Free Listing
The method of free-listing asks people to list all words that belong to a particular category. If the category is color, people will list color names they can think of, such as yellow, gray, white, brown, and sky-blue. Using statistical analysis, anthropologists examine the degree of commonality among each word on the lists. Besides colors, free-listing can be about plants, animals, foods, things to do on weekends, names for illnesses, kin terms, occupations, emotions, movie stars, brands of computers, or kinds of motor vehicles, etc. Free-listing shows how people perceive their realities and indicates common concepts shared among a group of people.
Basic Ideas
The method of free-listing has developed from the idea that each culture has its own way of classifying phenomena, such as materials, events, behaviors, and emotions. Therefore, when people list words, they reflect their cultural classification system. For example, English speakers distinguish the colors of grass and sky by giving them different words, green and blue respectively. The Navajo language, on the other hand, does not distinguish the two colors although people physically perceive the color difference. This example shows that people who grew up with English and those with Navajo may classify colors differently. These two groups of people may list color terms differently and this variation indicates different cultural domains of each group.
Advantage
Free-listing tells researchers where to concentrate their efforts. Words that people frequently put on the lists imply core concepts shared among them. Researchers examine these salient concepts in greater detail by conducting further interviews and observation.
Applied anthropologists often use free-listing because this method speeds up research. For example, to find out how adult learners view their ESL courses, researchers may ask the learners “what do you like (or dislike) about the ESL classes?” Researchers focus on terms mentioned by a large number of learners and investigate how these issues matter to the learners.
This page was created by a Minnesota State University, Mankato student. Last updated 11/14/04.