Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities. Intersecting Paths. A Case Study from Twitter
10.13125/americacritica/4521
L’obiettivo di questo saggio è proporre un’analisi critica del ruolo della Linguistica dei Corpora all’interno delle Digital Humanities. Lo studio suggerisce che gli strumenti accessibili e user-friendly della Linguistica dei Corpora possono essere considerati uno strumento ottimale attraverso il quale operare all’interno delle Scienze Umane e avanzare nell’obiettivo delle Digital Humanities di includere varie tecniche di computazione negli studi umanistici. Il saggio presenta un caso studio basato su dati raccolti sul social medium Twitter che rappresenta un esempio in cui i due approcci (Linguistica dei Corpora e Digital Humanities) possono essere utilizzati unitamente all’interno degli American Studies. Nel saggio, gli American Studies sono intesi in senso lato come una disciplina inclusiva di diverse prospettive che si approcciano allo studio del continente americano. In conclusione, l’incontro tra la Linguistica dei Corpora e le Digital Humanities viene definito come una necessità per il futuro delle Digital Humanities stesse.
application/pdf
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4521
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en
urn:nbn:it:unica-26475
Angela Zottola
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
América Crítica
WMatrix
Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities. Intersecting Paths. A Case Study from Twitter
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap
4
Dossier: An Epistemology of Doing. Digital Humanities and American Studies
2020-12-29
2020-12-29
2020-12-30
2020-12-30
131-141
1
Angela Zottola
2020/12/29
10.13125/americacritica/4521
131
Università di Torino, Italy
2532-6724
2
WMatrix
141
urn:nbn:it:unica-26475
Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities. Intersecting Paths. A Case Study from Twitter
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap/article/download/4521/4614
4
                          América Crítica 4(2), 131–141, 2020, ISSN: 2532-6724, https://doi.org/10.13125/americacritica/4521




                     Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities.
                    Intersecting Paths. A Case Study from Twitter
                                                               Angela Zottola1
                                                          1   Università di Torino, Italy

                                                                Received: 17/08/2020
                                                                Accepted: 10/11/2020




 Abstract—In this paper I aim at critically discussing the role of Corpus Linguistics within the field of Digital Hu-
manities. I posit that the accessible and user-friendly tools of Corpus Linguistics are an optimal resource for scholars
within the Humanities and the Social Sciences to engage in Digital Humanities and take in its effort to bring comput-
ing techniques to humanities research even further. I also present a case study based on data collected from Twitter as
an example of how the two approaches can come together within the framework of American Studies. In this paper
American Studies is conceived as a discipline inclusive of any perspective that looks at the American continent rather
than a specific field of research. I conclude by endorsing the crossing paths between Digital Humanities and Corpus
Linguistics as a necessity in the future of Digital Humanities. — Digital Humanities, corpus linguistics, American
Studies, Twitter, WMatrix.

  Abstract—L’obiettivo di questo saggio è proporre un’analisi critica del ruolo della Linguistica dei Corpora
all’interno delle Digital Humanities. Lo studio suggerisce che gli strumenti accessibili e user-friendly della Lin-
guistica dei Corpora possono essere considerati uno strumento ottimale attraverso il quale operare all’interno delle
Scienze Umane e avanzare nell’obiettivo delle Digital Humanities di includere varie tecniche di computazione negli
studi umanistici. Il saggio presenta un caso studio basato su dati raccolti sul social medium Twitter che rappresenta
un esempio in cui i due approcci (Linguistica dei Corpora e Digital Humanities) possono essere utilizzati unitamente
all’interno degli American Studies. Nel saggio, gli American Studies sono intesi in senso lato come una disciplina
inclusiva di diverse prospettive che si approcciano allo studio del continente americano. In conclusione, l’incontro
tra la Linguistica dei Corpora e le Digital Humanities viene definito come una necessità per il futuro delle Digital
Humanities stesse. — Digital Humanities, linguistica dei corpora, American Studies, Twitter, WMatrix.


