Abstract
This paper introduces the citizen science mobile application Lingscape. This free research tool for Android and iOS smartphones uses a crowdsourcing approach for research on linguistic landscapes. The paper discusses the use of mobile applications and crowdsourcing in linguistics, methodological requirements and problems of an app-based approach to the study of linguistic landscapes, and the key features of the app Lingscape. It considers the Luxembourgish cultural super-diversity as well as existing studies about the Luxembourgish linguistic landscape to set the background for the pilotstudy.
Highlights
Mobile apps in linguisticsOne relatively new and innovative way to tackle these problems is the use of a crowdsourcing approach (cf. Eskenazi 2013, Howe 2006) to study linguistic phenomena by means of smartphone technology (cf. Wang et al 2016)
This paper introduces the citizen science mobile application Lingscape
In the late 1990s – at least under the label linguistic landscapes – did the first studies appear to shed light on the different ways in which lettering practice in public space shapes the linguistic landscape of a given community: “The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration.” (Landry/Bourhis 1997: 25) Following this influential definition there has been some substantial effort in the field over the last 20 years concerning the study of linguistic landscapes in multilingual communities
Summary
One relatively new and innovative way to tackle these problems is the use of a crowdsourcing approach (cf. Eskenazi 2013, Howe 2006) to study linguistic phenomena by means of smartphone technology (cf. Wang et al 2016). Due to technical innovations both in camera and communication technology (even most digital cameras nowadays include GPS modules) present-day smartphones offer complete new possibilities for app-based data collection, especially regarding the potential of crowdsourcing approaches At this point in time, there are two projects that use smartphone applications for research on linguistic landscapes: one is part of the “Multilingual Manchester” project (LinguaSnapp; cf Gaiser/Matras 2016), the other one – Lingscape – was developed by the University of Luxembourg (cf Purschke 2016) in cooperation with the Swiss software studio ibros.ch.. 3 www.linguasnapp.manchester.ac.uk/ [31.10.2017]. 4 www.ibros.ch [31.10.2017]. 5 LinguaSnapp is a tool for data collection and analysis, while Lingscape includes a map viewer allowing the user to interact directly with the collected data
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