Update From Alison

This is just an update following the meeting I had with Alison on Wednesday. Don't worry if you couldn't make it, I took notes and have all the info!
Basically, there are a few key points that we have to focus on to make the investigation better:

1. Alison mentioned that all kinds of social factors (apart from gender) have an effect on hedging, and she thinks it's going to be very difficult for us to focus completely on hedging... For instance, if the data comes up with no differences between sexes, it's interesting, because it shows that Lakoff was perhaps wrong, BUT it does'nt give us much to report back on...
INSTEAD, Alsion suggested that maybe we should do the studies, transcribe them, and THEN look for differences. So basically, let the differences come to us instead of searching for them. I think this is a good idea, and although we have done work on hedging, etc. I think it would still work, and we can mention the problems and changes in the methodology.

2. Another thing Alison mentioned, was the fact that we really need to think about the relationship we have with the informer and how this is affecting the language.. I don't think it's a big issue, but we should talk about it next time we meet.

Apart from these two points (which look quite massive, but aren't really that bad!) she said that it's going well and we should just carry on the good work!

Meeting with Alison

Just wanted to say that I've emailed Alison, and instead of having an actual meeting time, her door will be open at various times during this week for groups to pop in and chat. As one of the times we wanted (Tomorrow: Wednesday at 2) is one of her office hours, I suggest we all just meet in the lobby of the Arts Building at 2 and then take it from there. Can everyone still make that time? Hopefully see you tomorrow! Z

Labov

Hey guys, just a quick note to say that the reference I thought I had(drawing our topic inspiration of 'describe your most embarrassing moment' from Labov's 'have you ever had a near-death experience?') actually wasn't that one. I think I do have the paper I'm thinking of in my notes... somewhere... but if you can rummage around too then that'd be great. Sorry and thanks!

Week four to five

In our meeting today, we clarified our redrafted version of the GLA, found some books in the library and discussed our pilot study. Aims for this coming week (in accordance with this plan) are:

• Conducting the pilot study and feeding back on this.


• See Alison face-to-face on Wednesday to discuss our project and hopefully gain some feedback and approval of proceeding with conducting the research.


• Watch v-lecture 5.


• Maintain the upkeep of our blog as a record of our progress.

Week Four - GLA feedback

Following Alison's feedback and our group meeting today, here's the list of elements that need editing in our GLA (aside from the title, which we edited in our meeting):

• See Cameron regarding 'problems': how may we explain the different use of hedges? Gender is only one independent variable. Consider the relationship between the interlocutors, particularly their face needs.
• Consider the situation of our research with regards to the above point: today we decided to edit our methodology in accordance with our feedback to a less 'artificial' situation. We agreed that asking "what has been your most embarrassing moment?", within 1 minute, would provoke a similarly useful response in terms of the use of hedges, but this is question might be taken with a little less confusion compared to our previous idea with a piece of fruit.
• 'Stratified' sample? How is our sample stratified? Either clarify this or remove it, and explain more coherently how we are going to sample our population for transcription.
• Define 'hedges'. We need to all be clear on what we are listening out for. As with most metalinguistic terms, there are probably a lot of different definitions for hedges out there, so perhaps we could find a few of those to form our own agreement and definition?
• Remove 'unique' from our description of hedges. Lakoff didn't say hedges were 'unique to womens; speak', only that they were more common than in males.
• Remove 'Lakoff was the first to really...' as this is inaccurate.
• We need to explore and discuss any ethical issues.
• Form a clear, educated and accurate idea of the role that gender has in interactions.
• Look into J. Coates and J. Cheshire with regards to gender and power.

We also need to clarify who is going to conduct the interviews; Alison proposed one idea that we recruited a male for the purposes of asking other males, and I'm not sure we came to a conclusion on this in our meeting? Or was it that we decided our informants would be from a 'friendship' level of relationship, for both genders, in the hope that this would reduce any potential awkwardness from male informants?

In general, we were quite pleased with our feedback and feel that the points made were useful ones that we can definitely work on. Before our next meeting on Thursday, we are each going to have redrafted a section of the GLA in light of these points.

Here is the finished draft outlining our project in more detail:

Englang Group 8:

According to Lakoff’s theory (1975), do women today use hedges more often in descriptive language than men?

