Episode 3: Santiago Fieldwork 2015

Hello readers! This was a great week! My project is really gathering steam, hurray!

These maps show the 2 neighborhoods I'm working in: lower-income on the right, and higher-income on the left. As you can see, they're pretty far from each other (I live closer to the one on the left).

A few highlights from this week, followed by some lessons learned:

Monday: back to the University, to do some more canvassing & head to the student centers. I also followed up with folks who had emailed me and I had responded, but who I had never heard back from. I was supposed to have an appointment, but he cancelled, bummer. Posted some stuff in various Facebook groups.

Tuesday: Got to my site in LP, called one of my participants from the week before who is helping me recruit, and he sent his sister right over. He also helped me get another onethat day, for a total of 2 (could have been 3; see Lessons Learned #2 below!).

Wednesday: Headed to my other site in LP, where I was supposed to do a workshop with the older ladies, and turns out the kitchen was still under construction, so negative on that. Took advantage of the time to do an interview with one of the ladies. I realized that the folks at this particular community center hadn't really been told what I was doing by my contact there, so I took advantage of being there all day to do a bunch of networking. Got another interview in the afternoon with one of the young ladies that works there, and 2 more set up for next Wednesday. Unfortunately at this particular site, the sound quality is not great. Lots of echo, mostly concrete, lots of ambient noise (car alarms, birds, hip hop bumping 24/7), making me thankful I'm only planning to be there 1x a week for the next 2 weeks. My other site is great, in terms of both acoustics & recruiting.

Thursday: interview in the morning, not in the most ideal of places (=a noisy hallway; see "Lessons Learned" section below). Went back to the university to hang some more flyers, then in the afternoon, had coffee with a contact (a family member of someone I met living in University Apartments at UCLA!), who is both going to participate (next week) as well as help me recruit in V neighborhood. Hurray!

Friday: Friday was awesome! Five interviews, and some excellent commentary from some of the participants! One of the motivating aspects of my project is the question that arises when /s/ is deleted across an utterance: how do you know whether what you're hearing is singular or plural? In some of the literature, authors are quick to state that this isn't an issue for native speakers; the plurality of the utterance is always recoverable from the context. However, I've come across some situations in which it isn't, so my head spun a little when I asked one of my participants what she thought of the perception task (in which folks are asked about singularity/plurality of isolated words), and she said (and of course I wrote it down verbatim, but I'm paraphrasing here): "Chileans tend to 'eat' the final <s>, so I didn't always know how many things there were." Of course, it's hard to know from a word out of context as in this experiment, but I delved a little deeper, asking her if that ever happened to her in daily life. She said, "yeah, actually, my friends make fun of me because I use a lot of [s], but sometimes it's tough to know. Sometimes you just don't know how many things you're hearing!" On the outside, I was like, "oh, how interesting." On the inside, though, I was doing a jig! :) More to come in the published paper! :P

<-- Very few things are open on Sundays! This is usually a bustling part of the avenue!

This weekend I double-checked my recording quality and made sure everything was up to date, as well as took another look at the study I'm partially replicating, to make sure I was collecting all the data I need. Turns out beyond the 60 interviews & perception tests, I have to do 3 other tasks, but each of those will a. require less time, b. can be carried out with members of any of the neighborhoods here, and c. will pay less :)

Next week I have appointments scheduled with folks for every day, from both neighborhoods, and am looking forward to a productive week!

Checking in: 17/60 interviews completed! Huzzah! I'm hoping to be at halfway by the time my mom visits, on the 21st of October.

Some Lessons Learned this week:

1. Make sure equipment is charged! I lost results from a perception test because the computer ran out of juice midway. I thought I knew this, but good to be reminded?

2. Make sure to screen better! Make sure to ask the important questions (that of origin, and whether they’ve lived in the community for the appropriate amount of time), and make sure people helping to recruit also understand that variable! I was mid-interview when I found out that my interviewee was actually from Valparaíso, a different city! Bummer.

3. If a recording environment is not ideal, just reschedule! It would have been less of a loss to have to reschedule than to do the whole thing with poor quality.