LINGUIST List 5.214

Wed 23 Feb 1994

Qs: Classroom interaction, English dialects, Cynicism

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Directory

1. Simon Williams, Corpus of classroom interaction
2. mmackenz, looking for refs on southern English
3. , Query: Cynicism

Hi

Does anyone know of a corpus of classroom interaction (on-line or otherwise),
ie transcripts of language classes, English or others, which are available to
researchers? Failing that, are there any corpora of general subject classroom
interaction? Thanks :-)

Simon Williams
School of Education
University of Southampton
Southampton SO9 5NH
England

e-mail:sawuk.ac.soton

Hello,
I am doing a research project this semester on the phonetics/phonology of
southeastern U.S. dialects of English. Could anyone direct me to
previous research that has been done on this topic. I am particularly
interested in timing or intonational differences, e.g. Is phrase final
lengthening greater in any of these dialects than it is in standard
English (whatever that is).

I will post a summary if there are sufficient responses.

advthanksance,
Mike MacKenzie

I would like to document two related phenomena I find very often
in talking to people in the field, and would appreciate any kind
of evidence or just statements from people who would not mind
being quoted. One is the widespread cynicism about the data
(especially about data in "my dialect") and the other is the
perhaps no less widespread cynicism about the predictive power
of linguistic theories (I have heard an active researcher in
syntax referring to the work in his own field as involving
"a bag of tricks" which one uses as one sees fit to explain
away counterexamples, for example, and I have also seen various
expressions of a feeling that it is a political matter whose
counterexamples are "just counterexamples" and whose are seen
as justifying a change in the theory.)