The finished product.

The website can be located here:

RSEL Group 1 Research Website

We are very pleased with the overall turn out of the website however if all else fails all the sound files are posted on our Youtube channel, found here, so the sound files cans till be accessed if there is a problem with the website.

"What we’ve done and what we need to do" or: The perils of the digital revolution

As stated our current aim is the collection and analysis of data. However a relatively large problem was encounter during this process. After a mass buying of news papers from all areas of print, we discovered a fundamental flaw, personal columns or lonely hearts ads are now somewhat scarce. Aside from a few examples in local and free papers (which we felt would not give a particularly good representation of the public), data was rather hard to come by. This is likely due to the popularity of social networking and the internet.

So (and rather appropriately for this module) we've shifted our attention to the internet, and personal ads on dating websites. This throws up some interesting areas that will affect our report.

•  With printed personal ads you tend to pay per word, this is not the case with online ads so structure, abbreviations and other features of printed ads are no longer present.
• We can no longer compare between different varieties of newspaper (tabloid, broadsheet, etc.) so may have to focus on other variables.
•  There are literally dozens of dating sites out there, each with a different take on the medium. We have selected one or two of the bigger sites that provided a “general service” (i.e. don’t cater towards people from specific careers, faiths, etc).

Currently we are collecting data from a variety of ages across both genders, as our main focus with be language and gender comparisons.

Still to do is obviously the analysis and formulation of the presentation. More info on how we will organise the presentation on the website should follow soon, after a bit more discussion.

The backup

With Bill's advice, I quickly set up a very basic site on a different server, just in case the main one goes down for any reason.

http://rselgroup1.moonfruit.com/

Update 27/10/11

We feel that our original question was somewhat too narrow at this stage of the investigation. We want to expand it from focusing solely on adjectives to include verbs and noun phrases, whilst continuing the idea of comparing the use in male and female adds. After collecting and analysing some data over the next few days, if any area seems too hold interesting scope for discussion we may also include that in the project. We will finalise the research question after this information has been gathered.

The Website

The skeleton for the website is up, found here; http://www.wix.com/rselgroup1/project

I decided to take a really minimal approach, plenty of scope for more pages, should be really easy to navigate and easy to add sound clips/youtube videos later on.

Let me know if there's anything you think I should add/change, the colour scheme is completely editable for example.

Link to GLA on google docs

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jh57c2jkIZYpHe3AVM4FgQUvzPFP4T4AzAwI83A0SOw/edit?hl=en_US

Week 4-5

Aims:

Unfortunately due to various issues we were late in posting our GLA, for which we apologise. However we feel we are now on top of where we are meant to be and are making sure that once we receive feedback we will meet up as soon as possible to redraft our GLA and meanwhile continue our background reading and look for extra studies relating to our research question. We are also going to make sure we talk to Alison Sealey on Wednesday to discuss how our project is developing, watch and read the relevant information on the wiki and continue developing our ideas through the blog and start collecting relevant data so that by week 7 we will post our reflections of our data on the blog:

(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZz3lrdVSNR6NXBwGimLpjyuaPz_m33j1mOWgPKR0djxqIum54s6PVwQ1tPWHVh8L5FTE-UjBy5xmS7sx9SIFAhhp07ERVwVtlU1l3Jh6qXVlVN3ZlC1zEMmAiBGzV9jBD4HwWlWWdj0ZN/s1600/RSEL+Timeline.png)

Additionally due to the fact it would be impractical to create a pilot study, whilst collecting data we will refine our question and make sure our focus areas are appropriate.

Project Proposal

Research Skills English Language Proposal

Members of Group 1:

- Natalie Amies

- Jay Glover

- Anil Abbas

- Chloe Burcham

- Jenny Joice

English Language Group 1 Research Question:

‘How do people use language to create identity through ‘lonely heart’ advertisements, with particular focus on the extent to which the use of adjectives differs between genders?’

Research Question Design:

We chose this topic because we originally came up with a theme surrounding newspapers or printed medium which led us to focus on a more specific topic.

After discussing many ideas as a group we wanted to focus on the differences in language and gender. We all did individual research into this topic, and looked through the books referred to early on.

In our project we aim to investigate how the ‘lonely heart’ advertisements give the writers an opportunity to create an identity for themselves and in specific how this differs between males and females, referring to adjectives in particular.

Methodology (type and amount of data and how we will process it):

We aim to look at 2 different newspapers (the telegraph and the observer) with different political audiences and we will have a total data collection of 10 newspapers (5 of each).

We will take different samples from these newspapers and analyse roughly 10 samples from women (5 from each newspaper) and 10 from men (5 from each newspaper).

The samples will be picked from the first advertisement printed under the section of 'men seeking women' and 'women seeking men'. For this study we will only look at the language used from the sections.

This also solves the issue of masculine and feminine traits and we are almost sure they all have the same sexual orientation which allows our study to be more specific.

Related Reading:

We have started looking through some background reading which will help us to build on our thoughts on this topic and either lead us to agree or disagree with certain conclusions. We can also learn from previous topics on what is best to research in this area of language and gender and any problems encountered which we can possibly avoid.

Core Textbook:

- Researching English Language; a resource book

o Sealey, A.

