7. Dialect (Vincent Phillips)

1. Field of study

In everyday life people co-operate and interact with each other in a number of ways: with immediate members of the family in their homes, with friends and neighbours in their local community, with colleagues at work and with complete strangers in meetings further afield. It is in this web of inter-relationships that language is used to forge and maintain friendships, to communicate, to instruct, to enthrall and to carry out all the other functions necessary in any social inter action using the medium of speech.

Language behaviour itself is extremely complex. When viewed in use in society, it is marked by two apparently contradicting characteristics. To participate fully in the activities of a society and to interact naturally with its other members, a speaker must be able to practise the communication code recognised by that society. The use of this communication code, or language, demands mastery of and adherence to the accepted forms of the particular structural patterning the relational framework - pertaining to that one language, otherwise effective understanding between people will prove difficult if not impossible. A speaker must learn the speech sounds of the language, their arrangement in 'words', the construction of sentences and the meanings associated with these 'words' and constructions, if he is to communicate effectively with other speakers in his community.1 Yet any observation of linguistic behaviour in society reveals diversity. Speakers do not all speak in the same way. The dialectologist is interested in aspects of this diversity; in particular as to how the variant patterns of the language are ordered and how the variations relate to each other territorially.

Differences of language are not all of the same order. Indeed some arise from extra-linguistic factors. Two main types of variation need to be distinguished:

- variation within the speech of the individual;
- variation within the community.


  1. On structural patterning and language see Lyons, J. ‘Structuralism and linguistics' in Robey, D. (Ed.) Structuralism: An Introduction; Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1973. On encoding see Moulton, W.G. A Linguistic Guide to Language Learning; New York: The Modern Language Association of America; 1970 and Jakobson, R. and Waugh, L.R. The Sound Shape of Language; Brighton: Harvester Press; 1979

Variation within individual speech

'Stylistic variations' occur because no one speaker will speak in the same manner in all situations. The totality of his speech forms -his 'idiolect,2 -will consist. of a range of styles which he deems appropriate to the varying social situations in which he may find himself. This appropriateness is dependent on factors present in the situation, such as 'place of interaction, topic of discourse, the person or people with whom the speaker is interacting, and of course, the degree of attention he is paying to his own speech'.3

Such styles are reflected in the way the language is spoken, in the choice of vocabulary and sentence constructions. They include also the attitude of the speaker at the time; whether he is polite, serious, patronising, etc. O'Connor, for example, commenting on such differences of pronunciation says that they 'can be graded by almost imperceptible degrees from stylised declamation at one end of the scale to the meaningful grunts of the family conversation at the other. 4' For the purposes of his particular transcriptions of spoken English he distinguishes between four styles: declamatory, formal colloquial, colloquial and familiar.

In certain cases the choice between stylistic variants may be determined by the occupation of speaker or listener. A lawyer in practising would naturally use the vocabulary and phraseology common to his profession, and the style appropriate to the formality of the occasion. Such variation is conditioned and is often given the special name of 'register variation'.
 


  1. Bloch, B. 'A set of postulates for phonemic analysis' in Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, Vol.24; 1948
  2. Milroy, L. 'Phonological correlates to community structure in Belfast' in Belfast Working Papers in Language and Linguistics, Vol .l; 1976; p.2 and Milroy, L. Language and Social Networks; Oxford: Basil Blackwell; 1980
  3. O'Connor, J.D. New Phonetic Readings from Modern English Literature; Berne: A. Francke; 1948; p.4

Variation within the community

Within a speech-community variation occurs along three dimensions: social, temporal and geographical.

Any social differentiation which sets up 'barriers' in society between its members can create linguistic variation. Social distance resulting from class-ordering of its members, or education, may mean greater recognition and prestige being given to certain varieties of speech. In many societies the speech of men and women differs whilst in others race and religion can form barriers as well. This kind of variation is often studied by sociolinguists.

