Imagine that you have received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of your target language and culture. How would you get started, and what would you investigate? How would different structural components presented in class appear in your work?
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If I had received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of your target language and culture, I would investigate the cultural shift in the usage of formality in Korean speakers. I would get started by creating a survey that collects data on how many Korean speakers use formality when talking to those who are younger, the same age, and those who are older. I would also compare the data from Korean Americans and Korean nationals. Different structural components presented in class would allow me to look for the historical context of Korean Americans and Korean nationals.
If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Hebrew and its culture, I would get started by trying to research its history like how it started, who used it, and why it was so important as a language. In addition, I would research more about the relationship between the language itself and the culture to better understand it. Furthermore, I would look into the impact that it has made on the current world and see how it is being used today. For example, I would investigate the customs and traditions of the Hebrew culture that people still practice. Then, I would like to interview individuals who speak Hebrew. Different structural components presented in class would allow me to look for specific characteristics of the language that might make it unique. I could look into different structures, phonology, morphonology, and others. I am aware that Hebrew has more semantics than other languages, so I will keep that in mind.
Although I conduct plenty of biology and ecology research projects, it’s difficult for me to imagine how a linguistic study might work. Fortunately, I have a friend who was able to offer me some examples of what linguists might study for a research grant. After she explained some of the basic forms of various linguistic studies, I was able to make a design a rough outline of a potential linguistic research project of Bahasa Indonesia.
If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Bahasa Indonesia, I think that I would look into the realm of sociolinguistic study, which I find fascinating. I would love to investigate the perceptions that a native speaker would have based on a person’s speech, grammar, and diction/accent. I could use different audios of speakers and ask native speakers to choose which person (based on a picture) they thought was speaking. This could be very fascinating to manipulate many different parts of speech and sound in the audio recordings and determine how this influences a native speaker’s perception of the recorded speaker. For example, the inability to properly pronounce certain Bahasa Indonesia sounds, such as ‘ng’, may indicate to a native speaker that the person is not Indonesian. Also, modern Indonesian teenagers are considered somewhat rebellious and outspoken by older generations. It would be interesting to see how the volume and stress of certain sounds influences the perception of the speaker. With Bahasa Indonesia I think there would be lots of room for exploration in this area, particularly because the stress of an Indonesian word does not change its meaning. It is likely that different subgroups of the population, or people from different regions/islands in Indonesia, stress their words and sentences differently. Although I have primarily spoken with Farida in Indonesian, I am sure that the many different islands and regions in Indonesia have unique speak patterns, at the very least.
I would also love to investigate how the grammar and sentence complexity of a recorded speaker influences a native speakers. The morphonology and syntax of Bahasa Indonesia can be very simple, or it can incorporate a more complex understanding of the language. For example, ‘apel punya warna merah’ could be turned into ‘apel berwarna merah’, demonstrating a more complex understanding of the language. It would be interesting to see if these grammatical structures are more prevelant in certain subgroups of the population.
It would also be intriguing to look at the intersectionality of manipulating multiple of these factors. For example, a person with very simplified grammar structure and a difficulty to pronounce basic Bahasa Indonesian sounds would be more likely perceived as a foreigner, whereas a person with only one of these traits may be perceived as a child or as an uneducated person.