Quantifying language : a researcher's and teacher's guide to gathering language data and reducing it to figures
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Quantifying language : a researcher's and teacher's guide to gathering language data and reducing it to figures
（Multilingual matters / series editor, Derrick Sharp）
Multilingual Matters, c1995
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-287) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Linguistics is changing from a discipline in which 'those who count don't count' to one in which expertise in empirical research methods is essential. There is a proliferation of what might be called 'hyphenated' linguistics - areas such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, attitude research, applied linguistics, etc. which require this know-how. For the would-be language researcher this work fills a gap in the limited repertoire of existing guides to research methods and statistics for the linguist. In particular it provides for the first time an overview of ways of gathering and turning into figures data from a wide variety of subdisciplines of linguistics, with numerous examples and onward reading references. This quantification is the grass-roots activity of the empirical language researcher - one which, if not performed satisfactorily, renders even the most sophisticated overall design and statistical analysis useless. For the language teacher or therapist, the book places the 'language testing' that they may be aware of within the wider context of language measurement in general, and draws attention to some ways of measuring language that have been more associated with research, but are coming to be used also for pedagogical assessment. Further, since many teachers now also undertake classroom research of some sort, the attempt to survey measurement concerns of researchers and teachers in the same volume is timely.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I. SETTING THE SCENE: WHAT IS QUANTIFIED AND WHY?
1. Basic Terms. What do People Quantify?
2. Why do People Quantify Language? The Teaching/Therapy Reason
3. Why do People Quantify Language? The Research Reason
PART II. DATA GATHERING FOR QUANTIFICATION: KINDS OF INSTRUMENT AND TECHNIQUE
4. Overview of Four General Kinds of Approach to Data Gathering for Quantification
5. Data for Quantification: Fully Naturalistic
6. Data for Quantification: Quasi-naturalistic Interaction
7. Data for Quantification: Opinion
8. Data for Quantification: Manipulation
9. Maximising Naturalness in the Data-gathering Phase of Language Quantification
10. The 'Referencing' Dimension of Quantification
PART III. DATA ANALYSIS IN QUANTIFICATION: SCORING, COUNTING AND SCALE TYPES
11. Overview of Scale Types: Simple Sources of Interval Scales
12. Scoring on Interval Scales: Counts of Various Sorts
13. Scoring on Interval Scales: Totals from Uniform Sets of Dichotomous Items
14. Scoring on Interval Scales: Scores Involving Rating and Weighting
15. Scoring on Interval Scales: Combined Scores of Various Sorts
16. Individual Rank Ordering
17. Ranking in Ordered Categories
18. Nominal Categorisation
PART IV. GOOD AND BAD QUANTIFICATION
19. Overview of Quality Issues and Reliability. Measurer as Source of Unreliability
20. Cases, Circumstances and the Measuring Instrument Itself as Sources of Unreliability
21. Overview of Validity: Measurer, Cases etc. as Sources of Invalidity
22. Specification of the Nature of a Variable and its Operationalisation as a Source of Invalidity
23. Indicators as a Source of Invalidity
Conclusion
by "Nielsen BookData"