Introduction to our topic:

As a group, we decided that we were most interested in doing our research in sociolinguistics. As we spoke about our ideas, we decided to focus on looking into the linguistic differences between genders. During our research and looking at previous studies carried out on gender, we found Lakoff’s theory on ‘Women-speak’ (1975) which is presented in The New Sociolinguistic Reader. Lakoff’s study is very detailed and she homes in on 10 characteristics that she found were unique to ‘women’s language.’ In our project, we aim to study one of these characteristics in particular - hedging, and will investigate whether Lakoff’s findings are still relevant 36 years later.

Research Design: Methodology

We aim to interview 10 female and 10 male University of Birmingham students, all in the age band 18 to 25. We will provide the participants with a stimulus (for example a soft piece of fruit) and ask them to describe how it feels and record (using a dictaphone) the answers that they provide. After transcribing a stratified sample of these answers, we will study in detail the use of hedges in both the female and the male answers and apply our findings to Lakoff’s study.

Problems to look out for

The observer's paradox: we will have to gain consent from the women and men that we question whether we can record their answer. We will ask them to sign a consent form in order to maintain ethically sound research. Unfortunately, this may lead to the interviewees altering how they respond to try and fit in with, or reject, the research motive.

We only intend to interview 20 participants, which is rather a small sample size that could potentially end in skewed results. Unfortunately, interviewing a bigger sample of informants may eat into the limited research time and result in us falling behind.

There is also the bigger question of whether Lakoff is still relevant to how modern women talk. Her study is now 36 years old and it seems only natural that much of her research may be at least slightly outdated. Despite this, Lakoff was one of the first to really research how women's speech is different to that of men's, so it makes sense that we use her study as the basis of our research.

Research so far

We carried out a pilot interview, which was not as successful as we hoped. As a result of both this and considering our potential problems from Sealey (p. 124, 2010), we tweaked our investigation so that it was more detailed and less generic. We also changed the participants from only females, in our pilot, to include males as well. This will give us a chance to compare the two sexes and give a more detailed result.

Bibliography

Bloomer, A., Griffiths, P. and Merrison, A.J. (2005) Introducing Language in Use: a Coursebook. Routledge: London.

Cameron, D. (2005) Language, Gender and Sexuality. Applied Linguistics 26 (4), 482 - 502 (available on the e-library).

Cameron, D. (2001) Working with Spoken Discourse. London: Sage.

Coates, J. Language and Gender: A Reader

Eckbert, P. McConnell-Ginet, S. Language and Gender

Sealey, A. (2010) Researching English Language. Oxon: Routledge.

Sebba, M. (2000) Focussing on language. Definite Article Publisher: Lancaster.

We thought, that as a research topic, we could use Lakoff’s theory (as well as those who have questioned and updated her theory since it was put forward) as a basis, and build upon this.

Bibliography

If you find any more reading add it to this doc. so that we can keep track :)

Bibliography

Group Planning and Research Proposal

RSEL Learning Agreement
Section I: the agreement
Group number: 8 Group name: Englang group 8
Group Members
By writing my name below, I agree to carry out the following learning agreement by the stated dates and I will make sure that I and my group achieve each of the milestones along the way. Once you see your tutor’s name here, too, this means that you have successfully negotiated your learning agreement:

Briony Statton
Olivia Cummins
Sophie (Zosia) Carr
Heather Mungin
Louise Bennett
tutor name

Section II: milestones
The following milestones have been set by your tutor and need to be met for you to successfully complete the module. However, routes towards achieving the milestones are negotiable.

Milestone 1
Our group will use this learning agreement together to create a draft research project proposal (see below)
Our group will work together in a shared google document (which will also be shared with our tutor) in order to reflect on establishing group roles, responsibilities and ways of working.
Our group will work together to create a time plan identifying the various things we need to do, with deadlines indicated.
Our group will then post the results of this collaborative work on our blog, which will be open to comments and suggestions by fellow students.
Each of us will look at other groups’ blogs and make constructive or interrogative comments, where appropriate.
This project proposal will be completed by the end of Week 3, with tutor’s comments in response sent to us by the end of Week 4.

Milestone 2
As we carry out the research, we will keep records of what we are doing.
Our group will then create a blog post entitled ‘What we’ve done and what we need to do’.
This will be completed by the end of Week 7.

Milestone 3
Our group will present our research project to the other groups and respond to their presentations.
This will take place in Week 11.

