Scholars Award: Methodological Training for Visualizing Linguistic Diversity

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

Scientists depend on acquiring new analytical techniques to improve their research abilities and communicate their findings to the public. This Scholars Award project provides a researcher with training in quantitative research, geo-spatial analysis, and data visualization in order to create new tools for understanding and representing linguistic diversity in multilingual communities. This project would broaden participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences by also training undergraduate, graduate, and high school students in ethnographic, linguistic, and spatial mapping and other visual methods. The data from the larger project would also be disseminated to policymakers and educators. Dr. Jonathan Rosa of Stanford University, who has conducted extensive research on contemporary multilingualism focusing on U.S. Latina/o communities, will spend a summer month and a semester at the Smith College Spatial Analysis Lab, where he will obtain the methodological skills necessary to (1) conduct a long-term project combining quantitative and qualitative analyses of community multilingualism; (2) create new visualization tools for linguistic data, including interactive maps, providing a more complex ?view? of linguistic diversity; and (3) train undergraduate and graduate students, as well as community members, in these new research methodologies. The project would advance the fields of linguistic anthropology and linguistic by training the researcher in novel visualization techniques that are on the leading edge for modeling language in society.