Language itself is never static and linguistic variation may be correlated with the ages of speakers. Several studies have shown incipient differences. In a well-known study of a community in Switzerland which looked at the language of three age-groups 'drift by generations' was observed. The changes 'are more or less latent in the first generation, appear irregularly in the second, and expand in triumph in the third'.5

Linguistic changes, however gradual, over a long period of time result in different sound patterns, in different grammatical forms and in differences of vocabulary. But these changes are not uniform over all areas where the language is spoken, hence geographical variations arise. In some areas older forms are retained, in others innovations have been accepted and the changes permeate through the whole language structure of a speaker. In many areas, for example, speech sounds exist which are not found in the speech of other areas. Such sounds, participating in the patterning of the sound system of that area, establish it as a particular kind and thus set it apart from areas where these sounds do not occur at all. Other speech sounds, although in common use over a wide territorial area, may be found in particular combinations in some examples of speech and in different combinations in other examples. These patternings again can be set apart and identified as separate 'varieties,.6 Grammatical and syntactical forms, and items of vocabulary, may be isolated also in this way and can be related to known geographical areas. It is these areal varieties and their structural patterning and relationship to each other that are studied by dialectologists.

Areal differences arise because the speakers of a language through the long stages of its history, in their various communities, cannot possibly maintain close and frequent contact with each other. Certain areas -out of the way valleys for example -find themselves isolated from the mainstream of communications. A range of mountains can create a distinct barrier between communities. Political domination and religious boundaries have kept people in close contact whilst at the same time separating them from other areas. At a more local level, centres of influence for marketing produce, shopping, etc. -have drawn people from a particular hinterland and have spread their influence in certain directions whilst having little or no effect on other communities. Factors such as these have influenced the language patterns and a number of linguists have 'pointed out from different points of view that the closer the identifications of speakers the greater the range of shared interests and the more probable that tile speech will take a specific form. The range of syntactic alternation is likely to be reduced and the lexis to be drawn from a narrow range ... In these relationships the intent of the other person can be taken for granted as the speech is played out against a back-drop of common assumptions, common history, common interests. 7


  1. Entwistle, W.J. Aspects of Language; London: Faber and Faber; 1953; p.35
  2. Weinreich, U. 'Is a structural dialectology possible?' in Word: Journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York, Vol.10; 1954; p.389
  3. Bernstein, B. 'Social class, language and socialization' in Giglioli, P.P. (Ed.) Language and Social Context; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books; 1972; p.165
     

2. Types of dialect studies

Lexical studies

Many words to do with everyday life are not in general use throughout a complete language area and indeed many words of a language are known only to speakers within fairly confined regions. This realization and the related observation that common words often have· a distinct pronunciation in local speech as well as meanings which differ regionally, gave rise to the study of what words are to be found in a locality and what meanings are given to them. Of these studies the impetus to compile glossaries has been the most prevalent. These vary in coverage, some confining themselves to the uncommon words of a village or parish, and are little more than a chapter in a history of a dialect. Others aim at a complete collection of all the words in a defined locality. The value of these compilations is that they give precise information on the vocabulary used in one area at a particular time. More ambitious projects exist in some countries. In Finland, for example, collecting dialect words and phrases systematically in a number of determined locations covering the whole country in order to compile a Finnish dialect dictionary has been in progress for some years. Such glossaries and dictionaries should show with phonetic accuracy the form of a word as used by local speakers as well as defining fully its different meanings, giving examples of its usage in the various contexts where it is to be found.

Descriptive studies

The patternings exhibited in a language as spoken within speech communities which are geographically contiguous may often show imparity. The particular 'variety' of language that occurs in any community has its own structural patterning. In the phonological encoding of a language, varieties usually have a number of speech sounds in common, but in some regions sounds of distinctive quality occur which immediately identify a speaker from those areas. Furthermore, speech sounds may not all occur in the same positions in a linguistic structure in the varieties of two separate communities. Trubetzkoy distinguished these variations thus: 'A phonological difference based on inventory exists when a dialect possesses a phoneme that is not known in another dialect. A difference in phonological function is present when a phoneme in one dialect occurs in a phonological position in which it is not found in another dialect. 8

Again at another level in the language pattern, differences may occur. 'In many languages words play an important grammatical role, in that they are built out of smaller elements by certain patterns, but are put together into sentences by rather different patterns. 9 Word-forms and word arrangement in sentences in the variations of two areas showing incongruences exhibit, therefore, dissimilar morphological and syntactical patterning.

