Minutes 23/10/2013

In today's meeting, we:

• Discussed the measures to be taken in order to observe the etiquette when designing and distributing the questionnaire.
• Set a target to have our questionnaires produced by Week 6, in order to collect data during reading week when the group won't be organising a meeting.
• Decided that the group will meet on three occasions during Week 5, in order to compensate for no meetings during Week 6.
• Discussed the possibility and practicality of a Skype group call during reading week.

Our next meeting will take place tomorrow at 15:00.  

Minutes 21/10/2013

Following Alison's feedback, we met today to discuss improvements that could be made to our original proposal.  We agreed that our topic was far too broad and looked at refining it, instead focussing on how celebrity culture influences taboo language.  For this, we suggested looking at three areas: Politics, Football and Music, for each of these we will research cases, which will then be compared and contrasted with one another.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, in which we will refine our revised proposal further.

Minutes 17/10/13

In today's meeting we:

• Completed the 500-word proposal for our research project and posted it on the blog. 
• Exported the blog and backed it up to a number of different devices. 
• Exchanged mobile phone numbers to improve communication and increase opportunities to be flexible with future meetings.
• Discussed dates to be arranged for meetings next week.

Our next meeting will be at 12:00 on Monday 21st October.  We will think about our research methods in more detail before starting to design our questionnaire, or begin researching for our literature review.  We'll keep an eye out for any feedback from Alison on our proposal!

Proposal

We (Ellie, Hope, Jake, Jaya, and Natalie) have decided to focus our investigation on the social and cultural influences on taboo language around the world. These will include issues of sexism, racism, defecation, sex, family, and how these differ in significance in English and other languages. Our investigation will aim to answer the following questions: ‘What makes lexis taboo?’, ‘Which words or phrases are considered most offensive and why?’, ‘How much does the taboo language of English differ to that of other languages, and why?’, ‘Is there sufficient evidence to suggest that it does differ?’, ‘How has taboo language in English changed over time and why?’

               The methods we will use to investigate this topic will be: a questionnaire about which taboo terms are most offensive to which ethnic groups and why people believe this is so; a number of interviews with people whose first language is not English about their impressions of taboo words from their native tongue and English; a corpus analysis into which words are commonly used; and a variety of literature to help support our findings and investigate further into the topic. Whilst the questionnaire will allow us to see if our predictions about people’s opinions about words are correct, the corpus study will tell us more about the frequency of words, the genre in which they are used, the gender of the person who is using them, and the time period in which they are used. The interviews will help to highlight which issues have the highest influence on taboo lexis in which languages. Some of the literature that we think will be relevant to our study includes: An Encyclopaedia of Swearing: the social history of oaths, profanity, foul language, and ethnic slurs in the English-speaking world by G. Hughes, 2006; Cursing in America: A psycholinguistic study of dirty language in the courts, in the movies, in the schoolyard, and on the streets by T. Jay, 1992; Taboo expressions in American Sign Language by Mirus et al., 2012; Fk yea I swear: cursing and gender in MySpace by M. Corpora, 2008.

               One of the potential problems that has arisen when discussing this topic is the fact that investigating taboo language involves using potentially offensive lexis when conducting the questionnaires and interviews, and even when presenting our findings to our peers. We aim to address this issue by including a consent form at the start of the questionnaire, which offers the participant the opportunity to withdraw themselves at any time and warns them of the personal nature of the questions and use of potentially offensive lexis. We will include a similar disclaimer at the beginning of each interview. As well as this, we will offer an ‘I’d prefer not to say’ option for each of the questions of the questionnaire so that participants do not need to discuss anything which makes them feel uncomfortable. We will present our findings to our peers at the exhibition at the end of term, making use of visual representations of our data through pie charts, bar charts, other graphs, and tables.

Agenda for meetings 14/10/13 and 17/10/13

• Discuss the ethical issues in regard to our research; how we will ensure that our questionnaires and other research methods are ethical 
• Begin to plan and draft our proposal as a group
• Post the proposal onto the blog, or assign someone to type up and post it

Minutes 10/10/13

A lot of new ideas were discussed in today's meeting:
- We decided to change our topic idea altogether (previously accent/dialect) due to the fact that our previous topic lacked originality.
- The idea of racist language was discussed, which had been mentioned briefly in the previous meeting and was something that really interested us. We then discussed what could be investigated if we were to choose the study of racist language e.g. the use of certain lexis within ethnic groups and outside of them.
- The topic of sexist language was then discussed. Comparison of sexist and racist language - why is racist language considered more offensive/shocking?
- We then considered the more general idea of studying taboo language, which could include racist and sexist terms within it. Studying taboo language would give us the opportunity to investigate the use of swear words and why certain words are more offensive than others.
- In order to investigate another level of taboo language, we discussed the idea of the use of taboo in other languages as it was mentioned how in Italy, for example, the worst kind of swearing refers to god or family. Whereas in English, many references tend to be made towards sex. We also proposed to study the deterioration of swear words over time e.g. bloody etc.
-Which words and phrases are more taboo than others? Why? How similar is the taboo lexis in English language to other languages? Is there sufficient evidence to suggest that it differs? If so, why?
- We listed some methods that we could use to obtain our research. The group will design and create a questionnaire which will be distributed to members of the public(/students?) Corpus study will establish Context, medium, number count, collocation, gender, time period.
- Our presentation will make use of graphs, tables, pie charts, etc – showcase data/evidence.
- In order to condense our ideas, we decided that our research would hopefully enable us to identify the social and cultural influences on the use of taboo lexis.

Influences:  Moral, ethical, religion, defecation, relationships – family, etc, politics – whether certain phrases are deemed politically correct or incorrect, racism, sexism, passive vs. confrontational scenarios.
Ideas for the proposal were collected, so that we can write it up during week 3. The proposal will be a more detailed description of our plans for the investigation. Between now and our next meeting, we have decided to each conduct some independent research in order to find some relevant readings that we could use for our investigation.

 

Agenda for Meeting 10/10/13

• Refine topic and come up with a research question
• Begin writing the proposal together/outline what it will say
• Designate a part of the proposal for each person to write, and write it separately before the next meeting

Agenda for meeting 7/10/13

• Discuss topic ideas from each person and decide on a definite topic to investigate with our group project
• Decide on individual roles for each person: someone to export the blog regularly, someone to post an agenda before each meeting, someone to post the minutes after each meeting (or perhaps rotate these roles)
• Arrange the time and date for our next meeting, and discuss what progress we hope to achieve by then, and what the meeting will cover