Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introductory note
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition: forty years later
- I Problems and methods of analysis
- 1 The study of language in its social context
- 2 First approach to the structure of New York City English
- 3 The social stratification of (r) in New York City department stores
- 4 The isolation of contextual styles
- 5 The linguistic interview
- 6 The survey of the Lower East Side
- II Social differentiation
- III Social evaluation
- IV Synthesis
- Glossary of linguistic symbols and terminology
- Appendix A Questionnaire for the ALS Survey
- Appendix B Anonymous observations of casual speech
- Appendix C Analysis of losses through moving of the MFY sample population
- Appendix D Analysis of the non-respondents: the television interview
- Appendix E The out-of-town speakers
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The linguistic interview
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introductory note
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition: forty years later
- I Problems and methods of analysis
- 1 The study of language in its social context
- 2 First approach to the structure of New York City English
- 3 The social stratification of (r) in New York City department stores
- 4 The isolation of contextual styles
- 5 The linguistic interview
- 6 The survey of the Lower East Side
- II Social differentiation
- III Social evaluation
- IV Synthesis
- Glossary of linguistic symbols and terminology
- Appendix A Questionnaire for the ALS Survey
- Appendix B Anonymous observations of casual speech
- Appendix C Analysis of losses through moving of the MFY sample population
- Appendix D Analysis of the non-respondents: the television interview
- Appendix E The out-of-town speakers
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The methods for isolating contextual styles, as discussed in Chapter 4, were designed to be applied in a series of linguistic interviews. These interviews were conducted on the Lower East Side, as a secondary survey of a sample population that had already been carefully studied for its social characteristics. Chapter 6 will discuss the methods and the design of this social survey, and the sampling methods which were followed for the linguistic study. The present chapter will be concerned only with the linguistic interview itself, as it would be applied to any speaker of English.
The interview is constructed around the problem of isolating contextual styles, and almost every detail of the questionnaire can be understood from that point of view. In the evolution of the questionnaire, however, the situation was not so clear-cut. The method for isolating contextual styles gradually emerged from the interview as it evolved in exploratory studies; as the importance of the exact definition of style became apparent, and the ways of eliciting casual speech were developed, the interview was reshaped to its present form. As it now stands, every part of the interview serves a double purpose:
to measure the values of the five phonological variables in the context and style of that section;
to gather the information which is the ostensible subject of the questions being asked.
- Type
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- Information
- The Social Stratification of English in New York City , pp. 87 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006