Synchronic descriptive studies aim to give an account of the linguistic encoding for a particular region. Within a chosen area homogeneous samples of speech are identified and the relationship patterns exhibited by them are analysed and described. The uniformity of the samples often determines the size of the area chosen for investigation. Conversely the study may describe the range of variation in linguistic patterning in one area taking into account the sociocultural factors that have conditioned speech and the variation related to age groups within communities. Such descriptive studies may deal with the data comprehensively or confirm themselves to selected aspects. As Leonard Bloomfield remarked ‘The modern demand would be rather for a description such as one might make of any language: phonology, syntax, and morphology, together with copious texts'.10
 


  1. Trubetzkoy, N. S. 'Phonology and linguistic geography' in Baltaxe, C.A.M. (Ed.) Principles of Phonology; University of California Press; 1969; p.298
  2. Hockett, C.F. A Course in Modern Linguistics; New York: The Macmillan Company; 1965; p.l?7
  3. Bloomfield, L. Language; London: George Allen and Unwin; 1950; p.323

Comparative studies

Whereas the descriptivist is concerned with investigating the linguistic patterning within one defined area, the comparativist sets out to gain an overall view of the linguistic variation obtaining within the whole speech area. The practices of these two students of linguistic variation contrast sharply. The descriptivist uses all possible data and very many informants within his chosen area of investigation. The comparativist uses the method of selective sampling:

'By choosing a limited body of linguistic items for investigation in a limited number of carefully selected communities, each of them represented by a single speaker belonging to a certain social class, or by one for each of two or more social levels, the area linguist hopes to obtain a general view of the dialectal structure of the total area within a relatively short time. He has no illusion about achieving a complete coverage of usage.'11

Linguistic sampling of this kind depends for its reliability on co-ordinating several factors:

The direct recording of the spoken language in each area being investigated must be undertaken by trained fieldworkers.

The linguistic items which are likely to reveal the whole spectrum of variation within the language must be carefully determined in advance. This means the preparation of a fieldwork questionnaire to be used in all the locations chosen for the investigation.

The communities within the speech area from which samples are taken must be selected so that they are likely to produce comparable data and adequate coverage.

Within each community the informants chosen to provide the local form of speech must be assessed so that they match as to social background and style of speaking.

The collecting work must be completed within a reasonable period of time so that the data reflects the state of the language at a given period.

Obviously the inclusion of more linguistic items in the fieldwork questionnaire might reveal some variations more clearly - incidental material observed in the course of collecting is often noted down - and the addition of more points of enquiry might show up in greater detail definite trends in particular areas, but the comparativist has a set purpose and a planned programme to adhere to if he is to acquire suitable data from all the communities included in the investigation. It must be stressed that this is sampling using a wide network. Any problem areas can be the subject of further fieldwork.

Collecting in the field will result in complete sets of local speech forms for each location visited. As a corollary each individual linguistic item in the survey, if the field collection has been successful, will have a local response corresponding to the location where it was noted down. These local forms can, therefore, be set out on a map of the whole speech area and this will reveal what areas use the same forms, what areas are different and what areas use more than one form. This is the arrangement employed by the comparativist and, thus, linguistic geography -or dialect geography as it is also called -came into being, resulting in complete dialect atlases covering many speech forms for a whole country.

Within a speech area, locations where the same linguistic form is used can be separated from others which use a different form. Variant phonological realizations of the same 'word' and variant 'words' having the same lexical meaning exhibit this grouping and separateness. Consequently dividing lines can be drawn on a map to mark off areas which resemble each other in their use of a particular speech form from other areas. These lines are called 'isoglosses'. Where the isoglosses for many linguistic items co-occur almost entirely across speech areas a 'dialect boundary' is said to exist along those locations. Comparative studies reveal the range of variant forms for each item within a speech area and, by examining the general pattern of many items, aim at determining where speech boundaries exist. These are then studied in relation to physical terrain, settlement patterns, development of transportation systems, growth of regional centres, etc. in order to see whether their presence across areas can be explained by such factors.

The central problem in studying areal patternings has always been the ordering of the particular features of a sample of speech so as to establish how they relate to the same particular features of another homogeneous sample of speech. The common practice was to focus on the immediately observable similarities and differences of speech forms -phonological variants of the same 'word' or lexical items - and on comparing those variant forms directly with the aim of revealing similarities or differences in the linguistic patterning. Uriel Weinreich in an important paper voiced a primary objection to such an approach. Such comparisons, he maintained, 'ignored the structures of the constituent varieties … existing dialectology usually compares elements belonging to different systems without sufficiently stressing their intimate membership in those systems'. He insisted that 'the forms of the constituent systems be understood first and foremost in terms of .those systems, 'and that structural dialectology's 'special concern is the study of partial similarities and differences between systems and of the structural consequences thereof.'12 He proposed a particular comparative co-ordering by means of what he called a diasystem. W.G. Moulton attempted to take areal dialectology a step further by mapping differences in complete systems, for example the vowel systems of different regional varieties of the language. 13


