What Social Media Can Tell Us About Dialect Variation and Change

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This talk will looks as some of the challenges and discoveries associated with using social media (Twitter/X) as a source for examining dialect variation and change. Messages from social media constitute a fantastic source of evidence for linguistic diversity, much of which is otherwise inaccessible, allowing us to see patterns of linguistic variation across thousands, sometimes even millions, of people. We will look at some of the results of the Tweetolectology project, which has been mapping linguistic variation across various countries, with case studies from Welsh, English and Haitian Creole framed around key research or methodological issues of broad general interest.

Speaker: , University of Oxford

David Willis is Jesus Professor of Celtic in the Faculty of Linguistics at the University of Oxford. He specializes in historical linguistics, theoretical and dialect syntax, and the use of digital methods in linguistics. His most recent project, Tweetolectology, maps variation in European languages using social media.

Free, booking required

This event includes a reception for all attendees after the lecture.

This event will take place in person in partnership with The Philological Society of London.

Host or Publisher British Academy