Researching English Language

Getting started

The sections in the book in this thread are:

A	B	C	D
The first stages: getting started and settling on a topic	The how and why of getting started and choosing a research topic	Language research topics	The origins of some research projects in English language
Why research English Language?		Projecting towards the future: the benefits of students’ research skills to employers	John Sinclair. Susan Fischer. Ronald Carter.
Choosing a topic to research		Identifying what interests you

Additional material on getting started

1.1 Some students’ contributions

Students who have read drafts of the book have added their reactions and experiences, providing a student’s perspective on the challenges of tackling an independent research project for the first time.

1.1.1 While the ‘community of practice’ I refer to in the book is assumed to be based on shared academic values rather than on national or cultural affiliation, a student from Hong Kong highlighted the importance of context to the way the enterprise unfolds. She suggests that:

I ... think that the student's attitude is very important when doing a research. To me (or most students from Asian countries), to question everything is somehow difficult. That's why it may be useful to remind the students to be curious, observant and brave to share.

1.1.2 Another student reader shared her ideas about potential projects, reflecting on their feasibility, as advised in the book.

Here are some of her thoughts, on which she commented herself as she reflected on each one:

My main area of interest is ‘How language constructs the world’ (too broad) so to narrow it down I would incorporate it into a more narrowed down topic:

1. Colour categorisation – what does colour mean to people from different parts of the world?
Interesting, but far too difficult to obtain the data from all over the world. Also, how to translate the data without a native understanding of the languages in question poses a problem.

2. Child Language Acquisition – How children perceive literature.
I like this one a lot. Although children are very difficult to get access to…

3. Roald Dahl – onomastics: how does Dahl use onomastics to create his characters’ personalities? Do the morphology and phonetics work well with the characters’ description?
I would like to combine the option 2 with this one. Perhaps link the two together and ‘How do children of different ages perceive the names of the characters in Dahl’s texts?’

Reading around your topic and reviewing this literature

The sections in the book in this thread are:

A	B	C	D
Reading around your topic	The how and why of the literature review: joining a ‘community of practice’	The literature review	Reviewing previous English language literature for research
Housekeeping		Organising and structuring a literature review	Emanuel Schegloff, Irene Koshik, Sally Jacoby, David Olsher. Neal Norrick. Ruqaiya Hasan.
Identifying what to read		Reading for different purposes
What are you reading for?		‘Reading critically’ revisited
Reading critically

Additional material on reading around your topic and reviewing this literature

2.1 Some students’ contributions

Various students have tried out the suggested activities.

2.1.1 This student was planning to research the language of leaflets produced within the criminal justice system aimed at young and adult offenders. Her search on CSA Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts using the search term ‘leaflets for young people’ produced 70 articles, but none that were peer reviewed. The term ‘published material for offenders’ generated 434 articles, but she found that these were mostly in the domains of psychology and criminology, rather than language. ‘Government leaflets’ produced articles about policies, so she tried searches on ‘language and leaflets’ and ‘analysis and leaflets’, each of which identified 12 peer reviewed articles, which were useful for the project.

 

This student then switched to Linguistics Abstracts Online, trying out similar combinations of words and phrases. She tabulated the results like this:

search term	number of peer reviewed articles generated
leaflets AND linguistics	1
leaflets AND language	2
leaflets AND communication	1
youth offending	0
offending	11
drugs leaflets	5
publications AND teenagers	0
publishing information	235, of which 4 involved (critical) discourse analysis

She reflects on the experience:

I learnt to widen my search – the topic that I specifically want to consider is clearly unique in some way. I found that what works for one search engine does not for another. Variations are crucial.
The process also extended my way of approaching the topic. Perhaps a questionnaire would be appropriate, asking people to judge the leaflets’ effectiveness and readability. The searches threw up articles which were both specific and encompassing, ranging from a study into the quantifiers used in leaflets to the comprehensibility of leaflets. Overall, the activity was vital to discovering where my research fits in, and I look forward to extending these searches.

