A Snowball Sampling Approach for Studying Digital Minority Languages
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2015
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
This thesis discusses the methods used to assess the linguistic diversity of the
internet. I critique the current literature on internet language diversity, arguing
that existing methods-which aggregate textual data from many languages, to the
exclusion of video and audio data-are unsuited to the study of minority
languages. To address these shortcomings, I propose a snowball sampling
approach for studying an individual language's online use. I provide a series of
case studies, in which I apply this method to several so-called "low-density"
languages to demonstrate its potential. Finally, I conclude by describing how
future studies could be improved through partial automation of the data collection
process.