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The Digital Turn in Historical Sociolinguistics

The DH Research Seminar is a series of talks organised by the Digital Humanities Institute given by researchers from a wide range of backgrounds and aiming at presenting the vast array of subjects covered by Digital Humanities.

Abstract

Over the last thirty years numerous corpora of various historical varieties of English and other languages have been compiled and made available to historical sociolinguistics, i.e. a research field that investigates language variation and change over time and space, with a particular focus on the effect that society has on language use. Regarding the text bases for corpus creation, a development from using printed material, often written by the top social layers, to manuscript materials, written by the lower (less educated) social layers, can be observed. On the digital side, a move from plain text versions to TEI and other standards has taken place.
This presentation (a) provides a brief overview of the digital development in the field of historical sociolinguistics, and (b) discusses some challenges that the corpus creation process entails, e.g. the conversion of textual material into a corpus, the implementation of meta-linguistic information, the (dis)agreement on standards, and (c) sketches a vision and the future potential of historical sociolinguistic databases.

Information

  • Time and place: from 4pm to 6 pm, room BC420
  • Source: EPFL memento

 

From: 13 Nov, 2019
To: 13 Nov, 2019

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