                                                                             able asset to a number of disciplines within the Humani-
                                                                             ties and Social Sciences – disciplines inherently located
I NTRODUCTION                                                                within the qualitative spectrum - as a way to approach
                                                                             the DH. CL and DH are both technology-mediated ap-
    n this paper I aim to discuss the existing and possi-
I    ble developments in the intersection between Dig-
ital Humanities (DH) and Corpus Linguistics (CL), ar-
                                                                             proaches widely used in both the Humanities and Social
                                                                             Sciences to investigate how language produced in dif-
                                                                             ferent settings is employed to construct meaning. How-
guing that the type of tools offered by CL, which com-                       ever, it could be argued that while CL is a linguistic-
bine quantitative and qualitative analyses, can be a valu-                   based framework that uses technology as a way to assist
                                                                             scholars in the analysis of language and is mainly used
  Contact data: Angela Zottola, angela.zottola@unito.it                      by researchers interested in researching how language
132                                                                                                    América Crítica 4(2): 131–141

works by investigating its structures, patterns and the in-              areas in which it has already flourished such as history
trinsic characteristics of its use, scholars who position                and literary criticism (Brinson Curiel et al. 2000, 14)
themselves within DH are not necessarily language ex-                    and be more inclusive, both in terms of objects of stud-
perts. In DH technology has a more central role and the                  ies but also of the approaches and disciplines that can
study of language is often auxiliary to the investigation                be included under the American Studies label. This is
of digital data.                                                         especially true in Italy, for at least three reasons. First of
    In this study, I argue that while DH and CL are well-                all, the status of American Studies is unfortunately am-
established frameworks of their own, and have many                       biguous due to its absence as an “institutional field in the
overlapping goals and instruments, the combined use                      Italian university system” (Izzo 2018: 184). Secondly,
of the two is not very popular, especially in research                   not many linguists, despite their interest in the United
which is not strictly related to the field of linguistics.               States, commonly relate to the field - to the best of my
It is rather rare to find a paper using CL as its method-                knowledge I have yet to find a paper which positions
ological framework and outwardly positioned within the                   itself at the intersection between CL (or other linguistic-
field of DH. At the same time, most research framed at                   based approaches) and American Studies. And lastly,
the intersection between DH and linguistics usually ap-                  the DH are just recently making way in universities
plies methods from Computational Linguistics or Nat-                     around the country. In this sense, I want to reproduce
ural Language Processing (NLP) (see, among others,                       here what has been appropriately said by Simon Bron-
McGillivray et al. 2020; Arnold et al. 2019; Sprug-                      ner (2012), to summarize this paper’s understanding of
noli et al. 2019).                                                       the field. Bronner argues that the “matrix” principle for
    My work stems from a background in linguistics and                   American Studies is that it can be seen as
in this paper I will suggest that not only the field of lin-
guistics could benefit from a stronger and more explicit                      a location for progressive research, a form of area
connection to DH, but most importantly that the combi-                        studies, allowing in its flexible domain multiple
nation of CL techniques within the DH framework could                         ways of viewing the same subject- the Unites
                                                                              States or the Americas – and forging integrated
be an asset for other fields within the Social Sciences.
                                                                              approaches that could be called inter- or transdis-
While this discussion has been started in the past (see                       ciplinary. An alternative view is that American
Jensen 2014) and increasingly continued in the past few                       Studies is counterdisciplinary because it is prob-
years (Brookes and McEnery 2020), I would also like to                        lem centered in a reform project of the bureau-
offer an additional layer to this discussion by including                     cratic university and works to break down depart-
within the conversation the field of American Studies.                        mental walls. (n.p.)
    In fact, this paper is set out to provide a definition
of the two frameworks and discuss the increasing im-                         With the aim of bringing together American Stud-
portance of bringing them together as a way to make                      ies, DH and CL, interdisciplinarity is the fil rouge in this
DH more accessible to scholars less familiar with digi-                  paper. Through an interdisciplinary approach, knowl-
tal practices. It also presents a small case study based                 edge and the critical perspectives offered by the three
on data collected through Twitter and that, given its                    fields can intersect and provide novel scholarship, novel
geographical, political and social implications, can be                  perspectives and a new awareness on the way we can
positioned within the framework of American Studies,                     explore issues related to society, politics and the impor-
conceding that this is considered from a broad theoret-                  tance of language use on a daily basis. By crossing dis-
ical perspective. As Brinson Curiel et al. (2000: 14)                    ciplinary boundaries scholars can look at data with dif-
have suggested, one of American Studies’ traditional                     ferent sets of interpretative tools, and, in the case of DH
goal is “interdisciplinary thinking about American ex-                   prospects are broadened in terms of the data that is pos-
perience.” In fact, the field has a longstanding and es-                 sible to retrieve and collect. This paper is a testament
tablished cross-disciplinary practice. Following up on                   to the richness that is brought by this use of interdisci-
this practice, American Studies offers a suitable ground                 plinarity, whereas a linguistic analysis is enhanced and
for scholars interested in America1 to go beyond those                   supported by theories drawn from Social and Cultural
                                                                         Studies.
1   Or the Americas as it has been suggested by a number or schol-           In the next sections, I will first introduce the fields
    ars (see among others Levander and Levine 2007). Due to space        of DH and CL, critically addressing their commonalities
    constraints this discussion cannot be explored further here but it
    is without doubt a relevant one considering the idea of a broader      and more inclusive field that I refer to.
Angela Zottola, Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities                                                              133

