LING480 Study Guide - Final Guide: Social Stratification, Speech Community
26 Mar 2019
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Document Summary
The article is investigating the use of anonymous and spontaneous observation to gather information about the sociolinguistic speech community in a naturalistic environment. The use of spontaneous observation rules out the methological problem of biased results from interviewer/interviewee interaction. The researchers want to investigate specific phonological variables and their sensitivity to social stratification in new york city. The researchers studied these phonological variables using the method of casual and anonymous speech events, posing as confused customers when approaching informants for the study. The independent variables in the study were the stratification by store and floor within the store, sex, age, occupation, race and foreign and or regional accent. The dependent variables were the use or (r) in four occurrences (preconsonantal and final position). Each plainly constricted value of the variable was entered, along with unconstructed schwa, lengthened vowel, representation, and affricates or stops used in the word final position. The results of the study displayed consistent stratification across three stores:
