Corpora: Query: broadcast conversations

[Brita Warvik]

Dear all,

I asking your help for a student of mine working on her M.A. thesis.

Where could we find transcipts of live broadcasts of fairly informal
multiparty conversations in British English?

The materials are needed for a contrastive study of simultaneous speech in
conversations by Swedish-speaking Finns and speakers of British English. If
you wonder at the choice of material, the English material has to be chosen
according to the Swedish material, because there is very little of any
transcribed spoken Finland-Swedish available. The Swedish material is used
courtesy of the project 'Finlandssvenska samtalsstrategier' SVESTRA at the
University of Helsinki (http://www.nord.helsinki.fi/svestra.html). It is a
transcription of a 95 minute radio program broadcast live on New Year's Eve
1989. The interlocutors are three women and three men, one of each acting
as host. Their ages range from 21 to 89. The conversation is fairly
informal as it takes place over a dinner and drinks suitable to the occasion.

I have checked BNC and the corpora available through ICAME, but there is
nothing close enough there. We would be grateful for any suggestions about
a transcribed sample of British English which is as close to the Swedish
material as possible on as many parameters as possible.

Regards,

Brita Warvik
Donner Lecturer in Text and Corpus Linguistics
Department of English				Tel. + 358 2 215 4360
Abo Akademi University				Fax  + 358 215 4436
Fin-20500 Turku, Finland			http://www.abo.fi/fak/hf/enge