Social Context and User Profiles of Linguistic Variation on a Micro Scale

Olga Kellert, Nicholas Hill Matlis

Abstract
This paper presents a new tweet-based approach in geolinguistic analysis which combines geolocation, user IDs and textual features in order to identify patterns of linguistic variation on a sub-city scale. Sub-city variations can be connected to social drivers and thus open new opportunities for understanding the mechanisms of language variation and change. However, measuring linguistic variation on these scales is challenging due to the lack of highly-spatially-resolved data as well as to the daily movement or users’ “mobility” inside cities which can obscure the relation between the social context and linguistic variation. Here we demonstrate how combining geolocation with user IDs and textual analysis of tweets can yield information about the linguistic profiles of the users, the social context associated with specific locations and their connection to linguistic variation. We apply our methodology to analyze dialects in Buenos Aires and find evidence of socially-driven variation. Our methods will contribute to the identification of sociolinguistic patterns inside cities, which are valuable in social sciences and social services.
Anthology ID:
2022.vardial-1.2
Volume:
Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop on NLP for Similar Languages, Varieties and Dialects
Month:
October
Year:
2022
Address:
Gyeongju, Republic of Korea
Venue:
VarDial
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Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
14–19
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.vardial-1.2
DOI:
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Cite (ACL):
Olga Kellert and Nicholas Hill Matlis. 2022. Social Context and User Profiles of Linguistic Variation on a Micro Scale. In Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop on NLP for Similar Languages, Varieties and Dialects, pages 14–19, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Social Context and User Profiles of Linguistic Variation on a Micro Scale (Kellert & Matlis, VarDial 2022)
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