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

J. MARSHALL
3. LEXREC. This is an index score for the recognition of fifty Doric lexical
items read from the list, which appears above, under section 6.7. The words
were read out in the full Doric pronunciation, and the respondent was asked to
either give the meaning of the word, supply a Standard Scots English
equivalent, or to use the word in a sentence, in order to show that its meaning
was known. A correct answer yielded a score of one, and an incorrect one,
zero. The maximum possible score is fifty. The results of this test are,
however, used with caution, as passive lexical recognition does not
automatically imply active use in everyday situations 9 . These three linguistic
scores were then correlated with the social factors sex, age, life mode, social
network, social class, attitude to dialect and national pride.
6.12. Subjects
The part of the valley to be studied consists of a rough triangle formed by the
towns of Huntly and Insch, and the village of Kennethmont. The furthest of
these are twelve miles apart. The sample has been stratified according to age
and sex, and contains sixty-nine interviews, of which six have been excluded,
due to the unsuitability of the speakers 10 . That is to say, males and females are
equally represented, and the following age groups were sampled: eight to
twelve, fourteen to seventeen, twenty-five to forty, and over sixty. These
groups were chosen to fit in with the writer’s existing networks, and also to be
representative of the community. After a discussion with other sociolinguistic
researchers, it was decided to include two child age groups. The youngest
group was included because speakers are already at school-going age, but not
yet old enough to be subject to the peer pressure involved in teenage groups.
The interviewer also has family ties with children in this age group, which
have been exploited as network contacts in the community. The teenage group
was included because this group leads language change (Kerswill 1994), and
also because the interviewer has family ties with children in this age group in
the community. A minimum of eight speakers per cell was aimed for, as this is
the recommended minimum for statistical tests of significance.
9 Although lexical recognition was used extensively in Macafee and McGarrity’s (1999) study of Aberdeen.
10 These speakers are not ‘locals’, having moved to the area from other parts of the UK. This was an oversight
on the part of the research assistant.
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