TEXT A
As well as the problems concerned with obtaining good quality audio recordings, recording also raises important theoretical problems. The main problem is usually referred to as the observer’s paradox. Ideally we want to know how people use language when they are not being observed. When speakers know they are being observed, their language shifts towards more formal styles, probably rather erratically, as not everything in language is under equal conscious control, and as speakers probably go through cycles of half forgetting they are being recorded. So the most casual language is the most difficult to record. The language that linguists would most like to be able to record is the language which is most susceptible to contamination by observation.
With modem audio-recording equipment, there is, of course, no difficulty in recording speakers in many face-to-face situations or on the telephone. Some researchers have ethical objections to such recordings; others adopt a compromise solution of recording without their knowledge and then telling them afterwards. How- ever, suppose one decides to record people with their knowledge, what solutions are there, if any, to the effect of the recording on the speakers In many cases, the recording may have to be with the speakers’consent in any case, for example, if recording teachers, doctors, magistrates, or official meetings of different kinds.
One argument, put forward by Wolfson(1976) ,is that there is no such thing as natural speech in any absolute sense. All language changes to be appropriate to the situation. All there is to study, then, is what people regard as appropriate in different situations. In any case, in all social situations, we ale. aware of being monitoned to some extent by others present: being monitored by a tape-recorder and researcher is therefore just a particular example of this. This type of argument usefully points out that the hunt for pure, natural or authentic data is a chimera. On the other hand, we may be investigating how people speak when they are un- comfortable. Being permanently recorded and studied is not a normal situation fox’most people, and those for whom it is an everyday occurance ( including celebrities, radio personalities, courtroom lawyers ) develop special strategies to deal with it. There is always the suspicion that in extraordinary situations people produce extraordinary language.
One research strategy is proposed by J. Wilson. lie argues that since speakers will inevitably be affect- ed by the recording, one should deliberately study such effects: what he called tape-affected speech. Exam- pies would include direct references to the recording equipment or uncharacteristically polite usages, or the opposite--deliberately obscene references, for example, where speakers are showing that they do not care what is recorded. This suggestion is useful, insofar as it warns researchers what to be aware of in recordings. On the other hand, we ought to know about normal language, not about such artificially produced ones.
It is regularly proposed that speakers grow used to being recorded, and that tape-affected speeches de- crease with time. One can, therefore, record speakers over some hours or days, and either edit out tape affect- ed sections, or simply discard earlier data. Although this principle seems very plausible, there appears to be no studies which have tested its validity. A similarly plausible but not well-tested claim is that if people are recorded in self-selected groups, then the pressures of interacting in a group will overrid the iuflueuce of the tape-recorder. Labor (1972b) claimes that recording Negro youths in their peer groups deceased the attention they paid to their speech. On the other hand, he was recording gangs of boys who might have gone out of their way to display their group solidarity to the observer. A different version of this argument is to record natural social groups. I did so in working class areas of Belfast. I became a natural member of the groups, with a socially recognized role. Despite the fact that I was known by some members to be making tape-recordings, I was not seen as a researcher, but as a friend of a friend! Having been initiated into the group by someone who knew my interests, these interests were not always seen as relevant, and not necessarily mentioned in introducing me to other members. I could, therefore, observe the group while not being defined as an observer. In other ways, I found a way of being present myself without breaking the interactional equipment, and that the effect of recording could not last for long periods during which I recorded.
Wolfson maintains that there is no such thing as natural speech in any absolute sense, because ______.