and differences. I will then introduce a case study car-       statistic-related exploration but also for more basic de-
ried out on a corpus of Tweets. I will conclude this paper     scriptive observation of the use of language, providing
by going back to DH and CL and addressing the reasons          even those with very little familiarity with digital tools
that lead me to argue in favor of a growing intersection       with a framework to examine digital data.
of the two disciplines.                                            Within the field of Linguistics, CL has been at the
                                                               forefront in the digitalization of research. As suggested
A F OCUS ON CL AND DH                                          by Kim Jensen (2014: 116), “CL has been around for
In this section, as a way of introducing the two frame-        decades and has made leaping and creeping advances in
works, I will discuss CL and DH. As anticipated in the         tandem with the development of digital technology.” CL
introduction, I view these as two approaches that are at       has been defined in time in a number of ways, and as
the same time different but similar in some aspect and         Charlotte Taylor posits these include “a tool, a method,
that are both effective tools for the analysis of language     a methodology, a methodological approach, a discipline,
in a digital format. Alexander Dunst (2016) suggests           a theory, a theoretical approach, a paradigm (theoreti-
that many scholars within the humanities already engage        cal or methodological), or a combination of these.” (Tay-
in digital scholarship daily, whether they identify as dig-    lor 2008: 180) In this work, as suggested earlier, I con-
ital scholars or not.                                          sider CL as methodological approach useful in the col-
    As of today, the discussion on a definition of both        lection and analysis of digital data. We find mentions
CL and DH that can be considered as final and upon             of CL as early as 1982 (Aarts and van Heuvel 1982;
which everyone agrees is still open among scholar of           Aarts and Meijs 1984), but the approach became pop-
the two fields. In my view, CL can be considered as a          ular only in the early 1990s with scholars such as Leech,
methodological framework, although – as I will discuss         Sinclair and Stubbs (Taylor 2008: 179–180). McEnery
further later in this section) – the field is still divided    and Hardie (2012) define CL as “not monolithic, con-
over the choice between theoretical and methodological         sensually agreed set of methods and procedures for the
(Gries 2009), while, despite the longstanding debate on        exploration of language” (2012: 1) mainly “based on
its definition (to read more about this see, among oth-        examples of real language use.” (McEnery and Wilson
ers, Gold and Klein 2016), I identify DH as being closer       1996: 1) All in all, CL can be defined as a heteroge-
to a theoretical approach to academic enquiry. The rea-        neous and versatile field of inquiry which encompasses
son behind my characterization of DH as such is related        a variety of methods and procedures of analysis such as
to the fact that the variety of works that identify under      collocation analysis, concordance analysis and keyword
this label show that there is no one way of doing DH,          analysis, and can be applied in any field that uses natural
but there is a vision behind it that guides scholars in this   occurring language as their main source of data.
field, in the words of Lisa Spiro (2012) “the digital hu-          Corpus, or corpora in its plural declination, is a Latin
manities [seek] to push the humanities into new territory      word that stands for ‘body’ and it is used in linguistics
by promoting collaboration, openness, and experimen-           with reference to a body or collection of written or oral
tation” (Spiro 2012: n.p.). What I argue in this paper is      texts. Linguistics has borrowed this term and in modern
that CL should be endorsed as one of the many ways of          linguistics it is explained as a collection “of naturally oc-
doing DH, both in linguistics, the field within which CL       curring language.” (McEnery, Xiao and Tono 2006: 4)
emerged, but also in other fields which likewise focus         According to Gaëtanelle Gilquin and Stefan Gries, cor-
on the study of language. In recent times, this sugges-        pora, within CL is a collection of texts with very specific
tion has been increasingly discussed, yet seems not be         features:
a given (Brookes and McEnery 2020). In a chapter pre-
                                                                  • is machine-readable;
senting the Literateca project, Diana Santos (2019) sets
out as one of the aims of the text to “test the use of re-        • is representative with regard to a particular vari-
sources and techniques from two different research com-             ety/register/genre, meaning that the corpus con-
munities: corpus linguistics and literary digital humani-           tains data for each part of the variety/register/genre
ties, complementarily instead of alternatively” (103). In           the corpus is supposed to represent;
this quote, and in my view, key is the use of the ad-
verb “complementarily.” I find CL techniques as a valu-           • is balanced with regard to a particular vari-
able tool for DH for scholars who have different degrees            ety/register/genre, meaning that the corpus parts’
of specialization, as they allow both for more complex              sizes are proportional to the parts of the vari-
134                                                                                       América Crítica 4(2): 131–141

