Tracey Adams is a PhD candidate in French linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation utilizes a blend of ethnographic and sociolinguistic methods to investigate diverse speech communities in Montreal. The COVID pandemic began shortly before her data collection efforts; she has since explored ways to recruit participants and conduct interviews remotely. In this interview we conducted in back in February 2021, Tracey shares her experience and insights about collecting data during the pandemic at that point.
Tell me a little bit about your research and specifically about your current data collection.
I am focusing on the varieties of French that are spoken in Montreal, and looking at the different extralinguistic factors that play into pronunciation, and the perception and reception of different accents. Because Montreal is a pretty diverse, pretty multicultural and multilingual place, it’s a good ground for studying. I’m currently working on my dissertation, where I’m hoping to compile a corpus of different speakers of different backgrounds, and hoping to do a perceptual dialectology study. So, in my current data collection, I’m trying to get some sociolinguistic interviews to elicit certain speech features. What I’ve been primarily working on for the Getting Data working group has been figuring out different ways to reach out to people. And it’s been working so far, as I’ve actually reached a number of people, but it’s definitely been a process of trial and error in terms of technical aspects like making sure the internet works, and whether the recording is going to be of good enough quality. It’s very interesting working with people and not being able to be physically there with them. There is a lot of innovating on the spot.
Can you tell me a bit about what you’ve done so far and what were the major areas of data collection that you had to change in order to adapt to the new situation?
Originally, I had hoped to be in Montreal, speaking with people and finding participants that way. I think it’s a little easier, as a participant, when you meet the person and you know who you’re going to speak with, I feel like it’s a little comforting. Online you’re just hoping that the person that you’re talking to is a real person. So, I’ve been trying to reach people through people I know, people who can speak to the fact that I’m real and I am a researcher, and what I’m doing is valid and not some sort of hoax. So, I have reached out through different professional contacts, like other researchers I know, or people who know researchers I know, and reaching out to a Facebook group of researchers who do work in Quebec or Montreal specifically, as well as trying to reach out to friends of mine and family, and using online forums like Reddit and Facebook. I’ve started trying to connect with people through MeetUp groups. So, it’s been really interesting. I actually took advantage of something Facebook offers, where for a relatively small amount of money, they will advertise a post for you. I got a number of participants that way, but it’s interesting, because I’m getting all one demographic, and I need several different types of participants. I’m currently brainstorming and figuring out other ways I can reach people in order to get the diverse sample that I’m hoping for.
And the ones that you did collect data from, what was that like?
It’s been interesting, I never really know what kind of internet the participant is going to have. The other day I had an interview with someone, and it was going great. The participant was giving a long answer to a question, which she was excited about, but the internet entirely cut out, and I couldn’t hear her through all of it. So, she finished, and she was laughing after telling the story, and I said ‘I’m so sorry, would you mind summarizing or retelling that?’ Her response to that was ‘sure, and I’m sure I’ll tell it better the second time’. It was great that she was open to it, but I was also thinking that now there is another level of monitoring that she’s giving to her speech, having reflected upon it. I’ve also asked some participants to use their phone to record the conversation if our internet connection was unstable, but that’s not always possible. Some participants only have access to a phone or a computer but not both.
What kind of variables are you looking at?
There are fairly large immigrant communities in Montreal. I’m specifically looking at the two largest communities which include Montrealers from North African and Haitian descent. I’m looking at the interplay of socioeconomic class as well as somebody’s self-described ethnic origins, and how that presents itself in speech and seeing what people pick up on when they hear different people speak. What Montrealers notice in terms of variation, and how that can help maybe come up with other sociolinguistic studies to do in the future. Currently, there are growing bodies of research on the regional variation within Quebec, and socioeconomic class has always been a big part of that, but I’m just hoping to include some of the more diverse characters that are also Quebecois or identify as Montrealais and the like, within our knowledge of the French spoken there.
Are you under any time pressure or time constraints?
Yes, and kind of. I’m in my fifth year of my program which is a doctorate in French Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. And when we start our program, we’re guaranteed funding for six years. So usually in your fifth year is when you travel and collect all your data, and in your sixth year you try to wrap everything up and graduate. But everything’s been slowed down a little bit, and I know I’ve been fortunate with the advisers and the professors in my department and my graduate school. They are being as understanding as possible and trying to help us figure out other funding opportunities to help us finish our studies in the event that we’re not done in six years, because I think a lot of people aren’t going to be. I have worked with that timeline in my head, so, personally, I would like to finish this first chapter in my research life within these six years.
Does that mean that basically you’ll have to finish your data collection remotely?
I think probably yes, I’ll be collecting the majority of my data remotely. For interviews, I think that has more of an effect. Because I think when I create the perceptual dialectology portion, I’ll probably put it in a survey which I think should work online as long as people have access to internet and are willing to take the time. I think it’s more translatable online, whereas I think this interview part is probably the hardest.
