3.2. Designing and conducting the questionnaire

The following chapter is going to explain the rationale behind each question while designing and conducting the questionnaire which is supposed to give an insight into the specific use of grand and deadly in Hiberno-English. Therefore, a description of the scientific use and the linguistic purpose will be given, respectively.

Firstly, the formal layout of the survey has to be selected because either an online questionnaire or a traditional written one could be chosen. This questionnaire will be carried out as an online survey since various arguments support this choice. Using LimeSurvey, the online survey is easy to generate, and the application conveniently processes the elicited data, as well. As this survey aims to examine the usage of grand and deadly in the English spoken in Ireland, an online questionnaire, which is easy to spread via social media, helps to sample a larger number of participants. Thus, the survey is not restricted to the researcher’s base and personal reach in Dublin, but can elicit more data throughout the country which will eventually give a more reliable result. Finally, one needs to take into consideration that the participants will not be paid; therefore, the researcher has to rely on their willingness to take part in the survey. This can be increased by the fact that an online survey is quicker and less exhausting.

However, the sampling frame is a major problem of online surveys (cf. Wiersma 2013: 4ff). Tagliamonte divides the methodological approach of sampling into two options. The first one is called random sampling which means that “each person in the total population sampled must have an equal chance of being selected for the sample” (2006: 19). This is impossible by conducting an online survey as not every person has access to the internet in Ireland; furthermore, even those people who are technically equipped cannot be surveyed equally because the link to the questionnaire cannot be sent to everyone. The second possibility is called stratified random sampling which means that “the researcher 1) identifies in advance the types of speakers to be studied; and 2) seeks a quota of speakers who fit the specified categories” (Tagliamonte 2006: 23). Again, the researcher could theoretically identify the categories beforehand, but as there is no control over the participants who take part in this survey, a quota cannot be selected in advance.

The link for this survey will be spread via Facebook which is rather similar to an ethnographic approach called “social networks”. Tagliamonte explains that the “unit of study is some pre-existing social group, not the individual as the representative of a more abstract social group.” (2006: 21). Thus, the researcher’s Facebook friends list serves as the pre-existing social group. This might be too limited in terms of the number of participants and reach which is the reason is why the so called “friend of a friend” advantage of the social network approach can help to spread the survey as “it is the ‘friend of a friend’ who helps you to get the things you want” (Tagliamonte 2006: 21). This approach is usually used for participant observation, but the given definition of a “friend of a friend” who is someone “with a status that is neither that of an insider nor that of an outsider” (Tagliamonte 2006: 22) is also valid for a person within the given Facebook social network. Therefore, the researcher’s friends are asked to spread the link to their friends in turn to create a snowball effect which helps to increase the number of participants and minimize thereby the bias of results.

This survey consists of three major parts. The first one is called “Informant sheet” and is intended to elicit personal details from the participants. Secondly, a question sheet called “Section I” will be provided which displays sample sentences and examines the informants’ intuition about language use. Opposed to this, the final “Section II” will take a rather metalinguistic approach tapping the awareness of the participant for the specific linguistic phenomena.

This survey is completely anonymous, but as it is a sociolinguistic study, personal details of the informant are needed to gauge the impact of social factors on the use of grand and deadly in Irish English.

Question 1: How old are you?

Obviously, this question will help to analyse at what age grand or deadly are used. The question type allows the informants to enter numbers only here.

Question 2: You are a) male b) female c) no answer

Again, this question aims to explore the impact of the informant’s gender as a social factor on language use.

Question 3: What is your nationality?

As mentioned before, the researcher has no control over the choice of speakers. Therefore, it is important to know where the participant originally comes from. Even a non-Irish person can give reliable answers if he or she has been exposed long enough to the dialect spoken in Ireland. An open short text field has been chosen as question type, as the nationality is rather unpredictable and therefore needs to be filled in individually.

Question 4: If you are Irish, what county are you from?

This question helps to find out if those words are used throughout Ireland or if they might be rather locally restricted. Thus, the participant can choose between 32 counties of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, or again, even non-Irish.

Question 5: If you are not Irish, for how many years have you lived in Ireland?

This question is again important to judge whether the result is representative as a non-Irish participant would need to live at least for some time in Ireland, to answer the questions appropriately. Therefore, anything less than a year will be neglected.

Question 6: What is your highest educational level?

This level is of sociolinguistic interest as education has an influence on the social status of the participant. Thus, a multiple choice question type has been chosen out of which the informant can choose among the most common Irish educational levels.

Question 7: What is your current occupation?

Close to the previous question, this one aims to identify the social status of the participant, too. The occupation, and thus the income, is a crucial factor of the socio-economic status.

The second part of this survey, “Section I”, provides 12 example sentences displaying the use of grand and deadly in various semantic contexts. This section appeals rather to the linguistic intuition of the participants as they are asked to judge how common those phrases are in every day speech, thus how natural it feels to them to use the respective words in the particular context. The specific meaning which differs from the common British notion is added to the sample sentences to prevent all possible misunderstandings. The possible answers are divided into a 5-fold ordinal scale which “gives options in a certain order but without a clear definition of the quantitative distance between those options” (Krug & Sell 2013:76), in this case: everyone, most, some, few people and no-one. The ordinal scale can be transferred into a quasi-interval scale for analysing the data afterwards because the options can be translated into a continuum between a quasi-zero which is “no-one” and a maximum, “everyone”. Choosing five possible options provides a so called midpoint, i.e. “some”, which allows the informants to “express that they are indifferent towards a statement” (Krug & Sell 2013:78). One might argue that an even number of options is preferable as the informant is forced to make a clear decision, but this would cause problems if the participant is truly insecure (cf. Krug & Sell 2013: 77f). I

In the following, each sentence will be commented to explain its respective linguistic purpose.

