Two fieldworkers’ effects on a respondent’s language use in Szeged, Hungary
Keywords:
fieldworkers’ effects in a sociolinguistic interview, bidialectals in hiding, Labov’s audiomonitoring, Bell’s audience design, trust between interlocutors, Watzlawick’s interac- tional view of communication, the respondent’s and the interviewer’s profiles, the respond- ent’s position in the interview, indirect effect of the fieldworker’s personaAbstract
Interviewing techniques in variationist sociolinguistics may work in one location but fail in another. In this paper we test the effect of a dialect (ö-speaking) fieldworker and a Standard Hungarian (e-speaking) fieldworker on the speech of the same respondent who uses ö [Ø] in place of Standard e [e]. Quantitative analyses showed no effect of any of the traditional explanations such as Labov’s audiomonitoring, Bell’s audience design, progress of time in the interview, topic or emotional loading. However, Watzlawick’s interactional view of communication provides an adequate means to interpret the data. What did have an effect on the speech behavior of the respondent was how he placed himself vis-à-vis the two interviewers on a social hierarchy axis. The importance of constructing profiles of the persona of the respondent and that of the interviewer is emphasised.