2.2 Further resources relating to literature searches

There is a lot of guidance online about how to use resource databases, and much of this is frequently updated and expanded. In addition to the support you should be able to access from the institution where you are studying, the following links may be helpful:

Making use of JSTOR (described as ‘part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways’): www.jstor.org/page/info/about/archives/tutorials.jsp
For a detailed article about Google Scholar, see Noruzi, A. (2005) Google Scholar : the new generation of citation indexes. www.eprints.rclis.org/5595/. You can also watch a video (already somewhat dated, but still useful as an introduction, if not very critical) at www.ehow.co.uk/video_4432458_use-google-scholar.html. An article comparing various search engines is Liu, M. and Cabrera, P. (2008) The new generation of citation indexing in the age of digital libraries. Policy Futures in Education 6 (1), 77-86 (www.dx.doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2008.6.1.77).

Identifying and framing your research questions

The sections in the book in this thread are:

A	B	C	D
What do you want to know?	The how and why of clarifying research questions	Research questions	Questions in English language research
Questions of data and theory	Research studies without explicit questions	Predicting what your study will involve	Sara W. Smith, Hiromi Pat Noda, Steven Andrews, Andreas H. Jucker. Chris Brumfit.
Making your questions explicit	Refining your questions	Predicting the outcomes of your study
	Appropriate questions for empirical research	The role of the hypothesis
		Summary: kinds of question

Additional material on identifying and framing your research questions
The book includes various examples of research questions and how to develop and refine them. In this section of the site are some further examples taken from published studies.

3.1. The research questions in a study about a particular word form

A study by Lüdeling et al (2007) explored the way in which the suffix ‘-itis’, familiar from words for medical conditions such as ‘tonsillitis’ and ‘appendicitis’, is being used in several languages with a wide range of non-medical terms, where its meaning is something like ‘”hysteria” or “excessively doing something”,’ as in ‘telefonitis’. The following extract (from p.10) indicates the various questions that could be explored about this phenomenon. It is interesting because it shows how different kinds of question lead in different directions, and the authors go on to discuss what kind of data and software would be needed to answer these questions, as well as the limitations of existing tools.

Types of questions that might be asked with respect to non-medical –itis are:

• qualitative: With which bases does non-medical –itis combine?
• distributional: In which contexts are the resulting complex words used?
• quantitative: Is word formation with non-medical –itis productive?
• comparative: What are the differences (in structure or in use) between the English and the German affix? Is one of them more productive than the other?
• diachronic (recent change): When did non-medical –itis start to appear and what is its development?

Reference: Lüdeling, A., Evert, S. and Baroni, M. (2007) Using web data for linguistic purposes. In M. Hundt, N. Nesselhauf and C. Biewer (eds) Corpus Linguistics and the Web: Rodopi B.V.

3.2 The research questions in a study about electronic communications

This example is from a study referred to in Unit C.1. As noted there
Ling and Baron (2007) ... collected examples, produced by American college students, of both instant messages sent via computers and text messages sent by mobile phones. They compared the length of the messages, the use of emoticons, and the specific linguistic features of lexical shortenings and sentential punctuation.

In the following extract, Ling and Baron present their research questions. You could use the discussion in Thread 3 of the book to analyse these questions according to their type, and predict the methods they used to collect and analyse their data. Note the sub-questions which were prompted by the first main question. ‘Unpicking’ a big question like this can be helpful not only to clarify what the research will be about, but also in demonstrating how much work is likely to be involved in answering it.
Our three research questions were:
Research Question 1: What are the linguistic characteristics of text messaging in the
USA?
Research Question 2: How do these characteristics compare with IM in the USA?
Research Question 3: Is extensive prior experience with word processing and IM
reflected in American texting?
Findings reported here involve three linguistic areas. The first is length: How many words and characters were there per transmission, how many one-word transmissions, and how many sentences per transmission? The second is emoticons and lexical shortenings: How often were emoticons, acronyms, abbreviations, and contractions used? With contractions, how many contained apostrophes? The third is sentential punctuation: How much punctuation appeared at the ends of sentences, and was it haphazard or principled?

Reference: Ling, R. and Baron, N.S. (2007) Text messaging and IM: linguistic comparison of American college data. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 26 (3), 291 - 298.

Research methods

The sections in the book in this thread are:

A	B	C	D
Ways of finding out what you want to know	The how and why of choosing research methods	Research methods	Methods in English language research
Ways of observing	Methods and methodology	Finding your way around different methodologies	Kyra Karmiloff, Annette Karmiloff-Smith. David Barton, Mary Hamilton. Alister Cumming.
Ways of classifying	Choice of method in (English) language research	Experimental studies in Second Language Acquisition – advocates and critics
Ways of measuring and counting	Interviews in language research – how and why?	Recognising and naming Xs and Ys
	Selecting textual data in language research – how and why?	Theory and methodology
	Controlling variables in experiments – how and why?

