Keyword analysis and the indexing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity

This article presents a corpus-driven sociolinguistic study of Redfern Now – the first major television drama series commissioned, written, acted, directed and produced by Indigenous industry professionals in Australia. The study examines whether corpus linguistic keyword analysis can identify evidence for type indexicality (social demographics, personae) and trait indexicality (stance, personality), with particular attention paid to the potential indexing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity. More specifically, the study’s goal is to retrieve and analyse words that are associated with varieties of English in Australia, and with Australian Aboriginal Englishes in particular. To this end, a corpus with dialogue from Redfern Now is compared to a reference corpus of US television dialogue. Results show that Redfern Now features the use of easily recognisable and familiar words (e.g. blackfella[s], deadly; kinship terms), but also shows clear variation among characters. The case study concludes by evaluating the use of keyword analysis for identifying indexicality in telecinematic discourse.

The state of Spanish /s/ variation in Concepción, Chile: Linguistic and social trends

The current study examines /s/ variation in the southern-central city of Concepción, Chile and its relation to a variety of linguistic and social factors. A proportional-odds mixed effects model, with the random factor of “speaker”, was used to treat the categorically coded data on a continuum of acoustical variation ([s] > [h] > ∅). The results presented show that contrary to the previous assertions, heavy sibilant reduction, especially elision, in Concepción, Chile is the rule, rather than the exception, to the extent that it is no longer a marker of certain social demographics as has been reported previously. Furthermore, based on the trends reported, it is likely that this has been the case for several decades. Finally, the overall observed trends are indicative that the rates of /s/ elision will continue to increase across social demographics and different phonetic and phonological contexts in Concepción, Chile.

Impact of COVID-19 on mental health of the elderly

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented effect on the lives of people, irrespective of social demographics. The elderly, however, face special challenges, and it is imperative that healthcare professionals identify and highlight their special needs so that they can be adequately protected and supported through these trying times. Unless care is taken, the elderly as a group may face significant fallout with regard to their mental and psychological wellbeing.

Public Library Representations and Internet Appropriations

May the changes in the representations of the public library be propitiated by readers' appropriations of the Internet? To answer this question, a theoretically-driven and empirically-based research was developed in a public library in Portugal, combining the analysis of documents uses, the ethnography of space and Internet use, of social relations developed while reading, with the analysis of representations of the public library. No clear-cut association emerged between social-demographics or user profiles, and representations, in general. No disruptive Internet "impact" was found: Internet use may contribute to reinforce traditional representations of the library, while it may also update and democratise other representations. If the library and the Internet are represented as synonymous, the former does not make sense without the latter; but an Internet widespread and intensive use conflicts with the image of an institution dedicated to high-brow culture. Changes in uses of the public library are, instead, clearly associated with new types of readers, which in their turn reflect changes in urban social composition

EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRAVEL PATTERN AND SOCIAL-DEMOGRAPHICS USING SMART CARD DATA AND HOUSEHOLD SURVEY

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Understanding social-demographics of passengers in public transit systems is significant for transportation operators and city planners in many real applications, such as forecasting travel demand and providing personalised transportation service. This paper develops an entire framework to analyse the relationship between passengers’ movement patterns and social-demographics by using smart card (SC) data with a household survey. The study first extracts various novel travel features of passengers from SC data, including spatial, temporal, travel mode and travel frequency features, to identify long-term travel patterns and their seasonality, for the in-depth understanding of ‘how’ people travel in cities. Leveraging household survey data, we then classify passengers into several groups based on their social-demographic characteristics, such as age, and working status, to identify the homogeneity of travellers for understanding ‘who’ travels using public transit. Finally, we explore the significant relationships between the travel patterns and demographic clusters. This research reveals explicit semantic explanations of ‘why’ passengers exhibit these travel patterns.</p>