Universidad Central de Venezuela

Facultad de Humanidades y Educación

Maestría en Inglés como Lengua Extranjera
Sociolinguistica

Field Linguistics
Lesley Milroy

Presenter:
Belloso, Yleni

Caracas, April 30th, 2015

Index
•Field linguistics
•Why do field work?
•Descriptive linguistics
•Early approaches
•Dialectology
•Traditional Dialectology
•Research methods
•Some urban early studies
Field Linguistics
Is concerned with the description and analysis of previously
undescribed or underdescribed languages.

Sometimes it involves travelling to remote places where the

target language is spoken by small groups of people and their
language is being forced to be abandoned.

Many field linguistis are deeply concerned with issues of

language endangerment and dedicate a great deal of their time
to language documentation and language revitalization.
 Field Linguistics
Most cuttingedge research in the field for the past forty years has
been based on the Chomskyan premise that the primary focus of
linguistic inquiry should be on the grammatical competence of
the individual, regardless of the particular language (s)he
speaks.

However, linguistics is moving in the opposite direction. Giving the

same importance to grammar structure and investigation into the
full range of linguistic possibilities allowed by natural languages.

Linguists have widespread interest in both theoretical linguistics

and empirical linguistics.
 Why do field work?
 Field work can also bring a great deal of personal enrichment
associated with visiting exotic locations and meeting new and unusual
people.
 It is obviously required for syntacticians and phoneticians who are not
working on their native language, since grammatically judgements and
phonetic data cannot be erased from published materials.
 And also provides with access to a broader range of data than can be
taken from published sources, and these data are generally more
reliable than what one finds in many publications dealing with
theoretical linguistics, where the data cited are often taken from
secondary sources.
 Field work offers an appreciation of the complexity of language which
linguists can easily miss if they work only on their native languages.

Can you think of some other reasons?

Descriptive linguistics
According to Kibrik there are three crucial steps to carry out
linguistics activities:

 The subject of the research: language or part of the language.

 The object of the research: written texts or tape-recorded
data.
 The product of the research: The model produced (usually
grammar).

Differences between descriptive linguists and sociolinguists may

be analyzed as differences in the relationship between the
investigator, the subject of study and the object in the process
of arriving at the final product (or model). And this gives
shape to the method to be used.
 Early approaches
 The American Descriptivist

Known as “structuralists” or “descriptivist” placed a high premium on the development

and practice of a rigorous and accountable set of field methods. The basis for many
comtemporary data collection and data analysis techniques.

1920´s Chomsky´s work on dying American Indian Languages. American schoolars

preferred working in field than in offices.

Line of reasoning of Bloomfield (1926). Methods of description with the accreditation of

a scientific status to linguistics.

Introspection implies a conscious state in which one is oriented towards one’s own
conscious state. That is, one must be aware of one’s conscious state in order to be
introspective. This kind of knowledge and directedness is not a requirement for
normal perception. (Overgaard n.d)

Developing objectivity and accountable procedures for inductively deriving linguistic

generalizations from observable data.
 Dialectology
A branch of sociolinguistics that studies the systematic variants of a
language.
First coined in 1577 from the Latin dialectus, way of speaking.
Dialectal variation is present in most language areas and often has
important social implications.
It treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common
ancestor.
The earliest recorded instance with dialectal information appears in the
Bible, in the Book of Judges, verse 12:4-6: Then Gilead cut Ephraim
off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever an Ephraimite fugitive
said 'Let me cross', the men of Gilead asked him "Are you an
Ephraimite?" If he answered "No." they said "Then say shiboleth. He
would say Sibboleth, since he could not pronounce the word correctly.
Traditional Dialectology
 They were not devised to survey patterns of contemporary
language use as an end itself.
 Answering questions about the earlier history of the
language.
 To study contemporary reflexes of older linguistics forms.
 The aim of dialectological work is to produce a geographical
account of linguistics differences, the broad areal limits of the
linguistics features (usually lexical or phonological).

Data collection techniques

On-the-spot phonetic transcription by a trained field worker
More recently tape-recorders
Research methods
Introspective method
Model
A fragment of Investigator Language
language

Analytic method
Model
A fragment of Investigator Data Language
language

Experimental method
Model
A fragment of Investigator Informant Data Language
language idiolect

(Kibrik 1977: 3)
Research methods
Introspective method Analytic method
The description is based on Knowledge of the target
introspective self- language.
observation.
Generalizations are based
It cannot be used to study
on a corpus.
any language not known
by the investigator but
Ex. Modern work on
only full codified
discourse analysis.
languages.
Its applicability is sharply
limited.

Experimental method
Investigator´s control over the data accessed
Direct manipulation of the informant´s responses.
Collection procedures: labov´s commutation tests, matched
guised techniques and other methods used by psycholinguists.
Some urban early studies
 Silverstein´s Rough Cockney Phonology (1960).
 There are various kinds of cockney that vary according to their
style and speaker.
 He based his study on the speech of four elderly women,
selected for their relative social isolation, low social status and
lack of education. Pure form of dialect using phonetic
transcription.

 The restriction on the selection of participants to a single type

seems inappropriate
 Generalization of results.
References
Overgaard, M. (n.d). Introspection as object for qualitative research.
University of Aarhus. Retrieved from:
http://psy.au.dk/fileadmin/Psykologi/Forskning/Kvalitativ_metodeudviklin
g/NB31/Introspection_as_object_for_qua.pdf. Consulted on April 25th,
2015

University of Alberta. (n.d). Field Linguistics. Retrieved from:

http://www.linguistics.ualberta.ca/en/Undergraduate/AboutLinguistics/Fie
ldLinguistics.aspx. Consulted on April 25th 2015.

Vajda, E. (n.d). Dialectology. Retrieved from:

http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/dialectology.htm
Consulted on April 25th 2015

Vaux, B. & Cooper, J. (2003). Introduction to linguistic field methods.

Lincom Europa.