The Written Questionnaire as a Sociolinguistic Data Gathering Tool

Abstract

Self-reports in linguistic study, which were central to the dialect surveys of the twentieth century, have, by and large, been relegated to the sidelines by more advanced sociolinguistic techniques in recent years. This article probes into the validity of written self-report surveys in relation to the fieldwork method for Vancouver, British Columbia. Confirming Chambers's general findings of equivalence, it produces insights into the preferred length of written questionnaires and offers recommendations as to question type. The present article also compares the written questionnaire results to acoustically analyzed recorded data for yod-dropping and the low-back vowels before /r/, identifying linguistic items that correlate well with results from self-reports and those that fail to produce reliable results because of ongoing linguistic change or reindexicalization in the case of yod-dropping. Overall, written self-report surveys are found to be highly reliable data gathering tools if certain factors are kept in mind.

T-to-R and the Northern Subject Rule: questionnaire-based spatial, social and structural linguistics

“…(1997: 57) that ‘self-reports might be more valid and reliable measures of linguistic behavior than linguists have supposed’. Dollinger (2012: 103) concludes that ‘Overall, self-reporting should be seriously considered as a legitimate data collection method, especially so for dialectological projects. While some phonetic nuances cannot be operationalized in written format, basic phonemic differences can be fruitfully employed.’ Obviously, we concur with this position and thus it informed our questionnaire design.…”

“…Along the same lines, we believe that it makes little sense to query participants regarding the preferences of others concerning the occurrence of T-to-R in certain words and environments when we want to know exactly what an informant believes is going on in their own system. Indeed, in a detailed investigation of precisely this issue, Dollinger (2012: 76) notes that ‘Some researchers have shown that self-reporting might be the best option for low-frequency items.’ He further cites the assertion in Bailey et al . (1997: 57) that ‘self-reports might be more valid and reliable measures of linguistic behavior than linguists have supposed’.…”

The western Canada‐US border as a linguistic boundary: The roles of L1 and L2 speakers

“…Chambers (1998b: 225) addressed the traditional reservations of dialectologists against written self‐report questionnaires and showed that results obtained from written questionnaires are equivalent to those from fieldworker‐based data. Dollinger (2012) compares audio‐recorded data with written self‐reports and finds confident equivalence for most variables.…”

“…Such a result can hardly be called an Americanization. Instead, as indicated earlier, there is reason to believe that yod in student may be used to index various social meanings (Clarke 2006; Dollinger 2012: 97–100). The colloquial form me and Tom for coordinated subjects has now caught up in Washington to previous Vancouver levels, while Vancouver has decreased its use somewhat.…”

Estudio Emp�rico Sobre La Actitud Hacia Los Usos De La Modalidad Ling��stica Andaluza Seg�n Diferen

“…De este modo, propusimos posibilidades según los niveles de variación diafásica formal, estándar e informal a partir de tres hipotéticos interlocutores (una entrevista de trabajo, los padres del informante y el mejor amigo del mismo). Además de esto, nos basamos en la teoría de la construcción de escalas de actitud lingüística (Giles & Marlow 2011;Hernández-Campoy 2004;Schmid & Dussedorp 2010), así como de cuestionarios escritos como instrumentos de medición de variables sociolingüísticas (Dollinger 2012). Por otro lado, tuvimos en cuenta investigaciones acerca de la validación de instrumentos de aplicación en contextos educativos (Wayne & Shaw 2012;Zwick et al 2008).…”