Conversation Analysis (CA)

Independent and dependent variables

BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? AUGUST 23, 2015 ? LEAVE A COMMENT

Dear All, When we conduct a linguistic research, we usually work with a number of
variables some of which are independent and some are dependent. This post defines
these two types of variables. An independent variable is what is given (e.g. age,
sex, social class, geographical location, occupation), the input. An dependent
variable is what

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Social stratification of English

BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? JUNE 14, 2015 ? 4 COMMENTS

Dear All, This blog post has to do with the social stratification of English. In
other words, it deals with how a language use can depend on the social class of
speakers. The most well-known classic research in this area was conducted by
linguist William Labov (originally industrial chemist) and published in his book
entitled

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Some features of vernacular English

BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? JUNE 7, 2015 ? LEAVE A COMMENT

Dear All, One of the things that I have been recently noticing in modern English is
the vernacular usage of certain forms. This post briefly discusses some of these
forms. I would like to focus on seven vernacular forms which seem to be used often:
1) she dont; 2) he aint; 3) I just said

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Theme and rheme

BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? NOVEMBER 27, 2013 ? 18 COMMENTS

Dear All, Have you ever heard the terms theme and rheme (= focus
background/presupposition)? First, this post defines the two terms and then
provides an example of how they have been applied in research. The discussion
concludes by pointing at the importance of these notions in linguistics. Theme (in
some sources, also topic, background,

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Good ethnographic technique

BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? NOVEMBER 24, 2013 ? LEAVE A COMMENT

[] one good ethnographic technique for getting at speech events, as at other

categories, is through words which name them (Hymes, 1962, p. 110). According to
Hymes (1962), it is possible to get at speech events through the analysis of words
used to name them. In other words, by analyzing the words and expressions as

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Coherence and cohesion

BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? NOVEMBER 4, 2013 ? 6 COMMENTS

Dear All, In systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and in discourse analysis, there
exist two notions, which are sometimes confused: coherence and cohesion. In this
post I would like to clarify any potential confusion by defining the terms and by
providing examples. Coherence (from Lat. cohaerere to stick together) can be
understood in a wide

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MAXQDA: Discourse analysis software

BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? OCTOBER 22, 2013 ? LEAVE A COMMENT

MAXQDA, Software for qualitative data analysis, 1989-2013, VERBI Software Consult
Sozialforschung GmbH, Berlin, Germany Dear All, Two of the most important stages
of research are (1) data collection and (2) data analysis. Traditionally, for
researchers in humanities it is more difficult to find suitable software to assist
them in these tasks. MAXQDA, however, is designed

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BibleQuote 6
BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? OCTOBER 7, 2013 ? LEAVE A COMMENT

Screenshot: BibleQuote6 software Dear All, If you are doing research on different
versions of the Bible or if you need to find particular words (e.g. to compare
their frequency, word form, etc.) in a given version, the following software may be
of use: 1) BibleQuote6-20120312
(http://code.google.com/p/biblequote/downloads/list) 2) Modules
(http://bqt.ru/Katalog) Different versions of the Bible (King

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Observers paradox
BLOGONLINGUISTICS ? SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 ? 1 COMMENT

Have you ever heard of the term observers paradox? This is a sociolinguistic term
which was introduced by Labov (1972, p. 209) who noted that the aim of linguistic
research in the community must be to find out how people talk when they are not
being systematically observed; yet we can only obtain this data