‘The Incidence of Code-mixing among Hong Kong
University Students’
Methodology |
Research design
It was decided to adopt the Language Diary method
which was employed by Gibbons in his 1987 study. This
particular method of collecting data is useful because it minimises some of the problems experienced in other methods such
as observation, where there is the possibility that the presence of an observer may
influence the target behaviour, and questionnaires, in which firstly there is the
possibility that respondents may not have sufficient awareness of their language behaviour
to answer questions about it, and secondly it may happen that negative attitudes towards
code-mixing may result in questions being answered incorrectly. The Language Diary requires correspondents to keep a
record of all verbal exchanges over a 24-hour period, noting choice of code and other
factors which may be relevant, such as subject of the exchange and role of the principal
speaker. There were two sections in the Diary. The first consisted of questions to elicit
basic background information from the subject, such as educational background and language
spoken, followed by some notes intended to help with completing the Diary. The second
section took the form of a record sheet on which respondents were
asked to keep a note of their conversations over a 24-hour period (see Appendix
A for a specimen copy [N/A]). The format of the language diary
was based on that devised by Gibbons (1987: pp18-19) with some minor
alterations, for example `cinema ticket' was used
instead of `bus ticket' because people are not issued
with bus tickets in Hong Kong, and `television and entertainment' were
added as additional examples of possible subject matter. The list of languages
which the subjects might speak was reduced to
`English, Cantonese, Mandarin and others' for the sake of simplicity, and because the
number of exchanges found by Gibbons in the other Chinese dialects included by him were minimal
(1987: 23).
Procedure
Respondents were obtained
by personal contact from among the friends of members of the research group. It proved
rather difficult to recruit volunteers due to the substantial amount of effort involved in completing the
diaries in comparison with ordinary questionnaires. Potential respondents were given careful instructions as to what was required of them so as to avoid possible
misunderstandings. For example, some students were confused
by the similarity to the concept of a questionnaire and thought that they had to answer
questions for 24 hours rather than simply record details of conversations.Etc. ... |
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