language development team believes that comprehension is adequate across all varieties of Northern Thai, and therefore the goals and research questions for this survey did not address comprehension Lew
2011. The researchers’ working plan was that if no negative attitudes were found toward the variety of
Northern Thai currently being developed, then no further development would be necessary. However, if negative attitudes were found, the research team would make recommendations regarding further
language development so that speakers in all provinces of Northern Thailand can have access to language materials in a variety toward which they have no negative attitudes.
3 Methodology
The fieldwork portion of this survey was divided into two parts. During the first part, the surveyors collected stories to use as representative speech samples for each province. In the second part of the
fieldwork, the surveyors used sociolinguistic questionnaires and modified recorded text tests to discern language attitudes among the different provinces of Northern Thailand.
3.1 Recorded text testing
The recorded text test RTT for this survey is an adaptation of the methodology described in Nahhas 2006. Whereas Nahhas’ methodology focuses primarily on comprehension between varieties with only
a small emphasis on language attitudes, the adaptation proposed for this survey focused primarily on language attitudes, as background interviews emphasized that comprehension is not an issue across
regional varieties Lew 2011.
The researchers collected stories in each of the provincial capitals in Northern Thailand. The exception to this is Lampang province, in which the surveyors collected a story from a more rural
district, due to personal contacts there. Storytellers were men between the ages of 30 and 60 years who were born and had lived most of their lives in that province and were reported by other people to speak
the local variety of Northern Thai clearly. The criteria for stories were:
• 1.5–3 minutes
5
• A personal experience of the storyteller
• Not widely known
• Not a folktale, traditional story, or common knowledge
• Does not depend on local assumptions or knowledge
6
• Does not contain potentially offensive or controversial content, such as religion or politics.
Nahhas 2006:27, adapted from Ahland and Liddle 2004 Once the stories were collected in each province, the surveyors then played them for a minimum of
ten people who were also native to that province. These ten people were interviewed to make sure that the story was clear, understandable, and a good example of the variety spoken in their province.
In the second half of the fieldwork, the researchers tested subjects by playing a series of three stories. The first story was the one collected in the subject’s own province. The remaining two stories
were selected beforehand systematically from the stories collected in other provinces see Appendix E.
5
The original criteria suggest using a story of 2–5 minutes in order to get enough material to develop comprehension questions. As the researchers did not propose to develop comprehension questions based on these texts, it was
determined that a shorter story would be sufficient, and would also allow the testing process to be completed more quickly.
6
Nahhas explains this with the footnote, “In other words, if no one will understand a part of the story correctly unless they are from this village, then the story is useless for testing comprehension in other villages.”
Afterwards, the subjects were asked to respond to a series of questions about each story, including a question which asks the subjects to rate which storyteller’s speech they liked best and least. A full list of
questions asked is included in Appendix D.
3.2 Individual sociolinguistic questionnaires
