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.