122251 AR Linguistics Advanced Course 1/2 - Focus: (2018S)

We might think that there is no question to answer if we ask whether linguistics is part of digital humanities (DH). What most people would identify as the roots of DH (e.g. Busa and subsequent work) was closely linked to the fields of computational linguistics and corpus linguistics. And linguistics (some parts of it at least) likes to see the discipline as the most scientific part of the humanities; rigorous quantitative analysis should be congenial to such scholars. However, although many areas of linguistic scholarship obviously relate to DH activity, comparatively few linguists would identify as digital humanists and linguists do not make up a large part of the DH community. This course looks to examine the points of connection between linguistic scholarship in the last two decades and practice in DH concentrating on three main topics:
• linguistics and digital data sources, looking at the use of born-digital data in linguistics as well as digitized data sources;
• linguistics and computational analytic methods, including the revolution in phonetics brought by access to digital technology, the use of techniques from biology in historical and comparative linguistics and the use of visualisation and simulation;
• and re-imagining linguistic scholarship in a digital world, including consideration of how new modes of dissemination can improve the link between data and analysis and improve accountability in linguistics.
The course will also argue that linguistics as a discipline is missing opportunities by ignoring DH and that re-examining what linguistic scholarship can and should mean in the 21st century is important in moving the discipline forward.

The course will consist of 21 hours of classes split into two components:
1. 7 two hour seminars in which the teacher will present key issues in each of the three areas introduced above and then lead and guide discussion based on his presentation and on reading of important papers. The method of instruction in this component will include seminar teaching (exposition and discussion) as well as discussion in small groups to enable peer-assisted learning.
2. 7 one hour practical classes in which the students will have the opportunity to work with the types of data sources and tools which are introduced in the seminar classes. Specific problems will be set for students to work on, sometimes individually and sometimes in groups, enabling problem-based and peer-assisted learning. These classes will require either a computer laboratory, or for students to bring laptops (ideally one each, but some sharing would be possible).