  1. Kurath, H. Studies in Area Linguistics; Bloomington: Indiana University Press; 1972; p.2
  2. Weinreich, op.cit.
  3. Moulton, w. G. 'The short vowel systems of Northern Switzerland', in Word, op.cit., Vol.16; pp.155-l82

 

3. Data to be collected

All studies concerned with investigating linguistic forms as they occur in everyday usage must rely on data collecting in the field through interviews with informants. This is to ensure that what is collected will be an acceptable sample, which will meet with the requirements of the study being undertaken. Certain factors are common to this data collecting process whether the study be lexical, descriptive or comparative.

Lexical

Compiling a dialect glossary or dictionary means exploiting as fully as possible the totality of expression in everyday use amongst the people of an area. A dialect dictionary devoting itself to the whole language is an immense project. One aspect of the lexicographical projects undertaken in Finland, for example, had as its aim 'a dialect dictionary exhaustively expounding the vocabulary of Finnish dialects, dialect forms and distribution' .14

It was calculated that for such a dictionary a specific number of 'complete' parish vocabularies would be needed. These 'complete' vocabularies would include:

The common vocabulary of the community in its everyday living which in itself will vary considerably according to the predominant occupations of its inhabitants.

The vocabulary particularly associated with those predominant occupations as well as other crafts and skills.

The vocabulary related to the whole range of aspects which form human experience: bird, plant and animal names, natural features, folk lore, hobbies and pastimes, etc.

The particular modes of expression of a community in its telling idioms and phrases which may often be peculiar to the region.

Such collecting should reflect regional differences in the vocabulary - the local forms of the 'same word' and the local words for the 'same thing' - and will include morphological variations.
 


  1. Castrenianum: The Centre 0 Research into Finnish and its Related Languages, Helsinki; 1965; p.6

Descriptive studies

To describe the sound patterning - the phonological encoding - and the composition of words and the manner in which they are ordered to form complete sentences the morphology and syntax - of a variety of speech within one defined area, requires a copious sample of speech-data if it is to be adequate enough to reflect the range of patternings in that variety within the levels mentioned.

The kind of questions to be answered may be illustrated in an example from the phonology of a variety of Welsh. It shows the importance of sound distribution in the patterning. In this variety the distinctive diphthong [æə] occurs. Native speakers will use it in monosyllabic forms:

/tæəd/ father ., /tæən/ fire

/fæa/ broad beans., /ɬæə Ɵ/ milk

In monosyllabic structures in surrounding areas this sound does not occur. It is replaced there and in most other areas of Wales by the sound [ɑː].

The process of collecting will reveal a certain ordering, a pattern, and pose questions for the investigator. He will want to know if [ɑː] occurs at all in the south-east Wales variety and whether [æə] occurs in structures other than monosyllabics. He will find that the sound [ɑː] occurs also in the variety but in other positions, namely in the first syllable of a disyllabic structure:

[pɑˑtäɬ] pan, [kɑˈtu] to keep

[nɑˈpöd] to recognise

In this position the pattern corresponds to what is common in other areas. The distribution of a sound in a system can be a factor which distinguishes varieties of speech. This is the case here. Apart from the fact that the presence of [æə] in the inventory of sound distinguishes the variety, the occurrence of [ɑː] does not display equivalence of distribution with other varieties and thereby also differentiates this variety.

What is collected must identify all the speech sounds - vowels and consonants - used, where they occur in structures, their positional variants, their possible combinations in consonant clusters or diphthongs, the range of structures, syllabic stress, junction variation and all such features which make up the phonological encoding. Likewise how word elements combine and are composed into word-forms must emerge from the collected data.

To ensure that he has collected the necessary data the researcher must resort to directed investigation of the speech usage, formulating questionnaires whose purpose is to reveal specific linguistic structures, and to follow up initial results with further questionnaires designed to throw light on particular problems. What goes into a questionnaire will be based on the investigator's experience of the language and especially on what is known regarding specific varieties of it. But the arrangement of a questionnaire must be thought out and related to the way language is normally used in the community, if the samples are to approach what could be deemed as a natural response. In order to do this the investigator must be conversant with the pattern of livelihood within the various communities of "the area and must centre his enquiries on topics related to his informants' everyday experience.

