Quantifying Language: A Researcher's and Teacher's Guide to Gathering Language Data and Reducing It to Figures (Multilingual Matters)

✍ Scribed by Phil Scholfield

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 323
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

A comprehensive overview for both researchers and teachers of principles and problems when turning language into figures. Methods of data gathering, counting and serving are covered, along with matters such as ethics, norm and criterion referencing, reliability and validity, and how quantification connects with research design or pedagogical use. There are numerous examples from a range of areas of linguistics and applied linguistics.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright © 1995......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 14
Introduction......Page 15
1 Basic Terms: What Do People Quantify?......Page 18
2 Why Do People Quantify Language? The Teaching/Therapy Reason......Page 27
3 Why Do People Quantify Language? The Research Reason......Page 37
4 Overview of Four General Kinds of Approach to Data Gathering for Quantification......Page 46
5 Data For Quantification: Fully Naturalistic......Page 56
6 Data for Quantification: Quasi-Naturalistic Interaction......Page 67
7 Data For Quantification: Opinion......Page 75
8 Data For Quantification: Manipulation......Page 82
9 Maximising Naturalness in the Data-Gathering Phase of Language Quantification......Page 94
10 The 'Referencing' Dimension of Quantification......Page 107
11 Overview of Scale Types: Simple Sources of Interval Scales......Page 122
12 Scoring on Interval Scales: Counts of Various Sorts......Page 133
13 Scoring on Interval Scales: Totals from Uniform Sets of Dichotomous Items......Page 145
14 Scoring on Interval Scales: Scores Involving Rating and Weighting......Page 155
15 Scoring on Interval Scales: Combined Scores of Various Sorts......Page 167
16 Individual Rank Ordering......Page 182
17 Ranking in Ordered Categories......Page 191
18 Nominal Categorisation......Page 202
19 Overview of Quality Issues and Reliability Measurer and Cases as Sources of Unreliability......Page 216
20 Cases, Circumstances and the Measuring Instrument Itself as Sources of Unreliability......Page 230
21 Overview of Validity: Measurer, Cases etc. as Sources of Invalidity......Page 244
22 Specification of the Nature of a Variable and its Operationalisation as a Source of Invalidity......Page 258
23 Indicators as a Source of Invalidity......Page 271
Appendix 1......Page 287
Appendix 2......Page 288
References......Page 289
Index......Page 302