Short-term Language Change of Groups in House of Commons Debates
Ed Dearden
SCC, Lancaster University
This talk will cover work I am currently conducting, looking at language change in groups over relatively short periods of time. By using and adapting established methods for studying language change, I am hoping we can learn more about how the language of different groups changes within communities. As an initial dataset for this work, I am looking at House of Commons debates between 2015 and 2019, with specific interest in the groups formed around Brexit. One key challenge is in trying to establish whether methods created for looking at long time ranges are applicable over much shorter periods - in my case ~4 years.
In this talk, I will show what I've been working on, discuss the challenges of looking at short-term language change, and suggest future directions for taking this work forward. As this is a presentation of work-in-progress, I'm very keen to gain feedback and insight from as many people as possible."