Comparative

A comparative study provides a conspectus of the linguistic usage at a certain period in time. At the planning stage for such a survey two aspects relating to its range have to be decided. The first of these has to do with determining the territorial extent of the field investigations. This should not prove difficult. The survey may cover an agreed area of the country with the remaining parts being apportioned to be investigated by other centres, or it may be the intention to cover the whole country from the working base. In a case of this kind, as happened in Ireland, practical co-operation between interested centres in providing financial resources and trained staff can ensure that one centre is able to plan and undertake such a survey for the whole country.15

The second aspect relates to the scope of what is to be collected in each location chosen for investigation. This depends on the kinds of variation in usage to be surveyed. Basic to all these types obviously is the regional variation, but within this divergence the differences related to social dimensions and age groups are included in the wider ranging surveys. Criticism was often made of the earlier surveys in that they confined themselves to the speech of the older generation and to one social group, frequently a rural informant. 16 In The Linguistic Atlas of the United States it was maintained, however, that 'all population centres of any importance are regularly included, and, in principle, all social levels are represented' .17

After deciding the scope of the survey, the collecting of data as in the case of the other studies must meet with the criterion of adequacy of evidence for what is proposed. Sufficient data must be obtained from each place of investigation to provide information for the ensuing analysis. In order to evaluate the kinds of phonological encoding likely to occur regionally this concept of the adequacy of evidence for each set of data collected was formulated thus:

'Care was taken to provide sufficient material for a rather full description, both phonemic and phonic, of the pronunciation of each informant, and hence for determining the regional and social distribution of the phonic variations of all the phonemes of American English, and for establishing differences in phonemic structures. '18

In the later stages of analyzing the data 'the essential soundness of the expectation' was proved. 19

As we are again in search of natural speech-forms the data must be collected from the language of common interaction within the community. For this reason:

'Regional and local expressions are most common in the vocabulary of the intimate everyday life of the home and the farm -not only among the simple folk and the middle class but also among the cultured ... Food, clothing, shelter, health, the day's work, play, mating, social gatherings, the land, the farm buildings, implements, the farm stocks and crops, the weather, the fauna, and the flora -these are the intimate concern of the common folk in the countryside, and for these things expressions are handed down in the family and the neighbourhood that schooling and reading and a familiarity with regional or national usage do not blot out. 20


  1. Barry, M. v. 'The methodology of the tape-recorded survey of Hiberno-English speech' in Barry, M.V. (Ed.) Aspects of English Dialects in Ireland, Vol.1; Belfast: The Queen's University; 1981; pp.22-3
  2. Chambers, J.K. and Trudgill, P. Dialectology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1980; pp.33-5 and Petyt, K.M. The Study of Dialect; London: Andre Deutsch; 1980; pp.154 et.seqq.
  3. Kurath, op.cit., p.l1
  4. Kurath, H et al. Handbook of Linguistic Geography of New England; Rhode Island: Brown University; 1939: p.148
  5. Kurath, H. and McDavid Jr., R.I. The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; 1961; p.2
  6. Kurath, H. A Word Geography of the Eastern United States; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; 1949; pp.9-10

4. Dialect study projects

From what has been said of the nature of dialect studies it is clear that some of them necessitate setting up an investigation project on an extensive scale. A lexicographical study of the whole language culminating in compiling a dialect dictionary or a comparative study covering the whole country with the intention of publishing a dialect atlas requires an active programme of data collection.

These investigations will produce manuscript material, usually in the form of phonetic transcriptions of spoken forms, written up in answer books designed to correlate with a linguistic questionnaire or vocabulary items taken down on index cards. Where sound recording is part of the project there will also be tapes of interviews in the field, incorporating questionnaire material and a corpus of uninterrupted speech.

Such linguistic projects, therefore, consist of a number of operations: planning the survey, field collecting and archiving of the data. After their completion the resulting studies can get under way. In setting up a project, however, certain basic requirements are necessary and decisions affecting the whole investigation have to be taken to ensure good order. These will be considered now.