Additional material on research methods

The book includes extensive discussion about the way theories about the world and how we can know it are the province of ‘methodology’, while these theories are important for making decisions about the practical issues associated with ‘methods’.

4.1 Defining the objects of research

One idea used throughout the book is that different kinds of things have different properties, and are thus best researched using methods which take this into account. It is therefore helpful to identify exactly what it is that you are trying to find out more about, partly because its properties will have a bearing on how it can be studied. In the book, I call the objects of investigation ‘X’s and ‘Y’s. Thus the main ‘X’ in a study about ‘the linguistic characteristics of text messaging in the USA’ (Ling and Baron 2007) is ‘the linguistic characteristics of text messaging in the USA’; furthermore, you could conceive of each of the entities denoted by this lengthy noun phrases as a ‘sub-X’, thus: ‘the linguistic characteristics [=X1] of text messaging [=X2] in the USA [=X3]’. To be successful, the researchers need to be clear about what is meant by each of these terms, or to be prepared to ask the question, ‘What is X?’. The sub-questions provided by these authors about the ‘linguistic characteristics’ of text messaging (see section 3.2) indicate what they mean by ‘linguistic characteristics’.

For a successful study, then, it helps to ‘define your terms’.

However, not everything is easily defined, including some things that are apparently very basic to the study of language.

4.1.1 Activity

Here are some terms from (English) language research that have been shown to be problematic. In each case, consider the following questions, discussing them with other students if possible. Consider the term first, and then read the quotations from linguists about the difficulties associated with it:

1. In what ways, precisely, is the term or label not transparent and unambiguous? That is, what is the range of meanings it could have?
2. In light of your answer to (1), what is the range of Xs or Ys in a research project that could be denoted by this term?
3. What would be the implications, if any, for planning research, and choosing research methods, to investigate the concept(s) denoted by the term?
4. Can you think of other terms, perhaps from the field you have chosen to research, which may pose similar problems?

(A) word

... there are several difficulties in arriving at a consistent use of the term in relation to other categories of linguistic description, and in the comparison of languages of different structural types. These problems relate mainly to word identification and definition. They include, for example, decisions over word boundaries (e.g. is a unit such as washing machine two words, or is it one, to be written washing-machine?), as well as decisions over status (e.g. is the a word in the same sense as is chair?) Regular definitions of words as ‘units of meaning’, or ‘ideas’ are of no help, because of the vagueness of such notions as ‘idea’. ...
(Crystal 2002: 500)

(B) native speaker
The theoretical question I address ... is the extent to which being a native speaker is a social construct, a choice of identity and a membership determined as much by attitude and symbolically as by language ability and knowledge.
(Davies 2003: 11)

… even so-called native speakers do not necessarily use standard forms.
… The conventional TESOL assumption is that …the ethnic majority pupil possesses native-speaker expertise in an undifferentiated English (i.e., no distinction is made between standard English and local vernacular Englishes).
… the binary native-speaker-versus-other is increasingly redundant …
(Leung et al 1997: 554; 556; 557-8)

References

Crystal, D. (2002) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: WileyBlackwell. (p.500)

Davies, A. (2003) The Native Speaker: myth and reality. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Leung, C., Harris, R. and Rampton, B. (1997) The idealised native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities. TESOL Quarterly 31 (3).

Possibilities and pitfalls

The sections in the book in this thread are:

A	B	C	D
Possibilities and pitfalls	The how and why of sorting out the details	Details	Problems in English language research
Establishing where you stand – researching people	What can go wrong with research?		Jennifer Coates. Vasiliki Papaioannou, Nora Basurto Santos, Amanda Howard.
Making things work for you	Relationships with people
Fitting into the bigger picture	Contexts – times, places and circumstances
	Concepts

Additional material on the possibilities and pitfalls
If you want to know in more detail about the issues associated with the ‘ethics’ dimension of doing social research, you can consult the Research Ethics Framework published by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) at www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Images/ESRC_Re_Ethics_Frame_tcm6-11291.pdf
The recommendations produced by the British Association for Applied Linguistics are accessible from www.baal.org.uk/about_goodpractice.htm, where you can access both a ‘student project’ and a full version of the guidelines.

