Interfacing structured and unstructured data in sociolinguistic research on language change/Tekstin ja rakenteisen tiedon yhdistäminen kielenmuutoksen sosiolingvistisessä tutkimuksessa

This project seeks to further the sociolinguistic study of language change by developing new tools that will allow us to ask research questions that have previously been too labour-intensive to answer. The computer science tooling will be developed hand in hand with and in response to the needs of primary humanities research, i.e. the diachronic development of English and Finnish.

Specifically, the project will target sociolinguistic variation and change in personal and private writings. In comparison to the printed word, which scholars of linguistic, cultural and social history are increasingly turning to for large amounts of data, manuscript materials give wider access to the varying communicative needs of individuals in the past