Section III: routes - strategies and resources
This learning agreement is not set in stone - it is intended to be as much as possible a process of negotiation. So, you might use this section, for example, to request input from your tutor, such as looking over a draft, or providing copies of some material not in the library, or an introduction to an interviewee - or perhaps further advice about collaborative small group work. Please identify in detail all learning activities to be completed for this project:

Section IV: research project proposal
The following is your research project proposal. Remember, you are not only researching and presenting on your chosen research project, but also producing evidence to meet the learning outcomes of the module (see below).

1. Topic

Linguistic differences between genders. We will build on the hedges aspect of Lakoff’s 1975 theory on ‘Women-speak’, presented in The New Sociolinguistic Reader, to try and determine whether this theory is outdated or still relevant. We will focus on males and females from a specific age group, (18-25).

2. Research Design

Main aims and research question(s) Do females use more hedges in their descriptive speech than males, as Lakoff suggests they do?
An indication of the type and amount of language data to be investigated Spoken data, roughly twenty participants. (10 males, 10 females).
An outline of the method(s) you’ll be using to select and collect your data Asking ten 18-25 year old male and female university students to describe a stimulus they cannot see, but can only feel.
An outline of the methods you’ll use to analyse your data

A tally chart to analyse the number of times males and females use hedges in their description of the stimulus. We’ll produce a stratified sample of transcriptions to support our research and findings and compare it to Lakoff’s ‘women-speak’ theory. (Language and Woman’s Place by Robin Lakoff).

A bibliography indicating works read and to be read

Jennifer Coates, Language and Gender: A Reader; Language and gender By Penelope Eckert, Sally McConnell-Ginet; Working with spoken discourse By Deborah Cameron; Introduction to English language By Bloomer et al.; Focussing on language By Mark Sebba; Researching English Language by Alison Sealey (pp 124-5); Cameron, D. (2005) Language, gender and sexuality. Applied Linguistics 26 (4), 482 - 502 (available in the e-library).


3. Presentation*

Describe how and when you will present your research here. The expectation is that you will make a vodcast, but this is open to negotiation if you have a viable alternative suggestion.
We are comfortable with the idea of filming a presentation and providing slides/our research transcripts/notes if required .

Learning Outcomes of the module
By the end of this module you should be able to:
(Semester 1) - collaborate with others to conduct a small-scale investigation on an appropriate language topic, including making a contribution to:
a review of relevant key findings reported in the literature;
the design of an empirical project, with due regard for ethical concerns as appropriate;
the collection of relevant language data;
the analysis of the data using appropriate methods;
presentation of the project to an audience of peers*
(Semester 2) - demonstrate competence in the independent gathering, organization and presentation in a written text of materials appropriate to linguistic research

Evaluation and assessment
The group project is assessed as pass or fail.
* The criteria on which the ‘audience’ (i.e. other people taking this module) will be asked to evaluate each presentation will be:
clarity (how well did the presentation explain the aims of the project?)
timekeeping (given the time constraints, how well did the presentation make use of the time available?)
interest (how well did the presentation hold and maintain audience interest?)

Pilot Study

Pilot Study

We will conduct a small pilot study in order to check if our method is suitable. We will each ask two of our female housemates the question, ‘What did you do this morning’ and expect a one minute response. We will inform our subjects that we are doing a piece of research on language use. During their response we will tally each time one of Lakoff’s features is used. This will allow us to see which features provide the most interesting feedback and will help when narrowing down our points of interest. It may be that the question itself is not suitable. Respondents are likely to give a narrow answer, possibly not reaching one minute in length. This pilot will give us the opportunity to adjust the parts of our method that are not working. It will also give us some preliminary data off of which we can base our hypothesis.

Hey guys!

Following our meeting today, here is the list of features that Lakoff proposed:

1. HEDGES: (It's sort of hot, I'm kind of tired).
2. (SUPER) POLITE FORMS: (Would you please open the door if you don't mind?)
3. TAG QUESTIONS: (John is here, isn't he?)
4. SPEAKING IN ITALICS: (Intonational emphasis equivalent to underlining written words, so, very)
5. EMPTY ADJECTIVES: (cute, lovely, sweet)
6. HYPER-CORRECT GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION
7. LACK OF SENSE OF HUMOR
8. DIRECT QUOTATIONS: (Using quotes instead of paraphrasing).
9. SPECIALIST LEXICON: (Using mauve and magenta).
10. QUESTION INTONATION IN DECLARATIVE CONTEXT: (For example in response to the question "When will dinner be ready?" giving the answer "around 6 o'clock.")

