Exploring Mass Observation: A Sociological Movement in Bolton
Delve into the intriguing world of Mass Observation, a sociological movement founded in 1937, focusing on the working classes in Bolton. The movement collected vast amounts of documentary records covering various aspects of life, including pubs, sports, politics, and more. Discover the unique Bolton/Worktown Corpus containing 100,000 words of spoken data, providing a fragmentary yet insightful glimpse into the past.
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Ivor Timmis, Leeds Beckett University i.timmis@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
Aye! Ees a bloody seet wuss nar, owd Eric, the bloody grabbing free ale buggar
Mass Observation A sociological and anthropological movement founded in 1937 by Harrisson, Madge and Jennings Roots in the documentary movement and the need to know (Jeffrey 1999) Assembled large teams of observers to make a detailed study of the attitudes and behaviour of the working classes Bolton [Worktown] was a particular focus, 1937-1940
The data 400, 000 pages of documentary records Various topics: pubs, sport, politics, religion, shopping, ceremonies; the war Spoken data: Overheards , Directs , and Indirects
The Bolton/Worktown Corpus 100,000 words Quality of the spoken data: fragmentary, variable, but unique ivortimmis.wix.com/theboltoncorpus
End Weight Aye! Ee s a bloody seet wuss nar owd Eric, the bloody grabbing free ale buggar
Canonical and Non-Canonical apposition [BWC] Aye! Ee s a bloody seet wuss nar owd Eric, the bloody grabbing free ale buggar [COCA] After she'd signed up with the Land Army, her dad, the miserable bugger, had said she wouldn't last a week [COCA] My cousin, the poor bastard, is waiting for us
Emotive Apposition < IC, M 55>They were somebodies lads poor things Why, Teddy Gee! Ee s getten a pair o bow s us bi mine, the buggar Aye un thi n ad no fucking breakfast the cunts
Emotive afterthought? He just waits until the last minute and then comes in for the spoils the dirty dog The people have spoken the bastards
A sting in the tail Aye! Ee s a bloody seet wuss nar owd Eric, the bloody grabbing free ale buggar
NP Tails They all want throwing out, the government, taking the guts out of us
Pronoun Tails I m afraid it s going to be a long do this with Italy coming in
Operator Tails That s Mrs Clay that woman over there she s proper nice she is
Inverted Operator Tails He s luckiest mon in t world is owd Brian. Table 4 Frequency of inverted operator tails in three corpora. Figures normalised per 100, 000words BWC BNC 54 2 ICE Ireland 2 Co-occurrence with evaluation (of [named] people)
Conclusion Are we talking about dialect or sociopragmatics?
