Introduction to Linguistics - Final Project/Paper Information James Madison University

GUIDELINES:

Length of written report -- about 8-10 full pages (not counting bibliography but possibly counting one page of data with additional data okay in an appendix).

Papers should be typed, doublespaced, in 12-point New Times Roman. Please use one-sided printing.

Content of written report -- Your work should build on something you've learned in this course, involving additional reading of secondary linguistics sources (sources of other kinds may be added, but finding and using linguistics resources is a fundamental part of the project) and, in almost all cases, at least some amount of direct use of language data you find/collect. (The exact trade off between the number of secondary sources and the amount of data analysis will vary based on individual projects. Students should confirm their emphasis with me.)

Reports should be organized, well-argued, and clearly written. For example, be very clear about your linguistic context, your thesis, your methodology, your results, and your conclusions. Reports based largely on secondary research must still involve some analysis and critical thinking; form a hypothesis/point of view/critical evaluation and argue for it in some depth.

Background context and any other ideas borrowed from other sources must, of course (as with direct quotes), be cited properly, and all sources must be included in a bibliography. (You may use any well-known citation style of your choice as long as you are consistent.) Finally, any examples, survey responses, or other real-life language data collected by you ,say, from family or friends, should be collected respectfully from willing participants, and the data must be used anonymously and only for our class purposes.

**LANGUAGE DATA COLLECTION HINT: There are databases of language "corpora? - spoken and text, some of which exist for other purposes but might be relevant to certain linguist analyses. Also, your data may be the kind you can find in a newspaper, novel, TV show, etc. You may find a few useful links in the "Linguistics Resources" link at the bottom of our course syllabus.**

Additional Research Tips -- Use references that are as current as possible and are clearly good sources for linguistic information. Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) is generally the best online database to use for linguistics scholarship; it's available through the JMU Libraries’ website. Note that you can and generally should narrow your results down to peer-reviewed publications. While refereed linguistics journals that are available through our library electronically are certainly fine, do NOT use the web in general as a reliable source unless you can offer strong evidence to me in advance that the particular webpage source you want to use is authoritative for the information you want to use. (Many sources on the web are not authorities on the topic they discuss. Even when an individual writes something in the style of a scholarly article, this is definitely not proof that his/her work has been subject to scholarly scrutiny.)

Plan out the stages of your research. Determine what resources you need and see me early on if you don't know how to get them. There are many materials that you might be able to get through JMU's interlibrary loan process, for example, if you plan ahead.

IN GENERAL, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COME TO ME WITH QUESTIONS.

SOME SAMPLE SUBJECT AREAS THAT YOU MIGHT CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING A THESIS: (These subjects are meant to appeal to a variety of different interests and academic backgrounds; the ones that sound hard to you may be the right ones for someone else. :-) Also, feel free to suggest alternative subjects.)

• Study how males and females might or might not differ in some aspect of language use.
• Analyse certain linguistic features of work by your favorite author/poet. (FYI: this kind of study is sometimes called "linguistic criticism" linguistic "stylistics", "poetics" etc.)
• Look at regional or social differences in lexicons/word choices. (There are dialect atlases and other resources to get one started on this.)
• Evaluate a teaching method in ESL based on linguistic principles or compare comprehension of a particular detail of English syntax by non-native speakers at two or more different levels of overall proficiency or from two different L1 backgrounds.
• Compare the way native English speakers talk/write to other native speakers and the way they talk to non-native speakers. (perhaps examining articles on this subject and/or online interest group transcripts, etc?)
• Compare non-native speaker comprehension of spoken English in a well defined context vs. without context, with an analysis of how these results do or do not reflect what has been said about non-native phonological processes.
• Examine the linguistic characteristics of some very specific register (recipes, email, Pats and Darts, etc.)
• Examine in detail the linguistic features of some game that has a language focus (Mad Gab, Boggle (?), etc.)
• Examine Linguistic features of some set of humorous data (perhaps the humor of a specific comedian or of a specific comedy show)
• Study of the function of discourse markers like "um", "uh", "like". etc. Do they help or hurt listener comprehension? How many "ums" do we use in various sitations and is there a syntactic, semantic, and/or discourse pattern to their use?
• Evaluate the subtle effect of word connotations or certain presuppositions on hearer/reader attitudes and beliefs -- perhaps some sort of examination of connotations or presuppositions in specific political or advertising contexts?
• Compare actual vs perceived syntactic or lexical ambiguity (ie. how aware are we of ambiguity?).
• Compare some pragmatic or sociolinguistic (introductions, general politeness patterns, etc.) feature in English and in another language.
• Examine how/if the phonological, morphological or syntactic systems of two different languages affect the nature of poetry in those languages.
• Examine the research on the ability of children of a certain linguistic age (MLU) to understand some linguistic constructions, perhaps comparing it to children's literature targeted at certain age groups.
• Examine oral storytelling ability as a linguistic skill.
• Evaluate the communicative methods of some animal compared to humans, or how humans perceive themselves to communicate with pets using language. (Just be careful to ask truly linguistic questions about this one. :) )
• Do a comparative study of different attempts to create a universal human language artificially.
• Implement a software program that finds the possible antecedents of pronouns or that tracks topics of conversation or that determines if strings of words in some little sub-language of English are/are not sentences.
• Consider whether a natural language interface is better or worse than some other interface (eg. graphical) for some specific task, considering what that might say about the nature of language.
• Characterize particular differences in the language of a speech or language-impaired person, perhaps with comparison to what is actually seen in some existing recordings or with consideration of situational impacts on communicative success or of strategies to circumvent this deficit.
• Study the use of new compounds or idioms in everyday language for some group or time. When does it happen and why?
• Contrast slang from different groups, from different decades, or from different languages.
• Consider the types of metonymy or metaphor commonly found in two different languages/cultures or even in two very specific contexts (e.g., particular social, political, or literary contexts, etc.)

NOTE: Papers must be submitted no later than in-class at the last class meeting (Thursday, Dec. 8th).

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