PowerPoint - High quality version!

For one reason or another, authorSTREAM is telling us that embedding is disabled for our powerpoint (without audio) but here's the URL link for it:

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/sirpsychoo-2017040-rsel-presentation/

PowerPoint issues explained

As a group, we were fully aware of the instructions provided online via the Wiki but, unfortunately, we were still unable to upload the presentation in the desirable way.  This may be due to the format in which the audio files were recorded and their subsequent incompatibility with Microsoft PowerPoint.  The decision was therefore made to use the programme Movie Maker instead.

Having missed the 4pm deadline, we were overly keen to upload a version of the presentation by midnight.  Consequently, the video quality has suffered.  Efforts are currently being made to convert the video into a much higher quality, however this appears to be a fairly time consuming process.  We are hoping the video will be uploaded within the next few hours.

We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Powerpoint presentation

Due to some technical difficulties, the PowerPoint had to be converted into a movie maker programme. We hope this does not cause any inconvenience.

Agenda and minutes for 4/12/13

Agenda - 

After finally completing our questionnaire (last Wednesday), we decided to meet the following Wednesday (today) to discuss the analysis, any trends we found, and begin our presentation.

Minutes - 

Our first step was to accumulate all the data we have onto one excel document, this worked well for our multiple choice questions, as we were able to but these tables into graphs and pie charts to see any trends. From here, we started compiling our presentation, identifying the most note worthy answers to spend time on in our presentaion

Minutes for 20/11/13 and Agenda for 27/11/13

Minutes:
- We went over our questionnaire again, discussing the points Alison had brought up for us to change
- We made the necessary changes, tidied up our questionnaire and decided to ask another person on our course, but not in our research group, to give general feedback on the questionnaire (if they thought it was too long or not and if they felt the questions were too offensive)
- We received positive feedback, so made no changes, but were still unsure on whether some questions were accurate and acceptable to have on our final draft, therefore we decided to email Alison our draft and ask for more feedback
- We also decided to book in a meeting to see Alison about our final queries

Agenda:
- To try to finalise our questionnaire and make it worthy enough to give out to our participants
- Meet with Alison and check if there are any other changes to make
- Make those changes, if discussed in the meeting, and hopefully publish the final draft of the questionnaire later on in the week

Agenda 20/11/13

After receiving some feedback from Alison regarding the first draft of our questionnaire, we have decided to meet up as soon as possible in order to make the necessary amendments.  Hope, who visited Alison for some face-to-face feedback, has informed us of the changes that need to be made.  Therefore, we have arranged to meet on Wednesday from 11-2 (or later, if necessary).  Hopefully, we will have a complete questionnaire by the end of the session that we can then begin to distribute over the next couple of days, once we have received approval.  The final version of the questionnaire will be posted in the 'Questionnaire' tab on the blog.

What we've done so far and what we need to do

What we've done so far and what we need to do:

Our project had a rather slow start.  Originally, our research topic was focussed on regional accents and dialects, but we quickly changed to 'taboo' language.  The original focus wasn't precise enough; we intended on looking at the history of 'taboo' lexis and its presence/use in other countries as well as people's different opinions on what is 'taboo'.  Alison quickly notified us that this topic would be too broad under the time constraints and suggested we delve deeper into the metalinguistics of 'taboo' language.  As a result, the group worked carefully to fine-tune three specific research questions that we wanted to answer.  Thereafter we quickly decided on four case studies from which to base our questionnaire around.  These include the controversial 'Plebgate Affair,' involving a prominent UK politician Andrew Mitchell, as well as the allegations of the use of racial and/or offensive language by footballer John Terry towards England colleague Anton Ferdinand.  The other two cases are both controversial songs: 'Niggaz in Paris' by Jay-Z & Kanye West and '212' by Azealia Banks.  One of the reasons why we chose these case studies in particular was because of the interesting metalinguistic language found either from blogs, press reports, Twitter or legal findings. From this stage, we have produced a questionnaire (which will be uploaded soon).  

Throughout our project, we have discussed the severity and sensitivity involving the ethics of our study.  These issues have been at the forefront of our mind, as by no means do we want to cause people any distress by participating in our project.

What we need to do:

Once our questionnaire has been uploaded, we will await feedback from Alison as, due to the ethical nature of our project, we feel Alison's input is crucial at this stage.  We will then distribute our questionnaire, aiming to collect a sample size of approximately 50.  We hope this will give us widespread, varied viewpoints and thus a great deal to analyse on 'taboo' lexis.  From here, we will use readings alongside our analysis.  After this we will start to put together our presentation and plan the recording for the blog.  We still have lots to do before the project is completed but now the questionnaire is together, we are hoping our progress will increase dramatically.