North Yorkshire Dialect Corpus based on Oral History Recordings

2022 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 22K00622
• Research Institution: Kyushu University
• Principal Investigator: Laker Stephen 九州大学, 言語文化研究院, 准教授 (10741548)
• Project Period (FY): 2022-04-01 – 2026-03-31
• Keywords: English dialects / Recorded speech / Corpus

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

This year I made one research trip to England. During this time, I visited Teesside Archives, in Middlesbrough, the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum, Skinningrove, the Civic Archives in York, as well as other local collections held at reference libraries at Guisborough and Redcar, and Middlesbrough. I worked most closely with Teesside Archives in Middlesbrough, which houses a large oral history collection, though much of it is not yet digitised. Importantly, the archivists sourced and allowed me to have copies of transcripts of 45 recordings and other data necessary for the first year of the project. As planned, I focussed on the recordings of the County Endeavour Oral History Projects from 1986. Even though I gathered typed transcriptions to work with, the print quality was not great, so OCR did not work especially well and manual improvements were needed, which was time-consuming. A sufficient number (about 20 one-hour recordings) of the recordings are now prepared, which is already a considerable amount of data that can be searched using corpus tools. I have already had initial contacts with the archivists at the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum in 2022 and gained access to recordings, but the surviving written documentation was not accessible until recently due to renovations of the museum. I have collected sufficient data to begin preliminary studies of selected dialectal features. Groundwork has been made on a study involving infinitival constructions, characteristic of the Yorkshire area. I will aim to write this up in fiscal year 2023.

Current Status of Research Progress

2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.

Reason

I am satisfied with the current progress. Importantly I have been able to gather excellent resources to conduct my research thanks to good communications with Teesside Archives and the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum in particular, both of which have substantial oral history collections.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

In fiscal year 2023, I have planned a research trip to Middlesbrough Archives and the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum in Skinningrove. This time I will focus mainly on the collections held at the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum, and I have been granted access to study the materials of the collection on site. From this collection, transcriptions will be made during the fiscal year. In doing so, a wider geographical area can be surveyed. Also in 2023, I should aim to complete and submit one research article on dialect syntax. Preparations have already been made in this regard.