Coding Task
- Isa Buchstaller (2008) studied the use of verbs of quotation in US/UK English (like, say, go, went, ∅ etc.). This was her dependent variable (the thing that does the varying that she primarily wanted to measure). Buchstaller gives examples showing how she coded her data for the independent variables (the factors that the dependent variable is influenced by), as below.
- Identify all instances of the dependent variable
- Identify the independent variables
- Open a new spreadsheet and code the examples
- What would you do next? Counts? Percentages?
| Reported speech | ||
| 1 | USA | My daughter’s like “mommy can I help you with the laundry? ∅ “Of course you can” |
| 2 | UK | And my mom was going “come on, try it on” |
| 3 | USA | And he goes “do you want to dance?” I go “no” |
| 4 | UK | And he just kind of looked at me and he goes “you all right?” and I said “yeah” |
| Reported thought | ||
| 5 | USA | Well I used to make the regular pudding and put it in the pie shell, and it would sit in the refrigerator for a day, where you cut the pie it would soak into the pie shell and it was like red and I’m like “uuahh:: this is kind of groedy” |
| 6 | UK | I mean I was like trapped, rather like being a rabbit in the headlight you know, it was like “ahhh” |
| 7 | USA | The first year the deer ate my garden, and I was just so astounded I’m going “deer right here in the city”? |
| 8 | UK | And the third time my hand went like straight through the window, and there was like glass smashing down, and I went “oh shit” |