       ety/register/genre the corpus is supposed to repre-         Let us now turn to DH. Julianne Nyham and Andrew
       sent (given the absence of reliable estimates of how     Flinn (2016) claim the field has been in the years been
       much of a target language consists of any one par-       labelled in different ways such as Humanist Informatics,
       ticular variety/register/genre, balancedness is a the-   Literary and Linguistic Computing, being the most com-
       oretical ideal);                                         mon Humanities Computing. However, they suggest the
                                                                term DH started to be widely adopted in 2006. About
    • has been produced in a natural communicative set-         DH, Nyham and Flinn (2016: 1) posit that DH:
      ting. (2009: 6).
                                                                     takes place at the intersection of computing and
The use of corpus methodologies for language analysis                cultural heritage. It aims to transform how the
has been considered mostly quantitative, although the                artefacts (such as manuscripts) and the phenom-
numerous relatively recent approaches that combine it                ena (such as attitudes) that the Humanities study
with discourse analysis and other methods are changing               can be encountered, transmitted, questioned, inter-
this orientation towards a mixed quantitative/qualitative            preted, problematized and imagined. In doing so it
                                                                     tends to differentiate itself from now routine uses
methodology. Different types of corpora have been pro-
                                                                     of computing in research and teaching, for exam-
duced in the past twenty years, from more traditional                ple, email and word processing.
ones including written language or spoken, to corpora
of sign language or corpora of video that encode par-
                                                                    Additionally, they suggest the increase in the use of
alinguistic features such as gestures and hyperlinks to
                                                                the label “Digital Humanities” indicates not only a ter-
video or sound (O’Keeffe and McCarthy 2010; McEnery
                                                                minology preference, but also signals the increasing use
and Hardie 2012; Ferraresi and Bernardini 2019). The
                                                                of digital resources in humanities, emphasizing how for
rise of popularity of social media has obviously created
                                                                a long time, DH was restricted to research intensive cen-
a fertile ground for data collection as well. The use
                                                                tres that could afford paying for the right equipment,
of corpora makes CL an “evidence-driven” (Partington,
                                                                professionals and maintenance.
Duguid and Taylor 2013: 5) type of analysis. The most
                                                                    Some scholars place the start of what can be consid-
famous and largest, genre-balanced corpus of American
                                                                ered as the DH as back as when Father Roberto Busa, in
English, for example, is the Corpus of Contemporary
                                                                1949, right at the end of World War II, initiated the cre-
American English (COCA) (Davies 2008-).2 This cor-
                                                                ation of the first digital archive of the works of Saint
pus can be defined as a monitor corpus, a corpus that is
                                                                Thomas Aquinas, the Index Thomisticus, a complete
open and new data is continuously added to it. In this
                                                                lemmatization of the works written by the philosopher
case the compiler continues to update it since 1990, year
                                                                (Schreibman et al. 2004). This first digital collection of
of its inception. Before COCA, another large corpus of
                                                                texts has been also viewed as one of the first instances
American English was built in the sixties, the Brown
                                                                of corpora within CL (see among others Jones 2016).
Corpus of American English (Francis and Kučera 1964),
                                                                In its most basic definition, we could say that DH is a
a ground-breaking project which still today continues to
                                                                field of inquiry that brings together the study of human-
be at the heart of many academic investigations.
                                                                ities through the use of computer-mediated techniques,
    Currently corpora, therefore CL, are being used in
                                                                in other words “using technology to illuminate the hu-
a variety of fields, from lexicography to language ac-
                                                                man record, and bringing an understanding of the hu-
quisition to discourse analysis (O’Keeffe and McCarthy
                                                                man record to bear on the development and use of infor-
2010) but also in connection to other fields such as Lit-
                                                                mation technology” (Schreibman et al. 2004: XXIIV).
erature for example (Mahlberg et al. 2019; Culpeper
                                                                The interdisciplinary core of DH is its most peculiar fea-
2009). CL has become a valuable method for bringing
                                                                ture and the one that opens it up to a number of in-
together language and language use and spatial patterns
                                                                tersections. “[T]he digital humanities reconfigures the
in geographical databases (Gregory and Hardie 2011).
                                                                humanities for the Internet age, leveraging networked
In Ian Gregory and Andrew Hardie’s words, “[m]any
                                                                technologies to exchange ideas, create communities of
branches of the humanities focus on textual evidence;
                                                                practice, and build knowledge.” (Spiro 2012: n.p.) In
whenever such evidence is considered on the large scale,
                                                                Digital Humanities (2012) Anne Burdick et al. present
corpus methods may be of use.” (Gregory and Hardie
                                                                in the first section a description of DH trying to address
2011: 298)
                                                                the question “What are Digital Humanities?” A number
2   Available at https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/.         of nouns are highlighted in this section which are used
Angela Zottola, Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities                                                                    135

