2. The Collection of the Linguistic Data
2.1. The
Questionnaire and the Interviews
The linguistic data was collected by fieldwork carried out by myself. For
this purpose I used the questionnaire designed by Peter Wright
as a basis and added ten questions from Willy Elmer's questionnaire. I
also omitted six questions from the original questionnaire by Wright which had
already been dropped by Elmer.
The questions, which are primarily concerned with vocabulary,
inquire about traditional fishing gear and techniques, the parts of a small
rowing-boat, natural features and phenomena, and the names for different kinds
of fish.
The three types of questions which were used
are the naming type which usually begins with what do you call...,
the completing type, e.g. to
get the mussel out of its shell, you have to... which is completed by the
informant with his word for open it,
and the talking question, e.g. what
types of fishing boats are used here which aims at getting the informant to
talk freely about a certain subject.
In this study the collected linguistic data
has to be strictly comparable in order to draw conclusions about the linguistic
variations between the fishing communities on the south-east coast of Scotland.
Hence, the questionnaire is an indispensable necessity, as all informants can be
confronted with the same standardized questions,
and a comparison of the answers therefore poses no great difficulty.
A further advantage is the possibility of collecting firsthand material within a
relatively short time span. This might sound trivial, but time usually is a
vital factor as the fieldworker can rarely spend several days or even weeks in
the same community if a whole network of communities has to be investigated.
The
main disadvantage of a standardized interview using a questionnaire is the
difficulty of establishing a natural relationship between the fieldworker and
the informant. As the fieldworker cannot vary his questions, it usually proves
difficult for him to adapt himself to the individual situations and the
individual informant. The non-standardized interview,
where the fieldworker has no standard set of questions at hand, is certainly
superior in this situation. However, time and the necessity of obtaining
strictly comparable material did not permit a non-standardized approach
in the interviews conducted for this study.
The standardized interview does not
necessarily need to be sterile or unnatural and thus inhibit the informant. It
is the skill of the fieldworker who conducts the interview to keep the situation
as informal and natural as possible.The interviews which were conducted for the present study usually started
with introductory talks about the informants as well as myself. I thus told the
informants about the purpose of the interview, namely that of studying the
language of fishermen and its background.
Questions about the local fishery and general questions about fishing followed.
During this initial stage of the interview, inhibitions or suspicions about
myself, the stranger, were gradually dispelled, and a conversational tone could
be established. The subsequent answering of the questionnaire usually developed
naturally. This was also due to the nature of the questionnaire which started
with a talking question about the
local types of boats and continued with questions about the various parts of a
small rowing-boat. This roused the interest of the fishermen as it was a field
they were familiar with. Questions about the fishing experience of the
informants were often slipped into the conversation, and thus they usually
started to speak naturally, encouraged by the interest taken in their subject.
These questions also aimed at establishing the master-pupil
relationship, with me being the pupil
and the informant being the master.
A problem which did occur, however, was the
paradox of me asking a question in Standard English (StE) and expecting the
informants to answer in the vernacular. One way I tried to avoid the impression
that I might be asking for a StE expression,
was the slight change of the naming type
question what do you call... into what
is your local word for..., which I regarded as a legitimate action which
would not obstruct the comparability of the answers. Sometimes the informants
gave several answers among which one was usually referred to as the "local"
word. This was usually also the one which was finally taken as an answer.
Nonetheless, a translation from StE into the local vernacular of the object or
phenomenon in question, was only considered as a very last option. It might
otherwise have undermined a spontaneous and natural answer. Where it could not
be avoided, it will always be explicitely indicated in the presentation of the
answers.
The formal aspects of the interview were
further reduced by the fact that the informants were all interviewed in
surroundings in which they felt at home and at ease. Most of the interviews were
conducted in the harbour - directly on the pier, or inside a shed. Some
informants were also interviewed at home. The interviews took place from October
9th to 29th, 1995. They lasted about an hour each. A
dictating-machine was used to record each interview.
