LING 320 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Vernacular Culture, Hypercorrection, Participant Observation
9 Mar 2016
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People act differently when they are conscious of observation. Vernacular: unconscious type of speech that people use on a daily basis when they are not conscious of observation. We are not focused on how we are speaking, but what we are talking about or whom we are speaking to. Observer"s paradox: person"s consciousness of being observed messes with the quality of the findings. We cannot gather information from informants without telling people that you are studying their speech. Sociolinguistic interview: you could simply say i"m studying how language varies rather than i am studying whether or not you use a uvular /r/ . You could deceive the participant, and say we are interested in how your life was in the 1930s and then at the end of the interview say in reality we were looking at your speech . We could gather information in ways that involve ordinary interactions with a general public.
