Twitter Corpus

[s.t. bischoff]

Hi all,

Some of you may find this of interest...

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/suttin-hella-koo-yall-regional-dialects-thrive-on-twitter/28960?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Suttin Hella Koo, Y’all: Regional Dialects Thrive on Twitter

January 13, 2011, 11:41 am

By Marc Parry

When people wanted to study language, they used to have two options. They
could use a computer to analyze a large body of formal writing, like
newspapers. Or they could go out and interview a bunch of people.

Now Twitter offers something fresh for researchers interested in the
evolution of language: massive amounts of informal written communication.

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University are demonstrating the potential of
that data in a study, which has found that regional dialects are thriving on
Twitter. In fact, local slang seems to be evolving within the social-media
site.