Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-tbj44 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T12:08:13.992Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cleaning up for company: Using participant roles to understand fieldworker effect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2006

SUZANNE WERTHEIM
SUZANNE WERTHEIM
Affiliation:
Center for Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland, Box 25, College Park, MD 20742-5121, swertheim@casl.umd.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines some issues facing the fieldworker attempting to observe and record “natural” conversations, and it reconsiders the long-held sociolinguistic notion of the observer's paradox by recasting it within Allan Bell's framework of audience design theory. Style shifting in observed and recorded speech events is seen to be influenced by speakers' perception of the fieldworker's social role, and by the fieldworker's participant role in the speech event.An earlier and much briefer version of this article was presented at the 2002 Berkeley Linguistics Society conference. I am most grateful to Barbara Johnstone, Jane Hill, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments. Funding for this fieldwork was provided by grants from the International Research and Exchange Board, the Academy for Educational Development, and the Berkeley Program in Post-Soviet Studies.

Keywords

fieldworker effectaudience designstyle shiftingbilingualismTatarRussia

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 35 , Issue 5 , November 2006 , pp. 707 - 727
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Baugh, John (1993). Adapting dialectology: The conduct of community language studies. In D. R. Preston (ed.), American dialect research, 167–191. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bauman, Richard (1975). Verbal art as performance. American Anthropologist 77:290–311.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard, & Sherzer, Joel (1989). Introduction to the second edition. In R. Bauman & J. Sherzer (eds.), Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, ix–xxvii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bell, Allan (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13:145–204.Google Scholar
Bell, Allan (2001). Back in style: Reworking audience design. In P. Eckert & J. Rickford (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 139–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Besnier, Niko (1994). The truth and other irrelevant aspects of Nukulaelae gossip. Pacific Studies 17(3):1–39.Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles (1984). Learning how to ask: Native metacommunicative competence and the incompetence of fieldworkers. Language in Society 13:131–128.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, & Levinson, Stephen (1979). Social structure, groups, and interaction. In K. R. Schere & H. Giles (eds.), Social markers in speech, 291–341. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Roger, & Gilman, Albert (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in language, 253–276. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cameron, Deborah (1995). Verbal hygiene. London & New York: Routledge.
Coupland, Nicholas (1980). Style-shifting in a Cardiff work setting. Language in Society 9:1–12.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nicholas (2001). Language, situation, and the relational self: theorizing dialect-style in sociolinguistics. In P. Eckert & J. Rickford (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 185–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cukor-Avila, Patricia, & Bailey, Guy (2001). The effects of the race of the interviewer on sociolinguistic fieldwork. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5:254–270.Google Scholar
Dorian, Nancy (1994). Stylistic variation in a language restricted to private-sphere use. In D. Biber & E. Finegan (eds.), Sociolinguistic perspectives on register, 217–232. New York: Oxford University Press.
Eckert, Penelope, & Rickford, John (eds.) (2001). Style and sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elías-Olivares, Lucía (1976). Ways of speaking in a Chicano community: A sociolinguistic approach. Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.
Finegan, Edward, & Biber, Douglas (2001). Register variation and social dialect variation: The register axiom. In P. Eckert & J. Rickford (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 235–267. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gal, Susan, & Irvine, Judith (1995). The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologies construct difference. Social Research 62:966–1001.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame analysis. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Goffman, Erving (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Gumperz, John (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Irvine, Judith (2001). “Style” as distinctiveness: The culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. In P. Eckert & J. Rickford (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 21–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jaffe, Alexandra (1999). Locating power: Corsican translators and their critics. In Jan Blommaert (ed.), Language ideological debates, 39–66. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Jahangiri, N. (1980). A sociolinguistic study of Tehrani Persian. Ph.D. dissertation, University of London.
Labov, William (1972). Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in Society 1:97–120.Google Scholar
Lewis, Julie (2002). Social influences on female speakers' pitch. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Milroy, Lesley (1987a). Language and social networks. 2nd ed. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell.
Milroy, Lesley (1987b). Observing and analysing natural language: A critical account of sociolinguistic method. Oxford & New York: Blackwell.
Milroy, Lesley; Li, Wei; & Moffat, Suzanne (1991). Discourse patterns and fieldwork strategies in urban settings: Some methodological problems for researchers in bilingual communities. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 12:287–300.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor (1978). Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Preston, Dennis (2001). Style and the psycholinguistics of sociolinguistics: The logical problem of language variation. In P. Eckert & J. Rickford (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 279–304. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rampton, Ben (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London & New York: Longman.
Rickford, John (1983). What happens in decreolization. In R. Anderson (ed.), Pidginization and creolization as language acquisition, 298–319. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Rickford, John, & McNair-Knox, Faye (1994). Addressee- and topic-influenced style shift: A quantitative sociolinguistic study. In D. Biber & E. Finegan (eds.), Sociolinguistic perspectives on register, 235–276. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rivers, William. (2002). Attitudes towards incipient Mankurtism among Kazakhstani college students. Language Policy 1:159–174.Google Scholar
Russell, Joan (1982). Networks and sociolinguistic variation in an African urban setting. In Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Sociolinguistic variation in speech communities, 125–140. London: Edward Arnold.
Schilling-Estes, Natalie (1998). Investigating ‘self-conscious’ speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English. Language in Society 27:58–83.Google Scholar
Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2002). Investigating stylistic variation. In J. K. Chambers et al. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 375–401. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Walker, Edward (1996). The dog that didn't bark: Tatarstan and asymmetrical federalism in Russia. Harriman Review 9(4):1–35.Google Scholar
Walters, Keith (1989). The interviewer as a variable in quantitative sociolinguistic studies. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America meeting, Washington, D.C., December 27–30.
Wertheim, Suzanne (2003a). Language ideologies and the “purification” of post-Soviet Tatar. Ab Imperio 1:347–369.Google Scholar
Wertheim, Suzanne (2003b). Linguistic purism, language shift, and contact-induced change in Tatar. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Wertheim, Suzanne (2005). Gender and the transgression of Tatar sociolinguistic conventions. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Ethnological Society, San Diego, California, April 7–10.
Woolard, Kathryn, & Schieffelin, Bambi (1994). Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:55–82.Google Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, Malcah (2001). Primitives of a system for “style” and “register.” In P. Eckert & J. Rickford (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 170–184. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.