Speakers of AmE needed for 5-min web-recording survey

[Claire Bowern]

Morning all,
Many thanks for posting this Damien.
I just wanted to add some information.
We do mean to include Canadian varieties (sorry if I wasn't very clear
about that). We are also particularly keen to get a broad sample of
ages, ethnicities and backgrounds.
The web site does not have much information about the purpose of the
study. That was deliberate, we didn't want to get into too much detail
about the survey on the web while we're still collecting the bulk of
the data in case it influences who responds and how they respond
(beyond, of course, the fact that reading monosyllables into an
internet recorder is not a typical mode of human communication!).
We're interested in a lot of different questions -- and I keep
thinking of new things that could be done with a dataset like the one
we're planning! -- but the main focus is on different types and
degrees of variation within communities and between them. That's why
we're aiming for at least 2500 speakers, and perhaps eventually up to
10,000, though that would require rather more in the way of coding
personnel than we have at present.

We are planning to make the dataset available eventually (we've only
just begun collecting data and coding so it will be a while). I'd be
happy to answer any questions about the technical side of the data
collection and tagging (either on or off-list). In the meantime, we
have a map of the sample origins at
http://maps.google.com/?q=http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/zips.kmz

Any help list members can provide by completing the survey and
distributing the link to professional and social networks would be
greatly appreciated.
Claire

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Damien Hall <djh514 at york.ac.uk> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Damien Hall <djh514 at YORK.AC.UK>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Speakers of AmE needed for 5-min web-recording survey
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Dear all
>
> Apologies for cross-postings and to those on these lists who don't speak
> American English. If that's you, you can delete this! (For these purposes,
> I'm not sure whether 'American' means 'North American' and includes
> 'Canadian' or not.)
>
> If you grew up speaking some variety of American English, as I think most
> people on these lists did, Claire Bowern (Yale) would appreciate your help
> with a survey: she is making a trial of Flash web-recording. You'd have to
> record something while sitting at your computer. Further details at her
> website below. Any questions should also go to Claire (her e-mail is
> below): I'm just passing this on from an e-mail I got.
>
> Many thanks, on Claire's behalf!
>
> Best wishes
>
> Damien Hall
>
> ====================
>
> Date: Â  Â Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:51:26 -0400
> From: Â  Â Claire Bowern <clairebowern at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: survey
>
> Hi everyone,
> Some colleagues at the University of Auckland and I are conducting a
> survey on North American English and trialling the use of flash web
> recording for phonetic analysis. We are doing a short survey
> collecting examples of as many different types of American English as
> possible. We are aiming for a few thousand responses from all over the
> US. We're also aiming to be as representative as possible for age,
> gender, geography, ethnicity and class (as representative as we can be
> given we're using an internet-based survey system). If you would like
> to participate by recording a short wordlist, please visit
> http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/NorthAmericanDialects for further
> information and instructions. The survey is open to anyone who grew up
> speaking English and will take approximately five minutes to complete.
> If you could help us spread the word by forwarding this to friends,
> family, networks, students, etc, that would be great!
>
> For any questions regarding this project, please contact Dr. Claire Bowern,
> Department of Linguistics, Yale University. Phone: - 203.432.2045,
> E-mail: claire.bowern at yale.edu.
>
> Have a good weekend!
> Claire
>
> --
> Damien Hall
>
> University of York
> Department of Language and Linguistic Science
> Heslington
> YORK
> YO10 5DD
> UK
>
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