to describe DH, these are: design, computation, digi-              As Massimiliano Demata (2018) observes, based on
tization, classification, description, metadata, organiza-     the Pew Research Center (2017) data, the intensive use
tion, navigation, curation, analysis (processing of text or    of social media has an impact on how people learn about
data), editing, modeling, networks, infrastructure, ver-       and understand news and politics. In the USA, for exam-
sioning, prototyping, failures. As a corpus linguist these     ple, 62% of the population accesses news through social
could have easily been used in an introductory chapter         media, of these more than half rely on twitter specifi-
on corpus-based methods for language analysis. Once            cally (Demata 2018, 70).
again, these two worlds intersect and the similarity be-
                                                                     The use of Twitter as an instrument of political in-
tween the two is more and more apparent.                             formation and propaganda is a relatively new de-
     It must be noted that the intersection between CL and           velopment of the information structure at the basis
DH has been acknowledged in the past, and references                 of a modern democracy. In the last two decades
to it can be found in the literature in the past decade. In          or so, social media have deeply altered the way
the book mentioned above (Schreibman et al. 2004), for               political information is controlled, distributed and
example, Nancy Ide (2004) dedicates a whole chapter to               consumed. (Demata 2018: 69)
CL and its tools of analysis. Yet, to this day, these fields       More generally, because of the “communicative af-
are generally used as alternatives for one another, and        fordance” provided by social media these have been de-
even more so, despite the efforts of CL scholars, the use      fined as “a new paradigm of communication” (Khos-
of these techniques are mostly circumscribed to linguis-       raviNik 2017: 752), used by people more and more.
tic studies. In the next section, I will show you how the          In this section, I want to discuss a small case study
accessibility and structure of CL appear to be a perfect       that uses Twitter as a digital archive and looks at the use
fit for DH and conversely, the field of DH seems to have       of language in communication and more specifically dis-
room for a rather approachable and relevant methodol-          cusses the issue of digital activism in the USA context
ogy such as CL.                                                from a linguistic perspective.
                                                                   The participatory nature of social media has made
T WITTER AS A D IGITAL A RCHIVE : A C ASE
                                                               the Internet a breeding ground for a variety of exclu-
S TUDY ON # WONTBEERASED                                       sionary, intolerant, and extremist discourses, practices
Digital archives understood as collections of digital or       and beliefs (Kopytowska 2017), especially from politi-
digitalized language are now easy to find and access           cians who seem to have found in Twitter a very effec-
and are at the foundation of DH. The growing trend             tive means to communicate their thoughts and political
towards digitalization, today more than ever given the         ideas. One of the personalities who have found in Twit-
semi-worldwide inability to travel and access physi-           ter a strong ally is U.S. President Donald Trump, as De-
cal archives due to the COVID-19 health crisis, gave           mata (2018) discusses thoroughly. Trump has used the
an even more central role to digital archives, which in        platform so extensively to the point he has affirmed that
return became fruitful pools for corpora compilation.          he would probably not even be where he is now if it was
As we are surrounded by digital archives and possible          not for Twitter. The president has become notorious for
sources of data, CL is a great tool to take advantage of       his controversial tweets used not only for trivial issues
them. One of the most commonly used platforms nowa-            but in many cases to announce new political turns and
days, Twitter, can be considered as one of these digital       decisions.
archives, a place where language that can constitute a             The transgender community has been repeatedly tar-
corpus can be found. A collection of language, publicly        geted by Trump’s mediatic communication. One of the
available, that includes metadata, available digitally and     latest in his long tradition of suppression of human rights
representative of a variety of genres, languages, topics       goes back to October 2018. On this occasion, the de-
or even personalities. It can serve as a place for data        partment of Health and Human services announced it
collection not only to analyze language use or language        was in the process of revising Title IX of the Federal
change in time, but to observe political developments,         Civil Rights law to elaborate and establish a legal defi-
historical events or social behaviors, thus a useful source    nition of sex and gender identity that would define gen-
for many disciplines. Twitter is based on social interac-      der as a biological and immutable condition3 . A num-
tion between users and can be employed to create ambi-         3   The source used to retrieve the specific steps in the po-
ent affiliation through the use of hashtags (Zappavigna            litical agenda of the POTUS is https : / / transequality. org /
2012).                                                             the-discrimination-administration.
136                                                                                                    América Crítica 4(2): 131–141