Are you adapting anything in the interview protocol or are you just doing it the way that you would’ve done it otherwise but just on Zoom?
I think that it’s probably the same. I know by the time I was finally able to start doing interviews, this had been a thing for several months. So, I had it in mind when I put together how I was going to do this. I would say the interviews are probably more or less the same. I think I’ve done more adapting in terms of how I foresee the second part of my study continuing forward.
What are the biggest challenges and the biggest advantages of your remote data collection experience so far and adjusting to the situation?
That’s a good question. I think the best advantages would probably be is that so many people are familiar with Zoom now so asking them to do an interview with me over Zoom is not very new. They do a lot of meetings, they meet with friends over Zoom, and so on. So I’m not introducing any new equipment. It seems a little less formal, because it’s something people are doing with more or less frequency these days, so I almost think that by keeping to equipment that they’re used to, doing it remotely can actually be nice and more comfortable. If I were to do this in person, showing up with all the equipment I would have, the microphones, etc., would be a different experience for a lot of the people I’m speaking with. Whereas in the circumstances as they are, I get to use something that they use themselves otherwise and are familiar with. They can troubleshoot with me when issues happen, so I think that’s nice to be able to use equipment they’re familiar with. I think the setback, as I mentioned before, usually is the internet and never knowing how reliable it’s going to be. I usually do interviews from my office because it’s slightly more stable. But even then, I think that’s the toughest part. I don’t want to take up more of their time that they’ve so graciously given me by troubleshooting all the issues. Not being able to control as much as the environment that goes into the audio in the background can also be tough. So, it’s just tough when somebody turns out to have rough internet, because I want to give them the time and respect that they’ve also given me. I don’t want to sit there nitpicking with ‘can you try another room’ or ‘can you stop mixing your tea’. That’s more challenging. It’s both good and difficult to have less control over the environment I’m recording in.
How much do you think the data collected through Zoom would differ compared to the traditional face-to-face sociolinguistic interviews?
Something that I’ve been thinking about recently is that it is very different sitting across from someone at a table than sitting across from someone on a screen. For instance, I know I had to get used to picking up on cues for when someone was finished talking on Zoom, which is different than in person. And it’s just generally a different feeling. I wonder what it may be like from the participant’s perspective. It’s kind of counter to what I said before. Though they’re used to using Zoom, I still think it’s more comfortable and more informal talking to someone in person, and you can see exactly how their body’s moving, and how they’re reacting and responding to whatever it is you’re saying. I think there’s some physical aspect to meeting somebody that can encourage a level of comfort in talking with them that I think is potentially lost over Zoom and makes the turn-taking a little different. I also find that if someone says something when you ask them a question, and you want to follow up with that, it’s hard to show that non-verbal cue, and to have that message sent across. It makes interrupting a little more difficult in a way. Otherwise, some of my participants have indeed commented that speaking with me is still naturally a little different than how they speak with their friends, but not necessarily as formal as speaking in the workplace. That is, I ask them about how they would describe how they speak if they were to describe their own accent or pronunciation. And they do, when they say ‘oh, when I’m talking with my mom’ and they describe a conversation they have with their mom, they do slip into more vernacular speech. It’s nice to hear that they still do it, and that I’m getting that kind of data even on Zoom. When I constructed the questions for my interviews, I was hoping that in asking them to talk about themselves, and asking them meta-questions about their own linguistic practices, it would help them tell their stories and show some variation in that way. It was really cool to see people do that on Zoom interviews.
How do you think the conditions for linguistic data collection will change in the next five years in relation to the pandemic?
It’s going to probably be an eerie feeling, easing back into research where maybe you’re meeting face-to-face with people you don’t know at all. I think there will be a lot of things outside of research, just us as humans getting reacclimated to living life. where we don’t have to be distanced all the time, and I don’t know how long that’ll take to translate into being comfortable doing face-to-face interviews or fieldwork anywhere. I do think maybe it’s nice if we can find different ways to collect data. If we can find some really viable, useful ways to do this, it could mean a lot, I think. For researchers who maybe can’t travel to a region for whatever reason. or can’t afford to go somewhere or need to be working and doing this, I can see these tools that we’re collecting here being very helpful. I also like the idea that remote collection could be really nice for other grad students, because I remember in course work thinking ‘well, I have to go somewhere to collect data’. It never occurred to me to try to collect speech data remotely, until I had to. So, I think it opens a lot of doors. But I have no idea where this is going for the next five years. It could go anywhere at this point.
Do you have anything to add, perhaps in terms of advantages to collecting data online?
I am somebody who is rather shy, but I was very excited about doing research, and I almost feel like being forced to improvise and do it remotely has helped me to gradually get into doing this research. Because I’m a grad student, this is the first larger scale study I’ve ever done, so, as disappointing as it was at first to have to reinvent and improvise how I was going do it, I think that, on a personal level, doing it remotely makes it easier for me to reach out and meet with people that I don’t know yet.