Potential Problems In Our Preliminary Research

Most research presents problems it is difficult to get around, and these are some of the issues our group is currently facing:

• Observer's parardox: we intend to ask females aged between 18 and 25 to explain to us their morning and see how closely their account corresponds to Lackhoff's theories regarding how females speak. Although this research is not unethical mentally or physically, we will have to tell the women we question that we are recording their answer and ask them to sign a consent form, in order to maintain completely ethically sound research. Unfortunately, this may lead to the interviewees altering how they respond to try and fit in with, or reject, the research motive.
• We only intend to interview 10 women, which is rather a small sample size that could potentially end in skewed results. Unfortunately, to start interviewing a bigger sample of women may eat into research time we don't have and result in us falling behind.
• There is also the bigger question of whether Lackhoff is still relevant to how modern women talk. Her study is now 36 years old and it seems only natural that much of her research may be at least slightly outdated. Despite this, Lackhoff was one of the first to really research how women's speech is different to that of men's, so it makes sense that we use her study as the basis of our research.

The group intends to analyse these problems and present a blog post on the ways in which we will work around them at a later date in the research process.

Week Three

Hi guys, I have written in blue some notes on our potential learning agreement document following our meeting on Friday. Today we are meeting to finalise these and discuss the V-lectures (2 - 4) and the reading we have done from Sealey (2010). Personally I feel we are working well as a group and that things are so far, so good!

Week two

We have posted a preliminary draft of our research proposal and have made a lot of headway with google docs.
When we meet again next Tuesday (11th Oct) we will finalise our research proposal. During the weekend we are all going to add any extra reading we find to the google document as well as any additional details that we think of. This weekend we will also make sure that we are up to date with the online lectures and reading(Sealey).
On Tuesday we will also come together and finalise our learning agreement.

Learning agreement google doc.

Learning agreement document

Draft Research Proposal

Draft research proposal

Englang Group 8

Introduction to our topic:

As a group, we decided that we were most interested in doing our research in sociolinguistics. As we spoke about our ideas, we focused more on looking into the linguistic differences between genders. We looked at Lakoff’s theory on ‘Women-speak’, presented in The New Sociolinguistic Reader, and found that her study, although interesting, was very out-dated (apparently from 1975).

We thought, that as a research topic, we could use Lakoff’s theory (as well as those who have questioned and updated her theory since it was put forward) as a basis, and build upon this.

We would focus on a more specific age group (18-21) and compare the points that Lakoff has put forward (hedges, empty adjectives, politeness etc.) with our 21st century findings.

We debated on how to collect data and we also realise that the observer’s paradox is a problem, however, we believe that if we can get the informants into a casual conversation focused around one pivotal question (e.g “what did you do this morning?”), we can get data that is interesting to analyse.

Interesting books (found on Google books!)

• Jennifer Coates, Language and Gender: A Reader

(This book is quite good because it has lots of chapters focusing on different topics and written by a variety of theorists. That means that we can get different opinions and use them to back up our research. I found it on Google books so it’s easy to use!)

• Language and gender By Penelope Eckert, Sally McConnell-Ginet

(Some good ideas and quotes from theorists, such as: ‘Gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we do.’ Zimmerman and West 1987).

There are loads of others that we can also look at on google books.

Other Books

• Language and woman’s place By Robin Lakoff

• Working with spoken discourse By Deborah Cameron

• Introduction to English language By Bloomer et al.

• Focussing on language By Mark Sebba

• Researching English Language by Alison Sealey

• We also intend to use the elibrary to find any journals or essays on the subject we are researching.

The basic outline was written by Zosia and the reading list was contributed to by all the other group members. We will post a complete version next week.

Week One

First things first, members of group 8:

Heather - JH English Language and Drama

Livi - JH English Language and Classics

Zosia - SH English Language

Louise - SH English Language

Briony - SH English Language

We are aiming to meet twice weekly and communicate in the meantime through this blog. For our first meeting we're going to bring our thoughts on our preferable research areas in order to hopefully agree on and specify our project topic.

We will review the timeline, according to which it'd therefore also be good if we can all start reading the core text (Sealey) and discuss our Group Learning Assessment in preparation for having this completed as Milestone 1.