ber of protests raised across the country to fight this and            of the tags of a reference corpus, in this case the ref-
say loud and clear that transgender people would not be                erence corpus is BNCwritten sampler (Burnard 1999)
erased, a gathering organized by GLAAD4 was held in                    available on Wmatrix. From this comparison a final list
Washington Square Park, NY on the same day as this                     of the key semantic domains in my corpus is generated.
was announced, followed by a rally in front of the White               I will now discuss in more detail the three most signifi-
House in the next days (22/10/2018), for example. At                   cant semantic domains in this list. This analysis reveals
the same time as Twitter was being used by the Pres-                   insights both on the structural use of tweets for activism
ident of the United States to persecute a minority, this               and about the content of these tweets.
platform became the place for a sort of counterattack                      The most significant group in the list of domains
and the hashtag wontbeerased became the symbol of this                 (semantic domain tags in the table below) is labelled
protest. I became interested in the way this counterat-                as “unmatched” (Z99 in the labels used by Wmatrix).
tack was put forward on Twitter and decided to analyse                 There are over 30000 occurrences that match this do-
the linguistic and discursive practices that were being                main. As the name of the domain suggests, this group
used on the social media to pursue this protest.                       contains all the words that the software did not recog-
    The corpus used to carry out the analysis was created              nize, mostly hashtags and @ signs, which on Twitter are
by scraping Twitter using an adapted version of a Python               used when you want to reply directly to someone, to tag
library called Get Old Tweets3 (https://pypi.org/project/              them in your comment. In other corpora these might
GetOldTweets3/)5 the data was then processed into the                  be irrelevant, but in the case of a corpus collected from
right input text for the software, i.e. .txt. The data was             Twitter they are actually key elements.
collected in a time span that stretches across 6 months                    The table below (Tab. 1) shows the first 20 most fre-
between October 2018 (when the protest started), un-                   quent hashtags that were found in this domain and their
til March 2019 (the last full month when the data was                  frequency and relative frequency in the corpus.
collected). Tweets were selected using the hashtag in                  The centrality, both in terms of number of occurrences
all its forms as a search term. The search was lim-                    and statistical significance7 , of this specific feature of
ited to English language and to the actual post, no                    the corpus highlights two main aspects of the way in
replies or retweets were included, generating a corpus                 which activists employed language on Twitter in this
of 438,723 tokens. I then resorted to a more CL-based                  case, the first one by means of the use of hashtags
approach, within the framework of Corpus-assisted Dis-                 and the practice defined by Michele Zappavigna (2018)
course Analysis (Partington, Duguid and Taylor 2013),                  as hashtagging. Because Twitter only allows a certain
and used the software Wmatrix (Rayson 2009) to ana-                    amount of words per tweet, the use of hashtags to sup-
lyze the data, a tool best known for its semantic analysis             port the statement being made becomes fundamental.
tools.                                                                 The hashtag acquires the same semiotic function of an
    When data is uploaded to Wmatrix it is automati-                   image, the meaning is embedded in it, one hashtag car-
cally tagged by CLAWS (Garside and Smith 1997), a                      ries meaning that you are no longer in need to write and
grammatical tagger created at Lancaster University for                 explain, because that simple word already says every-
part-of-speech (each word is provided with information                 thing, already brings the meaning with it. The hashtag
about its grammatical function) and semantically tagged                begins to work in the same way as image, as for ex-
by USAS (Wilson and Rayson 1993) an English seman-                     ample an emoji or meme would, proving once again that
tic tagger also created at Lancaster University. For the               online communication is becoming more and more sum-
purpose of this case study, I focused on the semantic                  marized and iconographic. Along the same lines, the use
domains generated by the second type of tagging. Sim-                  of tagging (through the @ sign) becomes extremely im-
ply put, each word is assigned a tag that indicates a se-              portant as it enables direct interaction between the politi-
mantic domain, i.e. “time” or “emotions”. Using log-                   cian – the main actor, and the member of the public who
likelihood6 as a standard value, a frequency list of the               is using the social media to make a claim. In this case,
tags is created and compared against the frequency list                for example, as Table 1 shows, the main interlocutor is

4   https://www.glaad.org/.                                            7   When looking at the table we must bear in mind that we are look-
5   Special thanks to Andressa Rodrigues Gomide for the support in         ing at a very restricted amount of data and that the statistical rel-
    collecting the data presented in this case study.                      evance of the domain is intended in reference to the domain as
6   To read more about log-likelihood and other statistical measures       whole rather than the statistical relevance of the occurrence of
    see among others: Evert (2008).                                        each element.
Angela Zottola, Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities                                                          137

