Zum Hauptinhalt springen
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

Apps for capturing language variation and change in German-speaking Europe: Opportunities, challenges, findings, and future directions

  • EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 14. Januar 2021
Linguistics Vanguard
Aus der Zeitschrift Linguistics Vanguard Band 7 Heft s1

Abstract

Smartphone apps are ubiquitous: in 2018 in Germany alone, 79% of the population owned a smartphone. Virtually everyone in this cohort always carries with them a recording device and a notepad (i.e., a screen), two essential tools that linguists typically use in the field. In the present contribution we discuss how linguists can harness this ubiquity of linguistic tools in the population to capture language variation and change, illustrated through apps that were developed for German-speaking Europe. We present four apps (Dialäkt Äpp, Voice Äpp, Grüezi Moin Servus, and Deutschklang) that were developed to (a) engage with the public and (b) to collect linguistic data. We discuss opportunities (e.g., the multimodality of said devices), as well as challenges (e.g., maintenance, updating and the costs involved therein). Finally, we present new findings that have emerged from working with this new paradigm and speculate about future directions and developments in using smartphone apps to collect linguistic data.

Keywords: smartphone; methods; phonetics; German; dialects

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Daniel Wanitsch at www.ibros.ch for the development of the apps and Thomas Kettig (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa) as well as two reviewers for useful comments and edits on earlier versions of this manuscript.

References

Anshari, Muhammad, Mohammad Nabil Almunawar, Masitah Shahrill, Danang Kuncoro Wicaksono & Miftachul Huda. 2017. Smartphones usage in the classrooms: Learning aid or interference? Education and Information Technologies 22(6). 3063–3079.10.1007/s10639-017-9572-7Suche in Google Scholar

Birenboim, Amit & Noam Shoval. 2016. Mobility research in the age of the smartphone. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106(2). 283–291.10.4324/9781315266336-5Suche in Google Scholar

Birnbaum, Michael H. 2004. Human research and data collection via the Internet. Annual Review of Psychology 55. 803–832.10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141601Suche in Google Scholar

Britain, David. 2002. Space and spatial diffusion. In J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill & Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 603–637. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1111/b.9781405116923.2003.00033.xSuche in Google Scholar

Britain, David. 2015. Between north and south: The Fenland. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Researching Northern English, 417–436. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/veaw.g55.18briSuche in Google Scholar

Britain, David, Marie-José Kolly & Adrian Leemann. 2018. Using impact to make impact? Experiences from a dialect crowdsourcing project. In Dan McIntyre & Hazel Price (eds.), Applying linguistics: Language and the impact agenda, 83–98. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781351055185-7Suche in Google Scholar

Brupbacher, Marc. 2015. Wie wir mit unserem Dialekt-Quiz eine Million Menschen erreichten. Tagesanzeiger. 4 May. https://blog.tagesanzeiger.ch/datenblog/index.php/8487/wie-wir-mit-unserem-dialekt-quiz-eine-million-menschen-erreichten.Suche in Google Scholar

Buchholz, Andrew, Brittany Perry, Lucia Beck Weiss & Danielle Cooley. 2016. Smartphone use and perceptions among medical students and practicing physicians. Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine 5(1). 27–32.10.7309/jmtm.5.1.5Suche in Google Scholar

Chambers, J. K. & Peter Trudgill. 1980. Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Cherry, E. Colin. 1953. Some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and with two ears. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 25(5). 975–979.10.1121/1.1907229Suche in Google Scholar

Deterding, Sebastian, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled & Lennart Nacke. 2016. From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining gamification. Proceedings of the 15th international academic MindTrek conference: Envisioning future media environments, 9–15. Tampere. https://dl.acm.org/action/showFmPdf?doi=10.1145%2F218103710.1145/2181037.2181040Suche in Google Scholar

Dieth, Eugen. 1952. Der sprechende Atlas: Plattentext in verschiedenen schweizerdeutschen Dialekten: ”Gespräch am Neujahrstag” in 24 Dialekten. Phonogrammarchiv UZH.Suche in Google Scholar

Elmer, Christina, Timo Grossenbacher & Patrick Stotz. 2016. Spiegel Online. 30 August. http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/alltagssprache-bulette-oder-frikadelle-bolzen-oder-kicken-a-1109490.html.Suche in Google Scholar

Elspaß, Stephan, Robert Möller, Adrian Leemann & Curdng Derungs 2018. Wandel in apparent time in der deutschen Alltagssrache. IGDD 2018.Suche in Google Scholar

Entrepreneur. 2019. Mobile App Development Trends to Watch in 2018 and Beyond. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/313728.Suche in Google Scholar

