About 7000 languages are spoken around the globe, constituting a remarkable extent of linguistic and cultural diversity. However, research has shown that linguistic diversity has decreased through the past couple of decades and is vanishing rapidly, an observation that cannot simply be pinpointed to a single factor. Large-scale studies on language endangerment and linguistic diversity have already accounted for environmental and socio-economic effects.

Our project "Disentangling effects of digitization on linguistic diversity" (DIGILINGDIV) adds to this research by considering the effect of digitization on linguistic diversity. We do so by analyzing the relationship between global measures of linguistic diversity and digitization indices, by comparing linguistic diversity in the digital and the non-digital domain against each other, and by conducting surveys to learn about the motivation of language choice in digital communication.

The DIGILINGDIV project is funded by WWTF (Digital Humanism, ICT23-012).

Project team:

• Andreas Baumann (University of Vienna, Department of German Studies, PI)
• Hannes Fellner (University of Vienna, Department of Linguistics, Co-PI)
• Julia Neidhardt (TU Wien, Information Systems Engeneering, Co-PI)
• Juliane Benson (University of Vienna, Department of German Studies, Project assistant)
• Hannes Essfors (University of Vienna, Department of German Studies, Project assistant)
• Katharina Zeh (University of Vienna, Department of German Studies, Project assistant)