Using Twitter Data for the Study of Language Change in Low-Resource Languages. A Panel Study of Relative Pronouns in Frisian.

Jelske Dijkstra,Hans Van De Velde,Lysbeth Jongbloed-Faber,Wilbert Heeringa

doi:10.3389/frai.2021.644554

Jelske Dijkstra, Hans Van De Velde + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2021.644554

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Abstract

This paper investigates the usability of Twitter as a resource for the study of language change in progress in low-resource languages. It is a panel study of a vigorous change in progress, the loss of final t in four relative pronouns (dy't, dêr't, wêr't, wa't) in Frisian, a language spoken by ± 450,000 speakers in the north-west of the Netherlands. This paper deals with the issues encountered in retrieving and analyzing tweets in low-resource languages, in the analysis of low-frequency variables, and in gathering background information on Twitterers. In this panel study we were able to identify and track 159 individual Twitterers, whose Frisian (and Dutch) tweets posted in the era 2010–2019 were collected. Nevertheless, a solid analysis of the sociolinguistic factors in this language change in progress was hampered by unequal age distributions among the Twitterers, the fact that the youngest birth cohorts have given up Twitter almost completely after 2014 and that the variables have a low frequency and are unequally spread over Twitterers.

Highlights

Since the spread of the Internet and social media, language use on the Internet has drawn the attention of scholars in linguistics (Herring, 1996; Crystal, 2001) and communication (Thurlow et al, 2004)
In the current study we investigate whether we can refine our insights in this language change in progress on the basis of an analysis of Twitter data, covering a time span of 10 years
That Twitter data set comprises 76,757 predominantly Frisian tweets of 253 Twitter accounts posted in 2013 and 2014. This list of 253 Twitter accounts consists of 208 individual Twitter accounts (71,835 predominantly Frisian tweets) and 45 Twitter accounts that were owned by SMEs or organizations

Summary

Introduction

Since the spread of the Internet and social media, language use on the Internet has drawn the attention of scholars in linguistics (Herring, 1996; Crystal, 2001) and communication (Thurlow et al, 2004) It resulted in numerous studies on various topics within the domain of computer-mediated communication (CMC) such as: bilingual practices (Cunliffe et al, 2013; Androutsopoulos, 2014; Jongbloed-Faber et al, 2016, 2017; Reershemius, 2017; Cutler and Røyneland, 2018), discourse strategies (Herring, 2001; Herring and Paolillo, 2006; Baron, 2010; Androutsopoulos, 2014), and spelling skills (Plester et al, 2008; Stæhr, 2015). In both resources similar lexical patterns were identified, but some

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