Fieldwork projects that are slightly mental

I wouldn't reply to this message either.

No good will come of this student wackiness.

You saw that Onion article yesterday I hope.

Actually it sounds ace. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Why identity construction as the focus, Alix? I think it sounds good, though a lot of original work for a 5000 word project; which characters look specially promising? [PS You do know that everyone actually talks like that in small villages in West Yorks, don't you? I sound exactly like Pauline, for example].

Hi Lixi! I did a paper on the imitation of EBritish accents by American pop singers. If I remember correctly, all my data were from Big Star. My idea for the paper was based on research done by Peter Trudgill on the imitation of American accents by British pop singers. You can talk about covert prestige and code switching, i.e., they don't switch 100% of the time. Also, there was a study by Labov on /r/-deletion among New York department store workers. /r/- deletion was supposed to correlate with the prestige of the department store, although the workers earned roughly the same salary so presumably had the same SES. Perhaps you could do something similar with a different speech feature. I just looked up 'League of Gentlemen' and it appears to be a TV program. The only problem I can think of is that you don't know whether a source of variation has been written into the program or if it has something to do with the actors' dialects/idiolects. And there might not be consistency in how the latter affects the former. Sorry for being so eager to give bad advice.

taking sides: ideolects vs ideoplasts

if you can find recordings of the actors being interviewed or playing other parts then it should overcome the problem youn describes.

there was a interview with the actors from the League of Gentlemen on the radio the other day (didn't catch it though). also a friend's brother knows them from university I think, if that's any help

Two of the fellows from LoG were interviewed by the Evening Standard magazine recently. When asked to name their least favourite thing about London they said "South London". So, fuck them.

I'm using identity as it is one of the main variables in the show, ie, 3 actors, lots of characters. This also, I think will help sort of the problems of the actor's own speech. I minidisced that interview off the radio, so that'll help too. I've got a tutorial with my lecturuer in 20 minutes, where so will tell me I'm mad and that I would be best off recreating Labov. Labov is dull. I read the Trudgill paper, Youn, but I'm not entirely sure how helpful it'll be, apart from the methodology aspect. But, thank you!