Control centre

In any undertaking which involves the planning and collecting of data in the field, the building up of an archive for the future and the promulgation of research, a centre where all the activities are coordinated is essential. At such a base the work can be organized and supervised. To ensure continuity it will also have the task of providing funds for its projects. Other research specialists and interests can be concerned with formulating policies but they should not interfere with the day-ta-day running. The Lexicography Foundation of the University of Helsinki, for example, 'was established by certain learned societies ... It was important that the Ministry of Education be included among the founders and the government was therefore persuaded to take part in the comprehensive undertaking ... Parliament awarded funds for word collection and when the continuation of state aid was promised it was possible to organize the work on a new basis' .21 But it is the Foundation which controls the project.

The centre will provide a base for staff, will house the necessary equipment for fieldwork and analysis of the speech-material, will provide conditioned storage rooms for the recorded audio-magnetic tapes and space for the catalogues, information retrieval systems and other archive material.


  1. Castrenianum, op.cit., p.11

Staffing

At a centre planning linguistic investigations a nucleus of staff covering different aspects of the work will be required. These will include:

staff to undertake collecting in the field;

technical help to ensure effective maintenance of the sound recording and auditory equipment;

archive staff to catalogue and arrange the collected material.

Where publication of the results is to follow, the aid of specialists - such as cartographers in making dialect maps - will be necessary. A research co-ordinator who will be concerned with planning what is to be investigated and who will supervise the programme of collection will be responsible for the complete undertaking. He should be able to consult specialists in the language in deciding the scope of the investigation, what it should include and its territorial extent.

The nature of the dialect investigation being undertaken will determine what kind of staff can be used for collecting in the field. The financial resources will dictate their number and how they should be remunerated.

To take down speech forms in transcription requires rigorous training in phonetics and, where a team of transcribers is employed in the field, even extra training is necessary in order to standardize individual practices in denoting shades of sound, in recording quantity and stress, in defining meanings of words and other matters. This was attempted in the case of the Linguistic Atlas of New England, as some nine fieldworkers helped with the investigation. Both for descriptive and comparative studies training in linguistics is also essential. As the research deals specifically with linguistic patterning the investigators should have a grounding in phonology and grammar.

In lexicographical projects the number of collectors is on a far greater scale, and it would prove too costly to take them all on staff permanently. In such projects they may be of two kinds. The trained collectors undertaking the main thrust of the investigation are usually people who have taken a degree in a linguistic subject. Their collecting can be financed by means of scholarships awarded for three or four years, so that they could collect in the same area for that period, and the total project can be managed both financially and territorially in this way. They will require training before venturing into a selected area. Some centres organize courses in word collecting so that such fieldworkers set about their task knowing what is required by the collecting archive if it is to have data that can be relied upon.

The second kind are people who will aid the project motivated by a natural interest in language: the voluntary correspondents. Finland has achieved a remarkable success in nurturing such correspondents: ordinary farmers, housewives, foresters and schoolmasters.

By means of a special magazine: Sanastaja ('word collector'), they are guided and made aware of what could be collected and are encouraged in their collecting. Such is the interest in this activity that at one time up to 1000 native correspondents sent in word collections to the archive. They are not paid for the work but may be awarded book or money prizes. Being people of the area they have the distinct advantage of knowing what local words, turns of phrase and idioms are used in the multitude of circumstances that make up human experience.

The activities of these two kinds of collectors complement each other. The trained collectors probe and elicit word forms, the voluntary collectors are awakened to be aware of the richness of their language and to offer from their vast repository of knowledge.

Equipment

In all linguistic investigations fieldwork is a central activity and the necessary equipment to conduct it effectively must be procured. The collected data needs to be studied in more detail and suitable equipment is also required for this aspect of the work.

For fieldwork, both transportation and recording equipment need to be considered. The dialect fieldworker must be able to visit all parts of the country - even those not easily accessible - in the course of finding and choosing informants. For this travelling a suitable vehicle is a necessity if he is to complete interviews and recordings within a reasonable time. It need not be much more than a small robust vehicle able to carry the fieldworker and his equipment to his place of investigation. Under more arduous conditions a vehicle able to withstand rough road tracks and inclement weather would have to be used. For more sophisticated projects a recording car properly fitted for the purpose is often employed. Such an arrangement, however, calls for the services of a recording technician as well. 22

As the recorded sound material is subjected to painstaking auditory analysis and will in most instances be deposited in a sound archive for future consultation, it should be the aim to make the audio-magnetic recordings of the highest standard, bearing in mind of course the field conditions under which the interviewing takes place. Professional tape recorders, reel-to-reel, should be used where possible as domestic equipment is hardly suitable, and great care should be taken in choosing the right machine. The technical requirements for such equipment are further considered in the appropriate chapter of this publication.

