Skip to main content

Research Questions for Citizen Sociolinguistics

As we are considering where research questions come from, I thought this recent twitter post might be worth reflecting on:


And some of the responses from (self-deprecating?) linguists:



This feed, and the role of "linguist" it projects seems counter to all we have been discussing in class as we start thinking about our own "research questions" and where they come from.  We have been thinking about research questions as arising not out of the typical "research gap" (suggested here by the questions about cot/caught regional variation or pluralization), but arising from those situations of language wonderment or arrest that we encounter when everyday people start talking about language in ways that are interesting to them, thought maybe not to linguists.  What if we started listening to what questions or compelling concerns the "happy and healthy" (or any other people going about their own lives) have about language instead of forcing our own questions and methods onto them like this crazed goose? This is the perspective-switch that citizen sociolinguistics demands... And I had to add my own tweet to this thread, even though it might be considered annoying and critical:

What questions have you heard out there--those generated by wonderment or arrest--that you might follow up on?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#JeSuisCirconflexe and other French citizen sociolinguistics events

I would like to invite you to take a look at several French examples to illustrate some of the key claims made by this week’s authors about the role of language in society. All of these could use lengthier developments (and probably will in the course of the semester 😉), but I would like to use them here to paint a sort of introductory big picture of the situation in France. In retrochronological order: 1) The first one comes from our Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer. In April 2018, in the heat of new reforms of primary and secondary education, he mentioned in several speeches and op-eds the importance of teaching the “passé-simple” (a rather difficult past tense used mainly in literature). In November of the same year, he was invited to a TV show called “Au tableau!” in which famous guests standing at the black board have to answer questions from school children. And of course… he made two mistakes attempting to conjugate the verb “to run” in ...
12 comments
Read more

Context Collapse and the Methodological Questions that Arise

Part I In his “unapologetically presentist reading of Goffman’s dissertation,” Dr. Moore presents several points with the intention of increasing our understanding of what is common and different in online and offline interaction, and I would like to begin the first part of my blog discussing one that resonated with me the most.   One of the points that I found relevant for understanding communication interaction was the idea of “faulty participant,” which I understood as needing more than verbal cues to successfully communicate (see p. 280). This notion is relevant to me, as it goes back to the idea that there are layers of meaning to what we say. For example: Chilean friend 1: Hey buddy! Do you want to join me for ‘ once’ (Pronounced “awn-say,” it translates as ‘eleven,’ but it is actually the equivalent of ‘dinner’ in the US). Chilean friend 2: Nah! I have stuff to do. Chilean friend 1: Are you sure? It’s my treat. Chilean friend 2: No, I am...
7 comments
Read more

"I don't want to call my husband's brother young master": How citizen sociolinguistic wonderment has led to the change in norms and practices

This past weekend in Korea, we celebrated a harvest festival called Chuseok . It is one of the only two three-day national holidays, which bring together family members who live apart in distant cities to visit their hometowns and family graves, to hold memorial services to their ancestors, and to share a feast of traditional Korean food. It is this very nature of the holiday that instigates active debate on various issues regarding family and traditions. Most controversial a mong them currently is the problem of the asymmetric address terms for one’s husband’s and wife’s family members. This issue has received considerable attention from both media and laypeople, which deserves examination from a citizen sociolinguistic perspective. As someone living abroad and not having engaged in the practices of addressing family members for a while, I watch the heat of social attention and debate with wonderment and awe: What makes people suddenly feel uncomfortable with the terms th...
5 comments
Read more