Style Assignment (20%)

In-class presentation: Monday, May 16 or Wednesday, May 18

Write-up: Due by the beginning of class Monday, May 23

This project will investigate stylistic variation in one speaker. You will analyze the same speaker in two different stylistic contexts. Data will come from existing public recordings -- you will select a public figure (a Youtube personality, a celebrity, a politician, etc.) and analyze how some aspect of their speech varies between the two recordings/clips, connecting your findings to the differences in the context or personae the speaker is aiming to portray in the different settings.


Data and Analysis


The Data: You will select one public figure whose speech has been recorded in multiple settings and is publicly available for viewing. These will likely include celebrities, Youtube personalities, politicians, etc.

Select two recordings, with at least 10 full minutes of speech from your speaker in each recording. You should select recordings that you think capture the speaker in different speech settings, or in which they are portraying different stances or personae. You will be looking at how these differences in context affect linguistic and extra-linguistic differences in style. Please do not select trained actors who are explicitly portraying characters in TV or movies for your clips. We will be discussing parody and high performance later in the quarter, but this is not the purpose of the present assignment.

Select your recordings and e-mail the links to Annette by 5 p.m. Friday May 6th with a few sentences on what you're thinking about in terms of analysis.


Quantitative Analysis: Select at least one particular linguistic feature that you'd like to examine quantitatively across the two contexts. Depending on the length of the recordings, sound-related variables will likely be easier to quantify than morpho-syntactic or lexical variables. This can include particular segments, voice quality, intonation patterns, etc. You can conduct your analysis auditorily, reporting in a similar way to the quantitative analysis assignment (include a chart in your slides).


Qualitative Analysis: Differences between the two contexts that might not be quantifiable are just as important to an analysis of style and personae. For the qualitative portion, you will need to describe at least two aspects of the linguistic and/or extra-linguistic context that might not be "countable," but clearly contributes to stylistic differences. This could be something about the content or discourse context, something about visual or gestural differences between the two, etc. You should support this with in-depth examples in your write-up.


Presentation
(in class Monday 5/16 or Wednesday 5/18)

You will give a short (5-7 minute) in-class presentation about your project. Annette will randomly generate which students are presenting on which days and announce this in advance. This will be a significant portion of the project grade.

Create slides to facilitate your presentation (approximately 5 slides). In the presentation, be sure to touch on:

  1. The speaker you chose, and necessary background about the speaker that is relevant to your analysis.
  2. The particular recordings you chose, and why you chose them.
  3. The features you chose to examine, and your findings, touching on both your quantitative and qualitative results.
  4. A brief interpretation of your findings.

Since you are presenting to the class, you can assume familiarity with the theoretical concepts we've discussed in class, but keep in mind that we have not all seen your data, so you should contextualize it in a way that makes your analysis clear. Use your slides as an aid for your presentation. Your slides should be clearly organized and easy to read, and should guide your presentation -- you should not be simply reading a paper off of slides.

We will have a few minutes for questions following each presentation. Asking and answering questions will factor into your grade for this assignment.

Written Supplement
(due by beginning of class Monday 5/23)

Rather than a fully formed paper, this write-up will be a short supplement to the presentation and slides you've already given in class. You will not need to repeat the information already described in your presentation. Instead, the write-up will include any necessary expansion of the presentation that you were not able to fit into your 5-7 minute timeslot. You should include:

  1. Your methods of analysis.
  2. Detail about your chosen features and findings (tables with counts, where necessary, for the quantitative portion, and specific examples with timestamps for your qualitative portion).
  3. An expanded interpretation (1-2 paragraphs) of your findings in light of the theoretical discussions we've had about style and personae.
  4. Any additional information about the data sources, speaker, analysis, etc. that are important for your analysis, but that you weren't able to talk about in your presentation.

You can organize this information under headings (Methods, Results, Discussion) -- no need to have a cohesive structure as in a research paper. However, describe your methods and interpretations in original prose. As always, in your interpretations, be sure to only make claims that you can substantiate with the data you have. You are welcome to describe the additional information or data required to confirm potential interpretations as well.

Email your presentation slides (you may update them based on the feedback in class if you wish) and your written supplement to Annette by the beginning of class, Monday May 23.