Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Real Syntax: the reality TV show
In a world where reality TV shows are based on fakeness, you need something to ground you, something REAL that you can watch on TV and feel good about. REAL SYNTAX is the answer to quest for the next big hit!
The object of this new super-series is to record natural conversation and dialogues on TV, from a group of people, and provide the data to linguists around the world!! Occasionally the people on the show would be submitted to stressful situations, with the object of eliciting speech … to see what grammatical constructions they would pronounce.
The show will analyze dialects, show the vast array of pronunciations of a single word, and tackle such issues as non-standard English, Spanglish, and much, much more. The contestants would also talk about the meaning associated with the way they communicate, and the subtle nuances of their particular idiolects. You'd be surprized about how fierce people can be about the way they speak!

The data about phonology, morphology, semantics, phonetics, and of course, syntax, would be fed to linguists around the world!!!

I would like to do a survey concerning the viability of such a TV show. Please leave a comment with your opinions.

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