Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

SOCIAL NETWORKS IN A RURAL SETTING
Paradox’ needs to be addressed. Speakers usually speak ‘correctly’ and
therefore formally in the presence of an interviewer and recorder. There are
ways around this problem.
Various techniques have been used to deal with the Observer’s Paradox,
the most common in earlier studies being the structured interview, where the
speaker is asked to perform tasks at decreasing levels of formality, followed
by informal speech where the speaker is encouraged to talk about childhood
and emotional experiences. Later experimenters have often followed Milroy
(1980), who argues that it is easier to access the vernacular if the informant is
relaxed and this is achieved when the interviewer is integrated into the speech
community (the friend-of-a-friend technique) (McMahon 1994: 234). In the
Doric study, the author’s family ties with one of the families in the valley
were brought into play to this end. A substantial percentage of the interviews
were, however, conducted by a research assistant, who, being local, could also
activate network contacts.
The advent of portable recorders has of course made it possible to
analyse large samples of continuous speech, giving modern researchers a great
advantage. In this study a Marantz CP 430 portable cassette recorder was used
with a PZM Professional desktop microphone, which does not appear as
intrusive as a normal microphone, as it is flat. This yielded good results, as it
is non-directional, and was able to pick up the interviewer and subject equally
well, without contributing negatively to the problem of the observer’s
paradox. The main study has followed on from the results of the pilot study
and literature review: the former showed that there are strong features of the
Doric in daily use in the community, and this provides clear linguistic
variables with which to compare the social scores. What needed to be tested
was whether one can show empirically that there is a correlation between the
social factors identified here and linguistic change. The linguistic variables
were identified during the pilot study, and the cards and word lists designed to
elicit these variables, and as mentioned, informal narratives were encouraged
during the interviews where possible (mostly in private homes, as time
constraints in the school prevented this). The questionnaire drew up a social
profile of the speaker with which the linguistic variables could be compared. It
was at this stage that the life mode of the speaker was evaluated. Obviously
repeated interviews over an extended period would have allowed for a more
complete picture to be built up, but this was not possible because of time
constraints. In Hatch and Lazaraton’s (1991) terms, this is a ‘one-shot’
research design, and relies on the notion of ‘apparent time’ change. As
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