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Linguistic survey: 'Tag questions' of the United Kingdom (Only two questions, please only UK residents) (self.linguistics)

submitted ago* by Lorgramoth

End of survey, because the crap programme only lets me see the first 100 responses

Results: Imgur

Alexp2 has informed me of a much better free survey tool by google: http://www.workhappy.net/2009/05/using-google-docs-to-make-a-survey.html

I think the results look fairly good for such a short survey. I'm gonna make a much better one with all the input I have now. Please continue to make suggestions, and thank you all! :)

Previous stuff: I'm a German student, I've got to do a paper on tag questions of the UK for Uni, but all data is over 10 years old. This survey has two goals: 1. Is it possible to get good data this way? 2. Is it possible to get good data from Reddit?

If the data turns out to be good, I can use it and/or refine the survey. If not, I must change the method within my small means.

Whatever comes out, I'll post it here. :) Imgur

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[–]jmmcd 5 points6 points ago

There is a voice in my head that wonders if you might be confused. You asked this same question informally of Irish people the other day, but now that you're running the survey you've excluded most Irish people. On purpose?

[–]Lorgramoth[S] 4 points5 points ago

Yes, I've got the impression from all the answers that "innit" might well be too rare in Ireland. Now I've tested the survey- waters of "innit" for a region that's proven to be filled with users of "innit."

My next step will be to generate a good survey, thanks to the great input I got. I will include Ireland and will try to include "so it is" as a 'tag statement' of sorts.

[–]jmmcd 4 points5 points ago

My mistake. Apologies. Best of luck with it.

[–]Lorgramoth[S] 2 points3 points ago

Forgot to give the links to the great input I mentioned:

http://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/pbu6v/linguistic_survey_tag_questions_of_the_united/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/pbugo/linguistic_survey_tag_questions_of_the_united/

[–]postsentinlinguistics amateur 2 points3 points ago

I like how theres no "huh" option.

[–]kieuk 0 points1 point ago

'innit' and 'isn't it' are used by different social classes so your results might be skewed depending on what kind of people tend to visit r/linguistics.

[–]intangible-tangerine 2 points3 points ago

I think a bigger issue would be false reporting, in that lots of people will tell you they only say 'isn't it' but you will catch them saying 'innit' in real life conversations.

[–]kieuk 0 points1 point ago

Good point. It would also be interesting (but hard in survey format) to compare the numbers who use 'innit' as a general-purpose tag and and those who exclusively use it for third person neuter things.

[–]Lorgramoth[S] 0 points1 point ago

Actually, reasearch found out that "innit" and "isn't it" are relatively evenly distributed. The problem is, the reasearch is over 10 years old. I'm working on a more specific survey atm which will incorporate most of the possible answers I have been given here, and also age, location, gender and education.

[–]kieuk 0 points1 point ago

Ok, cool. Could you possibly link to that research you mention?

[–]Lorgramoth[S] 0 points1 point ago

Yep, as soon as I'm done I'll ask my lecturer if it's good enough, then I'll post it and probably pm it to all who posted underneath the previous survey. At the moment I'm working on additional questions.

[–]kieuk 0 points1 point ago

I meant the research that was, as you say, over 10 years old.

[–]Lorgramoth[S] 0 points1 point ago*

ah sorry. This is my base text I'm working with:

Krug, Manfred. 1998. British English is developing a new discourse marker, innit? A study in lexicalisation based on social, regional and stylistic variation. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 23: 145–197.

I had to get it from my uni library, it's not available scanned (here at least). The data he examined is from the BNC, though: http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ And the BNC stopped at 1993.

[–]Lorgramoth[S] 0 points1 point ago

Update: Thanks to the new survey, a linguist contacted me and provided me with some new research of innit! :)

[–]Lorgramoth[S] 0 points1 point ago

bump

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