2.2. The Informants
A few words remain to be said about the choice of informants which is of
major importance in an empirical study which aims to elicit representative
material.
The difficulty lies in finding the ideal informant who can serve as a
representative for a larger group and thus make the questioning of everybody
else belonging to this group unnecessary.
The
conditions which the ideal informant had to fulfil for the present linguistic
study result from the considerations set out in chapter 1.1. In order to reduce
the social and occupational variables to a minimum and maintain a stable and
conservative background against which regional variations of the vernacular can
be shown, the informants were chosen according to the lines of traditional
linguistic geography.
The main difference was that the targeted group were fishermen instead of
farmers. Thus, the informants who were to be chosen had to be older than sixty,
they would have had to live in the same community all their lives (except during
the Second World War), and they had to be fishermen, working (or having at some
time worked) with the fishing instruments and having employed the techniques
about which inquiry was made. The choice of older informants was also an
absolute necessity, as the questions were all concerned with the traditional
type of inshore fishing with which younger fishermen were not familiar.
All in all, 16 informants were finally chosen
as representative and were included in the study. They were distributed between
eleven fishing villages along the coast, chosen with respect to an even
geographic distribution. Sometimes two or three informants from one community
were included. This was either because of the size of the particular community
and its fishery, where it was felt that a further informant was needed to
represent a number of fishermen which was larger in relation to the other
communities,
or simply because there were fishermen about who fulfilled the conditions of
being representative informants, and were at the same time willing to answer
questions.
It would have been a shame to have missed this opportunity, as it was not always
easy to find suitable informants. However, most of the fishermen were very
co-operative, and if they did not fulfil the required criteria themselves
because they were too young or were not familiar with the traditional type of
inshore fishing, they could mostly inform me of some fisherman who would be the
type I was looking for.
The informants were usually chosen after they
had been recommended to me by people working in the harbour. Sometimes these
people were fishermen themselves who proved to be suitable informants and were
consequently interviewed on the spot. The following table of the 16 informants
who were finally selected contains the age of the informant, his place of
residence, which also is the place of birth if not otherwise indicated, the kind
of fishing or occupation the informant is presently employed in, and the kind of
fishing in which he is experienced. The Roman numerals in the left column are
used throughout this study to represent the informants.
Table
of Informants
N°
|
Place
of Residence |
Age |
Present
Occupation |
Fishing
Experience |
| I |
Burnmouth |
78 |
retired |
creels,
line fishing, seine-net, trawling |
| II |
St. Abbs |
68 |
retired |
creels,
line fishing, seine-net, trawling |
| III |
Dunbar |
60 |
trawling |
creels,
seine-net, trawling |
| IV |
North Berwick |
68 |
harbour master |
creels,
line fishing |
| V |
North Berwick |
76 |
fishing with creels |
creels,
line fishing, drift-net |
| VI |
Port Seton |
75 |
harbour master |
line
fishing, seine-net, trawling |
| VII |
Kinghorn |
70 |
fishing with creels |
creels,
line fishing |
| VIII |
Pittenweem |
77 |
fishing with creels |
creels,
line fishing, trawling |
| IX |
Pittenweem |
62 |
harbour master |
line
fishing, trawling |
| X |
Anstruther |
73 |
retired |
line
fishing, seine-net, trawling |
| XI |
Crail |
64 |
fishing with creels |
creels,
line fishing, seine-net |
| XII |
Crail |
67 |
retired |
line
fishing, seine-net, trawling |
| XIII |
Crail |
65 |
fishing with creels |
line
fishing, creels, trawling |
| XIV |
West Haven |
72 |
retired |
creels,
line fishing, drift-net |
| XV |
Gourdon |
74 |
retired |
creels,
line fishing, drift-net, seine-net |
| XVI |
Gourdon |
65 |
retired |
creels, line fishing |
