People and Platforms
How shifts in everyday language are observed and interpreted.
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How languages change over centuries, how word-frequency and corpus evidence is gathered, and what such data can and cannot tell us about shifts in language use.
How language learning apps and online exchange are evaluated, what usage data can show, and why engagement and streaks are not the same thing as fluency.
How internet slang, abbreviations and new online words spread, how researchers track them, and why many viral expressions turn out to be short-lived.
Whether emoji count as a language, how researchers study emoji use as a communicative system, and why comparing meaning across groups and platforms is difficult.
How researchers use geotagged online writing to map regional dialects and word choices, and where this method can mislead because of who posts and how.
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