Grossenbacher, Timo & Patrick Stotz. 2016. So sprechen 670’000 Menschen: Die grosse Dialektkarte.Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen. 29 August. https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/so-sprechen-670-000-menschen-die-grosse-dialektkarte.Suche in Google Scholar

Harari, Gabriella M., Nicholas D. Lane, Rui Wang, Benjamin S. Crosier, Andrew T. Campbell & Samuel D. Gosling. 2016. Using smartphones to collect behavioral data in psychological science: Opportunities, practical considerations, and challenges. Perspectives on Psychological Science 11(6). 838–854.10.1177/1745691616650285Suche in Google Scholar

Hasler, F. 2013. Die Berner Dialektlandschaft im Wandel: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung sprachgeografischer Strukturen. Bern: Unpublished MA Thesis, University of Bern.Suche in Google Scholar

Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel. 2014. Research methods in Sociolinguistics. AILA Review 27(1). 5–29.10.1075/aila.27.01herSuche in Google Scholar

Holm, Bleicke. 2019. Sägemol. https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/s%C3%A4gemol/id1441009278.Suche in Google Scholar

Jannedy, Stefanie, Melanie Weirich & Adrian Leemann. 2017. Voiceless Fricatives in Deutschklang. Poster at Phonetik & Phonologie 13, 09/2017 Berlin (DE).Suche in Google Scholar

Jannedy, Stefanie, Melanie Weirich & Adrian Leemann. 2018. The ecological validity of crowdsourced data. Poster at Phonetik & Phonologie 14, 09/2018 (Vienna, AT).Suche in Google Scholar

Kolly, Marie-José & Adrian Leemann. 2013. Dialäkt Äpp: Dialektologie vermitteln – Dialekte ermitteln. Jahresbericht des Schweizerischen Idiotikons 2013. 21–44.Suche in Google Scholar

Kolly, Marie-José, Alexandra Kohler, Stefanie Hasler & Anna Widerkehr. 2019. Wo sprechen junge Schweizer noch Grossmamis Dialekt? Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 18 Jaunary. https://www.nzz.ch/gesellschaft/schweizerdeutsch-viel-wandel-im-freiburger-dialekt-kaum-in-baar-ld.1390868.Suche in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1996. When intuitions fail. Chicago Linguistics Society 32. 76–106.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian. 2013. Dialäkt Äpp. https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/dialakt-app/id606559705?mt=8.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian. 2015a. Grüezi, Moin, Servus. https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/gruezi-moin-servus/id982633800?mt=8.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian. 2015b. Voice Äpp. https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/voice-app/id950037736?mt=8.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian. 2016a. Deutschklang. https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/deutschklang/id1140185572?mt=8.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian. 2016b. English Dialects. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/english-dialects/id882340404?mt=8.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly & Francis Nolan. 2015. It’s not phonetic aesthetics that drives dialect preference: The case of Swiss German. Proceedings of ICPhS.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly, Marc Brupbacher, Timo Grossenbacher & Daniel Wanitsch. 2015a. Grüezi, Moin, Servus. sprachatlas.spiegel.de.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly, Jean-Philippe Goldman, Volker Dellwo, Ingrid Hove, Ibrahim Almajai, Sarah Grimm, Sylvain Robert & Daniel Wanitsch. 2015b. Voice Äpp: A mobile app for crowdsourcing Swiss German dialect data. Proceedings of Interspeech 2015. 2804–2808.10.21437/Interspeech.2015-590Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly, Ross Purves, David Britain & Elvira Glaser. 2016. Crowdsourcing language change with smartphone applications. PLoS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143060.10.1371/journal.pone.0143060Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly & David Britain. 2018a. The English Dialects App: the creation of a crowdsourced dialect corpus. Ampersand 5. 1–17.10.1016/j.amper.2017.11.001Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian, Stephan Elspaß, Robert Möller & Timo Grossenbacher. 2018b. Grüezi, Moin, Servus: Wie wir wo sprechen. Hamburg: Rowohlt.Suche in Google Scholar

Leemann, Adrian & Kayeeon Yoo. 2019. Emotion response. https://emotionresponse.wanitsch.ch/10.1007/978-3-476-05353-4Suche in Google Scholar

Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland. 1962–2003. Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz. Bern (I-VI), Basel (VII-VIII): Francke.Suche in Google Scholar

McGurk, Harry & John MacDonald. 1976. Hearing lips and seeing voices. Nature 264. 746–748.10.1038/264746a0Suche in Google Scholar

Miller, Geoffrey. 2012. The smartphone psychology manifesto. Perspectives on Psychological Science 7(3). 221–237.10.1177/1745691612441215Suche in Google Scholar