Sentence 1:        Speaker 1 “Hey, how are you?”

               Speaker 2 “I’m grand, thanks. How are you?” (meaning “I’m ok.”)

This mini-dialogue mirrors the use of grand as an answer to the informal greeting “How are you?” which is used in Great Britain, too. Usually, British people would answer “I’m ok/fine/good”. Grand is used as a personal predicative describing the speaker’s general well-being.

Sentence 2:        Speaker 1 “Will we meet up at 8 pm in front of the cinema?”

               Speaker 2 “Yes sure, that’s grand.”

This sentence aims again to depict everyday language whereas grand is used as an impersonal predicative showing an agreement to the former polar question. This sentence is also a control item as the meaning of grand would be identical to the one in the first example (cf. Krug & Sell 2013: 76). Comparing to standard British English, a typical response would be “Yes, that’s ok/ alright/ fine.”

Sentence 3:        “This house was very spacious and grand” (meaning “impressive”)

This statement is supposed to be an unmarked structure which is not restricted to a specific dialect. It refers therefore to grand meaning ‘impressive’ as it can be found in the OED. Thus, the unmarked item is expected to gain a high score, i.e. many participants would choose “everyone” or “most”, which helps to check the reliability of the scaling system.

Sentence 4:        Speaker 1 “So tell me about last night’s party”

               Speaker 2 “Ah sure. It was a grand party” (meaning “fine”)

This dialogue seeks to find out whether grand meaning “fine” can also be used attributively.

Sentence 5:        Speaker 1 “Do I look ok in those trousers?”

               Speaker 2 “Of course, it’s a totally grand look” (meaning “fine”)

Again, this mini conversation investigates the attributive use of grand. It serves as a control item of the former sentence, too. Furthermore, this example explores whether grand can be modified by an adverb, in this case by the intensifier totally.

Sentence 6:        “The newly elected mayor had grand ideas for bettering the social situation.”

This statement is again an unmarked structure which refers to the standard British meaning ‘idealistic, impressive’ of grand.

Sentence 7:        “You’re deadly right!” (meaning “absolutely”)

Proceeding to the second word, this sentence aims to find out if deadly can be used as an intensifying adverb in common speech in Hiberno-English.

Sentence 8:        “The venom of that snake is quite deadly.”

This statement is an unmarked predicative use of deadly which refers to the common British meaning ‘something which is poisonous, causing death’.

Sentence 9:        “The world is facing the worst outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus it has ever seen”

Again, this sentence serves as an unmarked attribute structure agreeing with the British meaning of ‘something that can cause death’.

Sentence 10:         “It is a great town and the pubs are deadly.” (meaning “brilliant”)

This statement examines the predicative use of deadly referring to something ‘extremely good’, or ‘amazing’.

Sentence 11:         “That was a deadly film” (meaning “brilliant”)

This sentence aims to find out whether deadly meaning ‘brilliant’ can also be used attributively in Hiberno-English.

Sentence 12:        “Last night, I went to a party. It was absolutely deadly.” (meaning “brilliant”)

This last statement of “Section I” is supposed to investigate if deadly can be used as an impersonal predicative modified by an intensifier, in this case absolutely. It serves as a control item of the previous two sentences, too.

The last part of this survey, “Section II”, aims to collect metalinguistic information since it draws the informant’s attention to the particular linguistic phenomenon. Thus, the participant is asked to think on a meta-level about the specific use of grand and deadly in the English spoken in Ireland.

Question 1: What is the most common synonym for “grand”?

This open question helps to find out in what semantic context the participant would usually use grand. A small open text field is provided, so that the variety of individual answers is not limited.

Question 2: What is the most common synonym for “deadly”?

This question uses the same structure for deadly.

Question 3: “Thinking of your family and friends. a) Who would use “grand” meaning “ok, fine, alright”?

The possible options of answering would be: ages 0-25, 25-45, 45 and older or all ages out of which the participant is allowed to choose only one. This is again an ordinal scale, although concrete number are given, because the distances between the options do not “cover the same range” (Krug & Sell 2013: 77), but reflect rather a sociolinguistic division into youth language, middle aged or older. This question is used as a means of widening the study in terms of its sociolinguistic range as not only the participant’s age can be used for analysis.

Question 4: Thinking of your family and friends. Who would use “deadly” meaning “brilliant, awesome”.

Again, this question uses the same structure as the one before to gain more information about the specific age-related use of deadly.

Question 5: To what register would you assign “grand” meaning “ok, fine, alright”?

The informant can choose one option of: very formal, formal, neutral, informal and very formal. This is again an ordinal scale which also includes a midpoint, i.e. “neutral”. Answering the questions, the informants help to find out in what situation grand can be used.

Question 6: To what register would you assign “deadly” meaning “brilliant, awesome”?

As mentioned before, this question uses the same structure to examine the register deadly is used for.

Question 7: Would you consider “grand” or “deadly” typical of the English spoken in Ireland?

As Baker et al. have found out that people ”from the region examined are best able to identify speech samples of that variety [...]” (Baker et al. 2009: 67), this question uses this particular awareness to confirm the distinct use of grand and deadly in Hiberno-English.

Question 8: Can you think of any other expression which is used in Ireland only?

The final question of this survey is an open one which asks the participant to come up with more Irish particularities. This is intended to be a starting point for further research to eventually draw a more comprehensive picture of the English spoken in Ireland.

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