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The reporter's test as a sociolinguistic tool

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Martin J. Ball
Affiliation:
School of Speech Therapy, South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education

Abstract

The problem confronted by many sociolinguists of assuring sufficient examples of a particular variable in their data is discussed, and a pilot study using various different data elicitation techniques is described. The most useful of these appears to be the reporter's test, which is described in detail. A further study is described, which, like the first, is on features of Welsh, and this supports the previous findings. From these studies we have evidence that the reporter's test not only has great predictive capacity, but also appears to produce casual styles of speech. The value of this for sociolinguists is clear. (Data collection, Welsh)

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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