Möller, Robert & Stephan Elspaß. 2015. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. In Roland Kehrein, Alfred Lameli & Stefan Rabanus (eds.), Regionale Variation des Deutschen: Projekte und Perspektiven, 519–540. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110363449-022Suche in Google Scholar

New York Times (NYT). 2013. How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html.Suche in Google Scholar

Newzoo. 2019. Top 50 Countries/Markets by Smartphone Users and Penetrationhttps://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-50-countries-by-smartphone-penetration-and-users/.Suche in Google Scholar

Nielsen, Jakob. 2011. How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-long-do-users-stay-on-web-pages/.Suche in Google Scholar

Reips, Ulf-Dietrich. 2002. Standards for Internet-based experimenting. Experimental Psychology 49(4). 243–256.10.1026//1618-3169.49.4.243Suche in Google Scholar

Renning, Nancy. 2013a. Einfluss von Hintergrundmusik auf die Wahrnehmung des Alters durch die Stimme. Zurich: Unpublished coursework assignment, University of Zurich.Suche in Google Scholar

Renning, Nancy. 2013b. Hörerwahrnehmung des Geschlechts von Kinderstimmen aufgrund der Herkunft. Zurich: Unpublished coursework assignment, University of Zurich.Suche in Google Scholar

Saeed, Farhan. 2018. 7 reasons why progressive web apps are the future of web development. IQVIS. https://www.iqvis.com/blog/progressive-web-app-development/.10.22214/ijraset.2019.7077Suche in Google Scholar

Schmidt, Jürgen Erich & Joachim Herrgen (eds.). 2005–2009. Digitaler Wenker-Atlas (DiWA). Teil 3: Die Wenker-Fragebogen. Bearbeitet von Jost Nickel und Simon Kasper. Studentische Hilfskräfte. Marburg: Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas.Suche in Google Scholar

Statista. 2019. Smartphone user penetration as percentage of total global population from 2014 to 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone-penetration-per-capita-since-2005/.Suche in Google Scholar

Young, Steve, Gunnar Evermann, Mark Gales, Thomas Hain, Dan Kershaw, Xunying (Andrew) Liu, Gareth Moore, Julian Odell, Dave Ollason, Dan Povey,Valtcho Valtchev & Phil Woodland. 2006. The HTK book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Engineering Department.Suche in Google Scholar

Supplementary Material

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0022).

Received: 2019-03-08
Accepted: 2019-12-07
Published Online: 2021-01-14

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Editorial
  4. Editorial: using smartphones to collect linguistic data
  5. Research Articles
  6. Schnëssen. Surveying language dynamics in Luxembourgish with a mobile research app
  7. Gschmöis – Crowdsourcing grammatical data of Swiss German
  8. Stimmen: A citizen science approach to minority language sociolinguistics
  9. Sprekend Nederland, a multi-purpose collection of Dutch speech
  10. Apps for capturing language variation and change in German-speaking Europe: Opportunities, challenges, findings, and future directions
  11. Hands off the metadata!: Comparing the use of explicit and background metadata in crowdsourced dialectology
  12. Using smartphones to document linguistic landscapes: the LinguaSnapp mobile app
  13. Crowdscapes. Participatory research and the collaborative (re)construction of linguistic landscapes with Lingscape
  14. Secure account-based data capture with smartphones – preliminary results from a study of articulatory precision in clinical depression
  15. Worldlikeness: a Web crowdsourcing platform for typological psycholinguistics
https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0022
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
smartphone; methods; phonetics; German; dialects

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Editorial
  4. Editorial: using smartphones to collect linguistic data
  5. Research Articles
  6. Schnëssen. Surveying language dynamics in Luxembourgish with a mobile research app
  7. Gschmöis – Crowdsourcing grammatical data of Swiss German
  8. Stimmen: A citizen science approach to minority language sociolinguistics
  9. Sprekend Nederland, a multi-purpose collection of Dutch speech
  10. Apps for capturing language variation and change in German-speaking Europe: Opportunities, challenges, findings, and future directions
  11. Hands off the metadata!: Comparing the use of explicit and background metadata in crowdsourced dialectology
  12. Using smartphones to document linguistic landscapes: the LinguaSnapp mobile app
  13. Crowdscapes. Participatory research and the collaborative (re)construction of linguistic landscapes with Lingscape
  14. Secure account-based data capture with smartphones – preliminary results from a study of articulatory precision in clinical depression
  15. Worldlikeness: a Web crowdsourcing platform for typological psycholinguistics
Heruntergeladen am 24.4.2026 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0022/html?lang=de
Button zum nach oben scrollen