Cestrian English Project
The English Language team is always looking for ways to enhance their programme of study. One such example is the second-year module Researching Cestrian English which will run for the first time in 2019-20.
This module offers students the opportunity to collect written and/or spoken data from the local area and contribute to an archive of Cestrian English, a variety of English which hasn’t received a great deal of attention.
Before going out into the field to collect data, students will be introduced to some key issues in carrying out linguistic fieldwork: the ethics of collecting data from human informants, the means by which data is collected and stored and how results from quantitative investigations might be communicated as effectively as possible. The main aim of the module is to give students first-hand experience of data collection and to provide a useful background to more detailed studies of real data which may be carried out at Level 6 as part of the English Language dissertation.
Being part of the Department of English means being part of a community of scholars working together with the common aim of extending our knowledge of English Studies. There are times on this module when English Language students of Cestrian English will come together with English Literature students from the Chester Retold module to consider names in and around Chester and the construction of narratives, a fascinating topic relevant to the study of English Language and Literature.
This module is taught by Dr Jo Close, Programme Leader for Combined Honours English Language and Deputy Head of English, who has interests in linguistic change and the grammar of English dialects, and Dr Harry Parkin, Lecturer in English Language, who has expertise in the history of place and family names.
