A regional and sociolinguistic survey of Saskatchewan English

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorNylvek, Judith Anneen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-15T16:35:26Z
dc.date.available2024-08-15T16:35:26Z
dc.date.copyright1984en_US
dc.date.issued1984
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of Linguistics
dc.degree.departmentSchool of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en
dc.description.abstractThe purpose of this study is to determine if there is any evidence of sociolinguistic or regional variation among speakers of Southern Saskatchewan English. Several sociological variables were tested, including sex, age, social class, and urban/rural area. Also, the data were analyzed in order to determine if the different methodologies used had any significant effect on the responses collected. Informants for this study were required to have been born and raised in Saskatchewan, or to have lived in Sask­atchewan from a very young age. People who possessed this requirement were asked if they would volunteer to partici­pate in this study. The data for this study were collected by two different methods. Informants were either interviewed directly in the field, with the help of a questionnaire, and tape-recorded so that their responses could be analyzed at a later date, or were interviewed indirectly by means of a postal questionnaire. The results from both questionnaires were tabulated and then the data were coded and entered into the computer. The sociological analyses were performed using several SPSS programs which calculated the chi square, probability and crosstabulation for each variable with each question. A significance level of p < 05 was chosen prior to the study. The results from this study indicate that the differ­ences between the two methodologies are significant for some questions. These differences are usually the result of more "spelling pronunciations" being reported by those informants who completed the postal questionnaire, than by those informants who had been tape recorded. The results from the study also indicate that sex is significant for some questions. These results support the conclusion from the Survey of Canadian English that females tend to use standard pronunciations more often than males. The results from this study also indicate that age is an important influencing factor in the informant's choice of responses. For many questions the older and younger age groups tend to prefer different responses. This result also supports the finding in the Survey of Canadian English that age was an important factor in Canadian English. The sociological variable social class also demonstrates evidence of significance, however, the pattern of significance is not consistent. The results do not clearly indicate whether all classes differentiate their speech from each other, or if the middle class differentiates its speech from the upper and lower classes. The sociological variable urban/rural area is also significant for some questions; however, there is also evidence that rural speech may be assimilating to urban speech. The results from the regional analysis indicate that there is evidence of northern/southern and eastern/western speech differences However, the results do not indicate that communities near the United States border are influ­enced to a greater extent by American English than those communities farther to the north. Thus, the results from this study indicate that both sociological and regional variables influence the speech of speakers of Saskatchewan English. More research is needed in order to establish dialect boundaries, and in order to establish a more precise description of the roles of the various sociological variables in Saskatchewan English.
dc.format.extent226 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/19156
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.titleA regional and sociolinguistic survey of Saskatchewan Englishen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
NYLVEK_Judith_Anne_MA_1984_93748.pdf
Size:
21.81 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD)
 
University of Victoria Libraries

We acknowledge and respect the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Songhees and Esquimalt) Peoples on whose territory the university stands, and the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.