As the fieldworker is at the same time the interviewer and the recordist, a high quality portable recorder which can be operated where there is no electricity supply, if needs be, should be chosen. Consideration must be given to microphones which match the recorder. Two high quality condenser microphones of compact size, one for the interviewer and one for the informant, are at present the best means of coping with recording two persons. Such a microphone can easily be clipped on to an article of clothing and arranged at an appropriate distance from the speaker's mouth. The voice level for interviewer and informant can then be adjusted separately.

An alternative method is to use a cardioid response dynamic microphone positioned on a boom arm stand. The microphone can be placed between interviewer and informant, again at an angle taking into account the voice levels of each.

Stereo recordings are far more difficult to complete and require specialist expertise. In spite of the great strides made in developing compact cassette recorders they do not appear as yet to equal reel-to-reel recordings in performance.

Additional equipment will have to be acquired for use at the archive. Here, listening in detail to field recordings in order to analyze the speech sounds of each variety and prepare phonetic transcriptions calls for a playback system that reproduces faithfully and clearly what has been recorded. It should comprise a tape recorder deck that can withstand periods of intensive use in replaying portions of tape, a good amplifier system and a separate loudspeaker. No erase head is required on the tape recorder since it might cause accidental erasures. Greater clarity in reproducing a recording at any required sound level can often be achieved by using a pair of headphones and their use has the advantage of not disturbing other people in the vicinity to the same degree.

For preparing copies of tape recordings other tape recorders are required and where funds allow the purchase of studio equipment should be considered.

A great deal of time is taken up at the archive in listening to the contents of tapes and to particular sound qualities within the 'utterances' (i.e. the complete response offered by the informant) so as to prepare accurate transcriptions. Two other pieces of equipment are useful aids in this listening process. The one is a 'tape-repeater' by means of which parts of an utterance can be selected from the interview tape and re-recorded on to a tape loop on another tape-deck. As its name suggests, this recording can then be repeated any number of times without having to replay the interview tape interminably. The complete section or parts of it can be concentrated on in greater detail to further the analysis. An even more specific portion of speech can be analyzed by means of the 'speech segmentator'. As before a portion of the interview tape is re-recorded and any brief part of the speech event - the onset to a particular consonant, the offglide of a vowel - can be isolated for repetitive listening and closer analysis.


  1. Hedblom, 'The tape recording of dialect for linguistic sound archives', in Svenska Landsmåal och Svenskt Folkliv; 1961; pp. 51-100

Archival considerations

Collecting in the field will result in the creation of manuscript and recorded material, to be sent back to the archive centre holding all the collected data. This data will obviously be used by researchers working on the immediate projects being undertaken, but it must be borne in mind that both the manuscript and the sound recorded material can serve the needs of different researchers and that other scholars may wish to consult it from time to time. As linguistic surveys are costly, further investigations of a similar kind are unlikely to be undertaken again for some time. Consequently if the collected data is to be readily usable, certain archival considerations have to be heeded before fieldwork has begun and the data, as it accrues, must be kept in a properly organized archive. The magnetic sound recordings should, of course, be stored under suitable conditions in the archive.

An appropriately designed answer book is used for taking down transcriptions of the speech forms of the informants. It is arranged in such a way that each answer correlates with a numbered question in the dialect questionnaire which is to be used to collect the data. A completed answer book will contain the data of one informant, each item in it being his answer to a question and the whole representing a variety of speech from one area. An extra column is usually provided to note down any 'incidental' material; that is, any further expressions used in the community which exemplify a particular speech form or any similar words having the same meaning.

Biographical details of the informant are also noted down so as to identify a data sample and, from each locality investigated, a number of such answer books will be produced. This will be the working programme throughout the whole area being surveyed. From these answer books the data necessary for mapping work, for example, will be abstracted.

Vocabular items collected when undertaking fieldwork related to lexicographical projects should be entered directly on to index cards, all of a specified size. These will come together in the archive and will be arranged according to a manner of indexing previously established. The information on each card should be set out according to a prescribed form. Normally it will include the index word in the standard language; the spoken form, which may be in transcription; its meaning, with complete utterances to illustrate its use. The card also shows the region from which the information was obtained, the collector's name, the questionnaire number and date of investigation. Thus one card contains details of a single meaning given to a word. All the fieldworkers, including voluntary collectors, should be taught to note down lexical items in this way, as this procedure will reduce considerably any recopying work which otherwise might have become necessary.

