184 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE
In interview, the words on the SRNs are read aloud, thus eliciting a more formal
speech style from informants. Participants are then encouraged to think and note down
other words during the interview encounter itself, through more informal conversation.
The successful nature of the SRNs as a lexical data elicitation technique was proved in an
early pilot study (see Llamas 1999), where, in interview, from the 80 standard notion words
on the three SRNs, 272 lexical dialectal variants were produced and recorded, thus show-
ing the fruitfulness of adopting such a multi-method approach for lexical variation alone.
After the informant has read out the words they have recorded on the SRNs around
the standard notion word, the interviewer then guides an informal conversation
around the specific lexical variants that informants have written down, with the over-
all aim of eliciting a more informal phonological production, as well as grammatical
language variation and attitudinal information.
If conducted effectively these informal interview conversations can also produce
a wealth of information on language attitudes, including attitudes relating to the
crucial sociolinguistic variables of speaker age and gender as well as participants’
views on word etymologies and their own perspectives on language change over time.
A whole range of different sociolinguistic aspects of language study can thus be elicited
by using this multi-method.
Using SRNs
q To get a good sense of how an SRN works, take time to fill in your own dialect
words or phrases in the three SRNs given above.
q In order to test the potential usefulness of the multi-method approach described
in this unit, select two informants from a particular geographical area (use
friends or family members if you wish) and apply the SRN data collection
method (also including the questionnaire above in your initial, pre-interview data
pack). Ensure you give your informant the required time before the interview takes
place and conduct the encounter in an informal setting where they will feel most
comfortable. Ensure you audio record your interview (see B12).
q Once you have completed the data collection process, assess the effectiveness of
the method by answering the following questions:

q What recording equipment would you use and where would you locate it?
q What ethical barriers/dangers might be faced?
q Do any ethical permissions need to be obtained?
q Are there any of the situations listed below where you would not attempt data
collection?
q Would you consider participant observation?
q Would the observer’s paradox be an issue?
q If so, how would you try to minimise its effects?
q Could an experimental setting be created to elicit similar data?
Language in informal settings
a) A conversation between your friends in your living room
b) A conversation between your friends in a café or pub
c) An intimate conversation between lovers on the telephone
d) An intimate conversation between lovers in their own home
e) An argument between a couple in a supermarket
f) An argument between a couple in their own home
Language in online settings
a) Email correspondence between friends
b) Email correspondence between an intimate couple
c) Online social networking public ‘wall’ message postings
d) Online social networking private email postings
e) Discussions in chat rooms with friends
f) Discussions in chat rooms between lecturers and students
g) Blog postings on a national newspaper website
h) Blog postings on a specialised website for members only
Language in educational settings
a) The language of primary school children in the classroom
b) The language of primary school children in the playground
Activity 12.2
J

gies that humans acquired. It has been the focus not only of analytical linguistic study
but also of fantastical and science fictional speculation. Of course, any perspective on
language is a view of language, with inbuilt assumptions about the nature of language
itself. Much science fictional discourse on language (such as in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-
Four: see B13) is deterministic in its assumptions, expressing a strong Sapir-
Whorfianism and a hard linkage between expression and thought.
C13
Activity 13.1
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THEORY INTO PRACTICE 187
In Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, speculation about the historical evolution of
languages leads eventually to this conversation
‘I’m here on the Raft looking for a piece of software – a piece of medicine to be specific
– that was written five thousand years ago by a Sumerian personage named Enki, a
neurolinguistic hacker.’
‘What does that mean?’ Mr. Lee says. ‘It means a person who was capable of
programming other people’s minds with verbal streams of data, known as namshubs.’
Ng is totally expressionless. He takes another drag on his cigarette, spouts the
smoke up above his head in a geyser, watches it spread out against the ceiling. ‘What
is the mechanism?’
‘We’ve got two kinds of language in our heads. The kind we’re using now is acquired.
It patterns our brains as we’re learning it. But there’s also a tongue that’s based in
the deep structures of the brain, that everyone shares. These structures consist of
basic neural circuits that have to exist in order to allow our brains to acquire higher
languages.’
‘Linguistic infrastructure,’ Uncle Enzo says. ‘Yeah. I guess “deep structure” and
“infrastructure” mean the same thing. Anyway, we can access those parts of the brain
under the right conditions. Glossolalia – speaking in tongues – is the output side of it,
where the deep linguistic structures hook into our tongues and speak, bypassing all
the higher, acquired languages. Everyone’s known that for some time.’

‘The Babel fish’, said
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
quietly, ‘is small, yellow
and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave
energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all uncon-
scious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then
excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the con-
scious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of
the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick
a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form
of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which
has been fed into your mind by the Babel fish.’
Adams (1979: 49–50)
q Why is the Babel fish as far-fetched and impractical as the universal translator?
q You might consider the theoretical assumptions that Adams makes about the
pre-linguistic nature of consciousness and thought. Do you think in language?
Do you feel emotions, moods and dispositions in language? Can one language be
translated exactly into another (even when both languages are terrestrial rather
than alien)?
Some cogitations
Consider the following questions, which draw on the material presented across this
book. Discuss your thinking with your friends and colleagues.
q The different general approaches to language (structuralist, functionalist, generative,
cognitivist, and so on) all have their advantages and disadvantages. Each prioritises
different facets of language. Do you think it will ever be possible to produce a
definitive and comprehensive model of language, or is there a defining limitation
on linguistics for two main reasons. Firstly, language is too complex and multi-
faceted to be accounted for by one perspective. Secondly, it is impossible to take
a view of language without taking a view of it, and so it is impossible to be objective.
Even if you agree with these arguments, why might linguistics still be worth doing?

paradox. In other fields of investigation, it is possible to minimise the observer’s
paradox by replicating experiments on the object, by engaging in several different
approaches to the same object, or by using a system of measurement that is
universally accepted. When the object of exploration is language itself, however,
the difficulty is that the object changes with any form of contact. Furthermore, the
means of thinking about language is articulated in language itself. In linguistics,
then, is the observer’s paradox insurmountable?
q Is linguistics a science or an art?
q You have been reading a textbook, in which we have mainly and necessarily
presented ‘facts’ about language in an authoritative way. We have suggested in
various places that there are different and contentious views on what the facts
of language are, and whether there are in fact any facts at all. Even where we have
presented as straightforward a picture as possible, in almost all cases there are debates
and discussions in the field, and all statements in language study should be
treated with proper scepticism as being provisional. For each unit and across each
strand, explore the Further Reading we provide at the end of section D, and decide
for yourself whether you agree with our assumptions about language.