The Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English

(NECTE)

of linguistic archaeology

and the ethical and legal consequences

AHRB project code: RE11776

NECTE aims and objectives

To preserve, archive, and digitize audio recordings of Tyneside English dialect interviews conducted in 1969 and 1994.

To align these digitized audio interviews with their orthographic transcriptions.

To make these aligned files available to researchers (both scholars and authorized laypersons) on the web.

The Data Protection Act (DPA) of 1998

Purpose Who must comply?Types of data affected

DPA: Purpose

“An Act to make new provision for the regulation of the processing of information relating to individuals, including the obtaining, holding, use, or disclosure of such information.”

--16 July 1998

DPA: Who must comply?

“data controllers” and their “data processors”

Data controllers and data processors: Examples

Banking services, police, employers, marketers, medical personnel, academic researchers who use “human data subjects”

Academic:Data controllers:

Principal and co-principal investigators of grants.

Data processors: data managers, data handlers, data “miners”, research assistants.

DPA: Types of data affected

“personal data”, i.e.:

“data which relate to a living individual who can be identified from those data”

Informed consent

Pre-1984 data: Can consent be established?

Implied consent Last resort: tracing

participants

Establishing consent

TYNESIDE LINGUISTIC SURVEYMost people who live on Tyneside take a pride in the

local dialect[...]That is what this enquiry is concerned with[...] I shall call on you in the near future. I should be very grateful if you and the other members of your household would each give me about ten minutes of your time. I should like you to talk and to answer a few questions. The results of the survey will in due course be published, but no resident who has helped by talking in this way will be referred to in such a way that they could be identified.

Barbara Strang, Professor of English Language & General LinguisticsThe University, Newcastle upon Tyne

Implied consent

TLS/G54 .. Well, I—I’m-- I'm against both sides, tell you the truth.

Interviewer: Aye. TLS/G54 I- I'll tell you the truth, they

can please theirself if they hear it or not, whoever hears the tape recorder it doesn’t worry me at all. I always speak my mind.

Problems using data that pre-exist DPA 1998

Digitization (change in storage mode)Security and privacy

(change in accessibility of data)Readily identifiable data subjects?Sensitive subject matter

(interview content) and personal data

Sensitive subject matter (interview content): Examples

Addresses (home, school) State of healthVoting preference

Example 1: Addresses

Interviewer: Could you tell us first of all, where you were born please? To start at the beginning.

TLS/G11 Gateshead. Interviewer: Whereabouts please? TLS/G11 Here in Valley Drive… Interviewer: Here. TLS/G11a Low Fell.…Interviewer: where did you go to school? TLS/G11 I went to Central High first, and then

Westfield in Kenton.

Example 2: State of health

TLS/G12 How I like to spend my-- Spend my spare time shopping.

Interviewer: Yes? TLS/G12 I don’t do anything apart from

that, because I haven’t got the best of health. …TLS/G52 well with Jimmy not having any

mother... but never mind. The drink got him. It-- it-- it-- it ruined him.

Voting preferences

Voter party registrationVoting patternsVoting frequency

Example 3: Voting preferences

Voter party registration

Voting patterns

Voting frequency

Interviewer: Em this is eh another question you don’t have to

answer if you don’t want, because some people don’t. Eh which way do you vote?

TLS/G211a: Labour.…Interviewer: Yes. Eh have you

always voted the same way? TLS/G211: Uh huh. …Interviewer: Yes. And do you eh—

do you always bother to vote, you know in-- in general and local—local elections?

TLS/G211: Oh yes.

Problems particular to archived sound files

(Digital) Can be saved onto computer (permanent storage, easily transferable to non-authorized users)

Potential for subject identifiability

Solutions

Anonymised data Access to i.d. files (internal only)Access to sound files and social

data (password-protection and carefully screened users)

Storage of original audio dataCompliance statement

Options

University technology transfer office

University legal teamUniversity data protection

officer

Data protection officerCompliance statement: Steps

1. Draft report2. Meet with university’s data

protection officer3. Notification and registration of

data with the Information Commissioner

Data protection and protection of data

DPA requires protection against destruction of personal data

‘Traditional’ media (audio tape, print, etc.) subject to deterioration

Digitization provides additional backup of data

AHRB project code: RE11776