The vocabularies can be arranged in a single alphabetical index or in collections according to regions, as is required. With modern photo-copying devices copies of cards can be made so that different arrangements of the same material· is possible.

In section 4(c) of this chapter attention has already been drawn to the necessity of achieving the highest technical standards possible in field recording. Similar care and investment is needed in the archive to ensure the permanent preservation of recorded material. The main factors to be considered are the choice of tape, of tape formats and of recording speeds as well as the copying, packaging and storage of the archive collection. Regular conservation procedures should also be carried out. Readers should study Chapter 2 of this publication, and the associated references listed in Appendix A, for detailed advice on these subjects.

5. Field investigations

Before undertaking actual collecting in the field, three matters need to be brought together. Firstly, a representative sample of all the locations where the fieldworker will collect data must be listed. Obviously, previous knowledge through published surveys and descriptions of variations in the language, as well as information on settlement history, the geographical features, and the effects of administrative boundaries will determine the coverage which will be deemed necessary. 23 Secondly, the linguistic questionnaire will by now be in a form which can be used in the field. It will contain, as we saw, all the possible phonic distinctions and their contextual variations, as well as the vocabular variation which can be expected. 24 These items will have been grouped around topics related to the everyday life with which the informant is familiar. Thus hearth, hob, ashes and tongs will be in a section on 'the fireplace'. Thirdly, how the interview should be conducted should be decided - the way the questions are to be framed,25 and whether the whole interviewing is to be tape recorded and, if so, how it should be done.

The practical aspect of a linguistic survey means, then, undertaking a field trip armed with questionnaire, answer-books, list of locations and sound recording equipment. The initial task in any location is to choose a suitable informant. A native of the area who has also resided there and whose speech is strongly representative of the local spoken language should, in most cases, be able to provide the expected data. Ability to hear well and to have clear articulation are also favoured. The informant will be the fieldworker's vital source in obtaining the necessary speech-forms, and the success of the whole undertaking depends on setting up a creative working relationship with him so that the local forms can be elicited without too much difficulty. Good results depend on tact and patience. 26

An accurate phonetic transcription of the informants' responses is essential if we are to understand the particular encoding of the spoken language offered by them. The answers are, therefore, taken down in a 'narrow' phonetic transcription, using the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association. 27 This may be undertaken in the course of the interviewing or, as has been more usual in recent surveys, from the tape recordings completed at each visit. Equipment which has already been mentioned can aid in the process.
 


  1. Dieth, E, and Orton, H. A Questionnaire for a Linguistic Atlas of England. Leeds: Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society; 1952: p. v.
  2. McIntosh, A. Introduction to a Survey of Scottish Dialects; Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh; 1952; pp.41-44
  3. Dieth and Orton, op.cit., p.vi
  4. ibid., vii; see also Samarin, W.J. Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work; New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston; 1967; 'The eliciting technique', pp.106-129
  5. Abercrombie, D. 'The Recording of dialect material' in Orbis: Bulletin international de Documentation Linguistique, Vol.iii; 1954; pp.231-235

6. Post fieldwork tasks

The products of fieldwork - vocabular cards, answer books and sound recordings - as they accumulate in the archive centre need to be registered clearly and stored carefully, as well as the biographical details for each informant and any interview notes evaluating the type of data collected. They are now available for the next stages of the project. 28 Analysis, appraisal and editing of what has been collected must get under way with a view to preparing the final publications intended. The studies which we have discussed will result in dialect dictionaries, in descriptive monographs of varieties of speech within regions, in dialect atlases, as well as in numerous studies dealing with aspects of linguistic behaviour which are reflected in the data collected in the field. The advantage of having sound recordings as well as manuscript data is clear. The informant's original contribution will be there to be consulted by ensuing scholars. But what has been acquired for study is a sample - wide-ranging or restricted according to the initial planning and the type of project undertaken - of a brief state of the language influenced by sociocultural factors and moulded by the thrusts of preceding centuries in the course of its perpetual development in time.


  1. On copyright see Flint, M.F. A User's Guide to Copyright; London: Butterworths, 1979