect region. The write up should show the results from your survey and discuss the items that agree with your predictions, the items that disagree with your predictions, and the items that turned out to be problematic. Beyond the influence of geography, discuss any other factor(s) that account for the responses and explain why you think there is evidence for the other factor(s).


Your report should include the following sections:

 

 

Points

I.

The hypotheses you tested

10

II.

Procedure

 

 

 a. List the items you used and your predictions for each item

10

 

 b. Describe the people you surveyed and how you contacted them

5

 

 c. Describe the method you used to elicit responses

5

III.

Results

 

 

 a. Provide all of the responses you collected for each item

5

 

 b. Discuss the responses that support and don’t support the hypothesis

10

 

 c. Discuss any items that produced problematic responses

5


You might find the following web resources useful in describing dialectal variation:

North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns

List of dialects of the English language - Wikipedia

A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English - William Labov, Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg

New York Times dialect survey

Harvard Dialect Survey