Collecting data

The sections in the book in this thread are:

A	B	C	D
Doing the research: collecting data	The how and why of data collection	Data collection	Collecting English language data
Collecting and processing written data	What kind of data?	Written texts as data	Bojana Petric, Bernadett Czárl. Elena Semino, Mick Short. Janet Maybin.
Collecting and processing spoken data	Where will the data come from?	Spoken interaction as data
Collecting and processing elicited data	How much data?	Elicited data: diaries and journals
Combined methods	Which data to include?	Elicited data: focus group interviews
Housekeeping		Elicited data: experimental data
		Research about data collection methods
		Housekeeping

Additional material on collecting data

There are countless resources on various approaches to data collection, although fewer concerned specifically with the collection of linguistic data.

One site which gives brief definitions and explanations about approaches in social research is www.wpi.edu/Academics/GPP/Students/ch9.html. Another section of this site explains more about interviews, though it is not about the kind of interview a sociolinguist would need to do: www.wpi.edu/Academics/GPP/Students/ch11e.html.

If your research falls within the sociolinguistic tradition, you will find this site useful: www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/ncllp/aboutfieldwork.php. It is fairly introductory, and includes sample interview questions and examples of elicitation tasks.

Another excellent site with advice on spoken language data collection is at www.open2.net/word4word/index.html. This is a collaboration between the BBC and the Open University, who worked together on the Voices project, involving people all over the UK in documenting the many ways of speaking. From here, you can download a ‘kit’ to help you collect examples of regional variation in English.

Interpreting and analysing data

The sections in the book in this thread are:

A	B	C	D
Clarifying what you have found out	The how and why of data analysis	Data analysis and interpretation	Analysing English language data
Types of data and approaches to analysis	Data analysis example 1: sounds	Transcription as a stage in data analysis	Jennifer Coates, Joanna Thornborrow. Christina E. Gildersleeve-Neumann, Ellen S. Kester, Barbara L. Davis, Elizabeth D. Peña. Ruby Macksoud
From ‘closed’ questionnaires to collections of written texts	Data analysis example 2: words	Identifying patterns in data
Analysing spoken data: first steps	Data analysis example 3: clauses
Identifying patterns	Data analysis example 4: discourse
Identifying quantities	Data analysis examples: summary
Stages of analysis

Additional material on interpreting and analysing data

Qualitative data analysis
A website which supports the analysis of qualitative data is www.onlineqda.hud.ac.uk/Intro_QDA/preparing_data.php
This is more applicable for social research in general, rather than detailed linguistic analysis, but there is a lot of useful guidance and information to be found here.

Corpus analysis
If you plan to use corpus analysis, then you will need access to appropriate software. One free program which is likely to be useful is Antconc. You can find information about this, along with lots of support material at www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/antconc_index.html.

Quantitative data analysis
For an entertaining, basic introduction to some key ideas in statistics, try the BBC-Open University site at www.open2.net/sciencetechnologynature/maths/menu_statistics.html. For more detailed explanations of how statistics may be used in sociolinguistic research, Dick Hudson’s online mini course is very useful: www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/stats.htm.

Writing up your research project

The sections in the book in this thread are:

A	B	C	D
Writing and reporting	The how and why of writing up your project	Writing up your project	Writing about English language research
The dissertation as a record of the research	Writing: the how and why of style	Making use of abstracts	Mary Lea, Brian Street. Romy Clark, Roz Ivanič.
Timing and planning	Writing: the how and why of managing the writing process	Relating abstracts to whole texts
The dissertation as a text type		Components of the text
Style
Presentation

Additional material on writing up your research project
In addition to the further sources and links included in the book, students may find the following websites helpful for support with the basics of writing for assessment:
www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/STELLA/links.htm#Language
www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/STELLA/ARIES/

The English Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy has supported the production of various materials aimed at students, such as freely downloadable guides to the following topics:
Introduction to Academic Research
Library Resources  
Web-Based Research
Referencing and Bibliographies
Paragraph Structure 
Essay Structure
Grammar and Punctuation
Writing Style

These can be found at: www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/projects/archive/technology/tech12.php