CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLINGUISTIC JUDGEMENT TASK
4.1 Methods of Psycholinguistic Judgement Task
4.1.1 The Design of Questionnaire
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立 政 治 大 學
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CHAPTER 4
PSYCHOLINGUISTIC JUDGEMENT TASK
In the second study of the thesis, we intended to investigate what factors might influence EFL learners’ use of pretty and charming. Two versions of a questionnaire featuring an acceptability judgement task were designed for the EFL learners. In each version of the questionnaire, sixteen questions within two types of modified nouns (person and object) were included. Through the acceptability judgement task, it was expected that some interpretations of the participants’ judgements could be obtained. In the following section, we will firstly introduce the design of questionnaire in 4.1.1.
Then, in 4.1.2, the grading criteria will be presented. As for the participants, procedure and data analysis will be displayed in section 4.1.3 to 4.1.5.
4.1 Methods of Psycholinguistic Judgement Task
In this thesis, both corpus analysis and psycholinguistic judgement task mainly focused on two types of modified nouns—person-related modified nouns and object-related modified nouns. For the psycholinguistic judgement task, the questionnaire was mainly designed to investigate what factors might affect EFL learners’ uses of the two adjectives and the methods of psycholinguistic judgement task will be presented in this section.
4.1.1 The Design of Questionnaire
Three main variables. For the questions which focused on person-related
modified nouns (e.g., pretty girl, charming boy), they were designed mainly based on three variables: (a) gender, (b) patterns of modified nouns (i.e., pretty-only, charming-only, and both (called ‘common’)), and (c) source of beauty (i.e., inner and outer beauty). Each of them will be introduced respectively below.
The first variable of the questionnaire is gender. The gender of the person who has the qualities being described was controlled in the example sentences. In example
(4-‧
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1), a female person and a male person, respectively, were described (All examples were retrieved from the COCA).
(4-1)
(a) She has a charming manner and she always likes to make jokes about herself.
(b) He has a charming manner and he always likes to make jokes about himself.
Secondly, in order to select the stimuli of the questions, the patterns of collocates were considered. In total, there were three patterns of the stimuli: pretty-only, charming-only, and common. The ‘only pattern’ refers to the strongest collocates of the target word. For example, according to the corpus result, clothes can only collocate with pretty as in example (4-2-a), while manner can only collocate with charming, as demonstrated in (4-2-b). As for ‘common pattern’, collocates are shared between the two target words. In example (4-2-c) and (4-2-d), the word voice frequently collocates with both pretty and charming.
(4-2)
(a) Judy sat there imagining all the pretty clothes she would have when she went to
the party. pretty-only (b) He has a charming manner and he always likes to make jokes about himself.
charming-only
(c) It's her good fortune that she can use her pretty voice to earn a living. common (d) He always uses that charming voice to say ‘Good morning’ to everyone.
common
Thirdly, source of beauty can be further divided into two types: inner beauty and outer beauty. It is hypothesized that this variable may affect participants’ uses of pretty and charming. The attractiveness of the female in example (4-3-a) is her charming smile,
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and we categorized it as an ‘outer beauty’. As for (4-3-b), the man has a charming manner which may make people like him, and it belongs to an inner beauty.
(4-3)
(a) She lowered her window and gave the man her most charming smile.
outer beauty (b) He has a charming manner and he always likes to make jokes about himself
inner beauty From the definitions of pretty and charming shown in the dictionaries (see Chapter
3, section 3.1.2), one could know that both these two adjectives can be used to describe someone or something being ‘pleasant’ or’ attractive’.
In order to understand the participant’s use of the two adjectives in describing someone’s attractiveness, sixteen sentences in total (i.e., ‘gender’ ⅹ ‘pattern’ ⅹ ‘source of beauty’ =2ൈ3ൈ2=16) were constructed. In addition to the three controlled variables in the questionnaire, the gender of the participant was seen as a monitor variable in the study. A monitor variable may affect the outcome, but it cannot be kept constant in its value. It needs to be monitored. From the result of corpus analysis indicated in the previous chapter, we hypothesized that there was a relation between the gender of the participant (‘P’) and the gender of the person in the sentence (‘S’) whose qualities are described in the sentences. To test the assumption, in total, there were four combinations of gender in the study— the first gender is the participant; the second is the person-stimuli, [FemalePⅹFemaleS], [FemalePⅹMaleS], [MalePⅹMaleS] and [MalePⅹ FemaleS]. For instance, [FemalePⅹFemaleS] refers to a female participant who made a judgement on the sentence containing a female person. The former gender represents the gender of the participant, and the latter one stands for the gender of the person in the sentences.
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with different genders of the person described in the sentences were evenly divided into different versions of questionnaires. For example, manner, in the charming-only pattern has both person’s genders in two versions of the questionnaires, as shown in Table 4-1.Table 4- 1 Stimuli Used in Person-Related Modified Nouns Part of Questionnaire Patterns Adjective Source of
beauty
charming Inner beauty manner Female A
Male B
For example, (4-4-a) depicts a female person, and it was distributed into questionnaire A, while example (4-4-b) describes a male person distributed into questionnaire B.
(4-4)
(a) She has a charming manner and she always likes to make jokes about herself.
(b) He has a charming manner and he always likes to make jokes about himself.
As for ‘common pattern’, stimuli were shared between both pretty and charming. For example, traits frequently collocates with the two target words and there were four
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sentences describing traits in total (i.e., genderⅹtwo patterns=2 ⅹ 2=4). Then, these sentences were distributed evenly into the two versions of questionnaires. Each version of questionnaire included two sentences describing the same person-stimuli in common pattern (one male and one female). Overall, there were eight questions in total focusing on person-related modified nouns in each version of questionnaires.
In terms of the questions which focused on object-related modified nouns, the stimuli were selected based on similar criteria—categorization of ‘patterns’ and ‘source of beauty’ were used. For object-stimuli, there were two different types of source of beauty—‘nature’ and ‘artifact’ as demonstrated in example (4-5).
(4-5)
(a) I like the idea of you shooting the pretty scenery of beach. … nature (b) This charming story is drawn from the true adventures of the author. artifact
For example, (4-5-a) scenery was categorized as a ‘nature’ beauty. Example (4-5-b) belonged to ‘artifacts’, which were made by human beings.
Similar to the person-stimuli, eight object-related sentences were designed to test the understanding of the learners’ use of the two adjectives. However, all the stimuli of the object-related nouns in the task were gender-neutral, there was no need to distribute the sentences into different versions of questionnaires. All of these sentences appeared in both versions of questionnaires. That means that the object-stimuli received double the number of responses from the two versions.
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Table 4- 2 Stimuli Used in the Object-Related Modified Nouns Part of Questionnaire Patterns Adjective Source of beauty R1 collocate
charming-only charming Nature nature
charming Artifact inn
common
pretty-only pretty Nature flower
pretty Artifact harbor
Overall, each version of the questionnaires contained sixteen questions (i.e., eight for person-related modified nouns and eight for object-related modified nouns), but the questions for person-stimuli were divided into two genders; the questions for the object-stimuli were the same for both versions. After showing the design of questionnaires, we then demonstrate the grading criteria in the following section.