Books:

- Words and phrases: corpus studies of lexical semantics

o Stubbs, M.

- Language and desire: encoding sex, romance, and intimacy

o Harvey, K. and Shalom, C.

- The handbook of language and gender

o Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M.

- Gender and Language Research Methodologies

o Harrington, K. et al

- Language and Gender

o Talbot, M.

- Men Talk

o Jennifer Coates

- Physical appearance and gender: sociobiological and sociocultural perspectives (pages 58, 193, 245)

o Linda A. Jackson

Journals:

- Let's make a deal: An analysis of revelations and stipulations in lonely hearts advertisements.

o Harrison, Albert A.; Saeed, Laila

Extra:

- Carol Marley's PHD work on this topic

Things to take into account:

- We are going to have a relatively small amount of data which could be seen as inaccurate and not precise enough. However we have limited time.

- We will have to take into account the fact that there may be different readership due to different newspapers, and this will have to be discussed in our final conclusions of our project

- Although our investigation is based on gender, we will take into consideration all other factors we are presented with that might influence their language use, such as age and other factors. This will give us a more accurate and truthful representation of the language use of men and women.

- Despite the fact that this topic allows us to not have close contact with the individual and therefore not infringe on ethical issues we must realise what is being analysed is personal and we must respect what is said in these advertisements.

- However the benefits of using this medium is that there is plenty of available data, we don’t have human error from the transcription process and using previously published data avoids any occurrences of the observer’s paradox

Presenting our Data:

Rather that present our project in a single video, we want to take a more original approach and create a project based website. The project could be divided into 3-5 minute video or voice clips, with accompanying data, tables, pictures etc. displayed on the same page. This overcomes the problem of standard video formats, such as Youtube, and the size restrictions that come with them. In this format, all information would clearly laid out and easy to read.

We will meet in advance of the presentation to discuss all our findings and ensure we have all understood what our final conclusions are and are happy with what needs to be conveyed, respecting all contributions from each member.

Found an interesting article relating closely to our topic which we could also take a look at:

Let's make a deal: An analysis of revelations and stipulations in lonely hearts advertisements.

Harrison, Albert A.; Saeed, Laila

LINK:

http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com/sp-3.4.2a/ovidweb.cgi?WebLinkFrameset=1&S=PMKIFPCIEDDDJFHKNCBLOELBAGLHAA00&returnUrl=ovidweb.cgi%3f%26TOC%3dS.sh.15.16.20.34.39%257c8%257c50%26FORMAT%3dtoc%26FIELDS%3dTOC%26S%3dPMKIFPCIEDDDJFHKNCBLOELBAGLHAA00&directlink=http%3a%2f%2fgraphics.tx.ovid.com%2fovftpdfs%2fFPDDNCLBOEHKED00%2ffs046%2fovft%2flive%2fgv023%2f00005205%2f00005205-197704000-00008.pdf&filename=Let%27s+make+a+deal%3a+An+analysis+of+revelations+and+stipulations+in+lonely+hearts+advertisements.&link_from=S.sh.15.16.20.34.39|8&pdf_key=B&pdf_index=S.sh.15.16.20.34.39

Researched books for our chosen research question:

- Words and phrases: corpus studies of lexical semantics (Stubbs, M.)

- Language and desire: encoding sex, romance, and intimacy (Harvey, K. and Shalom, C.)

- The handbook of language and gender (Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M.)

- Gender and Language Research Methodologies (Harrington, K. et al)

- Language and Gender (Talbot, M.)

Meeting 2: Finalising the Group Learning Agreement

After sharing and discussing our individual areas of interest we decided to choose the research question:

"To what extent does the language used by males and females in lonely hearts ads differ?"


Our data collection will include samples from newspapers and online websites. After we have a better understanding of the information our data can provide us, we will narrow our focus down to several specific linguistic areas.


We're also interested in researching some context of our chosen topic. Though it wouldn't warrant the same depth as our research question, it might be beneficial to include some information on the history of both personal ads and the medium by which they are delivered. 

Preparation for Meeting Two

Group 1 is meeting this Thursday to discuss and establish our areas of interest for a research project. We will arrive prepared and we aim to come up with a workable plan which will create a successful research project proposal, suitable for everyone.

***

- We will first complete the GLA

- Secondly we will share our ideas and decide on the most appropriate/interesting topic

- We will discuss/research useful books for our chosen topic

- We will create a time plan to identify how to use our time more efficiently and assign roles to one another

- We will post our meetings and ideas on the blog

- Complete our project proposal

***

- We will also try and use google docs more regularly

These are our aims to complete by the end of Week 3. We will next post during/after this meeting.

Meeting One

In our first meeting, all 5 of us discussed how we wanted to go about this project. We tried to get everything up to date and watched relevant videos.

We've also decided to meet up this week after having viewed V-Lectures 2 – 4 and read the relevant sections of Sealey (2010).

Week One

The members of Group One:

Natalie Amies   (JH, English Language and French)
Jay Glover   (JH, English Language and Music)
Chloe Burcham   (BA, English Language)
Jenny Joice   (BA, English Language)
Anil Abbas   (BA, English Language)

We have set up and co-ordinate via our Facebook group which allows us to easily arrange meetings. We aim to meet for a couple of hours mid week, each week.