Historical sociolinguistics

Summary

Tanja Säily's video explores historical sociolinguistics, examining how language changes over time and the social dynamics behind these shifts. She discusses the transition from 'taketh' to 'takes' in English and highlights the role of social contexts and individuals, especially women, in driving linguistic change. The video also showcases how modern tools like corpus linguistics and computational methods, in collaboration with computer scientists and historians, help analyze large historical datasets. By using big data, historical sociolinguistics offers new insights into the evolution of language in past societies, particularly in 18th-century publishing networks.

Takeaways

• 😀 Historical sociolinguistics explores how language changes over time and the social contexts that drive these changes.
• 😀 The example of 'taketh' vs. 'takes' in 17th and 18th-century English highlights linguistic evolution and the social groups involved.
• 😀 Historical sociolinguistics uses corpus linguistics and qualitative research to understand language change in its sociohistorical context.
• 😀 The field is multidisciplinary, drawing from social history, corpus linguistics, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics.
• 😀 One major claim in sociolinguistics, that women often lead language change, has been validated through historical research, such as in the case of 'taketh' to 'takes'.
• 😀 Historical sociolinguists work with small, carefully compiled corpora, but they also use large digital databases for broader studies.
• 😀 The collaboration between linguists, computer scientists, and historians is crucial for advancing historical sociolinguistics and digital humanities.
• 😀 Historical sociolinguistics intersects with the digital humanities, where big data can answer questions that small corpora can't.
• 😀 The use of historical print text databases, like the English Short Title Catalogue, is a key resource for studying language change in the past.
• 😀 Multidisciplinary research, involving linguists, data scientists, and historians, is essential for a more nuanced understanding of the past, as shown in the speaker's own research project.

Q & A

What is historical sociolinguistics?

Historical sociolinguistics is the study of language change in the past, focusing on how linguistic changes happen, who drives them, and the social contexts in which they occur. It explores relationships between language, society, and individuals over time.

How does historical sociolinguistics relate to the digital humanities?

Historical sociolinguistics is part of the digital humanities because it often involves collaboration with computer scientists to analyze large historical corpora using computational methods, making it possible to answer complex linguistic questions from big data.

What role do women play in language change according to sociolinguistic studies?

Sociolinguistic studies have hypothesized that women tend to lead language change, a tendency that has been observed in historical materials, including in the shift from 'taketh' to 'takes' in English.

What is the significance of the change from 'taketh' to 'takes' in English?

The shift from 'taketh' to 'takes' illustrates how language changes over time. This particular change is also an example of how women were at the forefront of driving linguistic changes, as demonstrated in historical sociolinguistic studies.

How do corpus linguistics methods contribute to historical sociolinguistics?

Corpus linguistics methods provide quantitative data about language change by analyzing large collections of texts. This allows researchers to track and measure language shifts over time, providing a clearer picture of linguistic evolution.

What is the challenge of using historical corpora in sociolinguistics?

The main challenge of using historical corpora is that they are often small, biased, and lack social background information about the authors. This makes it difficult to achieve a fully representative analysis of language change.

Why is the collaboration between linguists and computer scientists important in historical sociolinguistics?

The collaboration is crucial because computational methods help manage and analyze large, messy historical data. This allows for more comprehensive studies of language change and its social contexts, especially when dealing with big data from historical texts.

What kind of research is being conducted in the author's current project?

The author's current project focuses on how language innovations related to commercial society spread in 18th-century publishing networks. It combines metadata from the English Short Title Catalogue with full-text data from the Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

What fields does historical sociolinguistics intersect with?

Historical sociolinguistics intersects with several fields, including social history, corpus linguistics, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics. It is a multidisciplinary field that draws on insights from a variety of academic disciplines.

How does big data benefit historical sociolinguistics?

Big data allows historical sociolinguists to answer questions that would be impossible to explore with smaller corpora. It also helps uncover new linguistic and historical questions of interest, offering a more detailed view of language change over time.