                      Word                  Semantic domain tag    Frequency     Relative Frequency
                1     #wontbeerased         Z99                    6067          4.14
                2     #transgender          Z99                    350           0.60
                3     #transisbeautiful     Z99                    300           0.24
                4     #lgbtq                Z99                    233           0.16
                5     #transrights          Z99                    170           0.12
                6     #pride                Z99                    153           0.10
                7     #wontbeerased.        Z99                    149           0.10
                8     @realdonaldtrump      Z99                    137           0.09
                9     #girlslikeus          Z99                    127           0.09
                10    #resist               Z99                    94            0.06
                11    #translivesmatter     Z99                    92            0.06
                12    #loveislove           Z99                    91            0.06
                13    #nonbinary            Z99                    81            0.06
                14    #lovewins             Z99                    78            0.05
                15    #gendertag            Z99                    71            0.05
                16    #thisisme             Z99                    71            0.05
                17    #simplerthanwords     Z99                    71            0.05
                18    #justbeyou            Z99                    71            0.05
                19    #itgetsbetter         Z99                    70            0.05
                20    #stopthehate          Z99                    67            0.05

                                          TABLE 1: D OMAIN : UNMATCHED .

precisely Donald Trump (Table 1 ex. 8).                     over 14 thousand match the “pronouns” domain.
    The use of the hashtags also allows for the users to        Wmatrix allows the users to access to a concordance
launch slogans that become empowering phrases, see for      list of the words included in that specific semantic do-
instance examples 11, 14, 17 and 20, not to mention the     main being analyzed, thus I conducted a concordance
main hashtag as well, which connote the tweets posi-        analysis on a random sample of 100 concordance lines
tively and users as activists.                              for both semantic domains. That is to say, I was able to
    All in all, from the point of view of the structure     look at the context of use of the terms included in the
of these texts used by the activists we can posit that a    two domains. The reason why I selected a random sam-
short tweet not only enables the users to express a much    ple is related to the fact that my aim here is to have a
more complex idea that 280 characters would normally        general overview and not to focus on any specific word
allow, but also opens a direct communication with a         included within the domain. These analyses revealed
specific user. Both of these features would not be al-      that the tweets are far from being impersonal or generic,
lowed by what we can consider as traditional activism,      but tend to be very personal and above all aim at bring-
i.e. marches or sit-ins for example. As Sarah Jackson,      ing the discussion back to the people, to underline that it
Moya Bailey and Brooke Foucault Welles (2020: 42)           is human beings that are at stake and specify that while
point out, the use of social media and Twitter in partic-   this issue is definitely concerned with laws and poli-
ular, has become “one important technology to push the      tics, it should, above all, be discussed in terms of what
mainstream public sphere on issues of social progress in    or whom it truly involves, people’s lives that are being
ways more powerful and visible than possibly ever be-       questioned. We have two different types of tweets here,
fore.”                                                      which can be differentiated by the level of personal in-
    Moving on to the second and third most relevant key     volvement in the tweet itself. In the first case we have
semantic domains we have “people” and “pronouns”            tweets that are always written by trans people who use
which will be discussed together here due to the over-      the social media to bring visibility to their identity and
lapping content of the two domains. These mainly in-        their community as whole. An example is the Tweet that
clude collective nouns that refer to human beings and       can be read below:
pronouns; 3256 tokens match the “people” domain and
138                                                                                             América Crítica 4(2): 131–141

      nemowo whats this? :3c @swagsires · 6 nov 2018                  haters refer to, and these are anonymity, seen as the abil-
                                                                      ity of the web to hide ones identity, physical separation,
      #MyTransIs living my best life and standing up                  which comes as a consequence of anonymity, and it is
      for my trans siblings. WontBeErased                             intended as the practice of distancing oneself from its
                                                                      online identity, the lack of face-to-face interaction and
      : 8/21/18
      Age: 22                                                         acknowledgement of people’s humanity, and lastly the
      Pronouns: He/Him or They/Them8 .                                practice of de-individuation which consists in relying on
                                                                      the group, being part of a specific ensemble by reduc-
In this case the user, also through the use of a pho-                 ing self-awareness and self-visibility. The analysis of
tographs (which have not been included but can be found               the small set of data presented here shows that the users,
in the original tweet) states who he is and declares                  or activists as I have defined them earlier, that used this
through the use of the hashtag that he will not be erased             hashtag use opposite strategies to these, eliminating al-
by a law that is an explicit political act which does not             together the practice of anonymity. They do this not only
take into account the lives of thousands.                             through the words but also through the use of images
The second type of tweets are less personal or related to             (see for example the first tweet quoted). The users in this
the users’ direct personal experience, and most impor-                case employ a type of discourse that opposes online hate
tantly are written both by trans and cisgender people, an             and that could be defined as online love, where, despite
example is below.                                                     the discourse patterns retrieved might hint at a sort of
                                                                      “battlefield” language, the metaphors are actually used
      Kirsten Gillibrand @SenGillibrand 22 ott 2018                   in a positive way and the language is directed towards
                                                                      the production of a beneficial meaning. This positive
      When this administration spews hate, we will                    use of language in these ‘battlefield metaphors’ recalls
      speak out louder. When they commit injustice
                                                                      the type of positive representation described earlier in
      against one of us, we will come together to stand
      stronger. When they attack our basic human rights,              this section, where people make use of positive hash-
      we will fight back harder. Transgender Americans                tags to accompany their tweets, or in the use of personal
      #WontBeErased. We won’t stand for it.9                          comments which can be seen as way to underline the hu-
                                                                      mans behind the social media user account.
Along these lines, one of the most recurring catch-
                                                                          The results presented here are very limited and only
phrases that follow the hashtag and that was identified
                                                                      apply to my dataset, the point, in fact, was not to discuss
through the concordance analyses, is “trans rights are
                                                                      at length the case study, but to provide an example of the
human rights”. The main discourse pattern that is put
                                                                      type of analyses that can result from the combination of
forward by the Twitter users who employ this hashtag is
                                                                      CL and DH in the framework of American Studies. In
that this behavior on the part of the POTUS is infring-
                                                                      fact, this case study proves that the combination of these
ing basic human rights and no matter how big the effort
                                                                      approaches can answers questions related not only to the
is to erase those words that we use to language gender
                                                                      use of language on the media or in relation to gender and
identity, people still exist, they cannot simply be erased
                                                                      sexual identities, but can speak to issues such as politics,
or vanish. This discourse is supported by phrases such
                                                                      social theory, activism, the role of social media in soci-
as “fighting for rights”, “resisting erasure”, “deserving
                                                                      ety and culture at large as portrayed and put forward in
to be alive and to exist”, “attack our basic human rights”
                                                                      the USA, a country which plays a seminal role world-
(as shown in the second tweet) which despite recalling
                                                                      wide in political and social trends.
battlefield language – i.e. fighting, resisting, present a
very positive discourse. The literature in this field has             C ONCLUSIONS
proven more than once that there is a tendency, as antic-
ipated at the beginning of this section, of spreading hate            In 2014 Jensen affirmed that “CL is on the fringes of
online, using very specific linguistic techniques. Ma-                contemporary DH, which is itself [. . . ] on the fringes
jid KhoshraviNik and Eleonora Esposito (2018), in par-                of humanities” (Jensen 2014: 57), six years later is this
ticular, highlight three specific features to which online            still the case? DH has grown greatly, as testified by, for
8
                                                                      instance, the growing offer of degrees and research ex-
    Nemowo whats this? :3c, Twitter post, November 2018, 11:26
    am, https://twitter.com/swagsires/status/1059768940619067392.
                                                                      plicitly labelled as being part of the Digital Humanities
9   Kirsten Gillibrand, Twitter post, October 2018, 9:56 pm, https:   not only in the USA, where it first started, but more and
    //twitter.com/SenGillibrand/status/1054476486793682945.           more in Europe as well. A testimony of this is also the
Angela Zottola, Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities                                                                               139

increasing scholarly publication within the field that aim      combination with DH this could be extended to many
at the interdisciplinarity of this field that this paper also   more disciplines and fields beyond linguistics.
argues for (see the latest issues of Digital Humanities             Crossing the two paths, having the digital world at
Quarterly). At the same time, CL has also witnessed             a fingertip thanks to the accessible tools of CL, would
a growth in number of scholars adopting its methodol-           allow the two fields to grow even more, tickling the in-
ogy, as well areas in which the tools of CL are used,           terest not only of scholars but of learners and the gen-
as discussed extensively in previous sections. As Gavin         eral public as well. In fact, growing effort is being put
Brookes and tony McEnery (2020: 385) agree, CL and              into the popularization of the use of CL techniques, es-
DH “appear to be a good match: both are inextrica-              pecially in schools10 but also in non-educational con-
bly tied to digital technology, both use digital or digi-       texts, for example in the field of translation (Baroni et
tised data and both use computational tools for analy-          al. 2006) or product branding.11
sis.” Their encounter, via other disciplines as well, like          In this effort being made by CL scholars I see the
in this study, has become not only needed but neces-            same one being made by digital humanists.
sary for scholars of any discipline which involves digital
data. For instance thinking about my experience, while          R EFERENCES
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