Project Details
Projekt
Belief states of vulnerable groups in crises in Latin America: sociolingustic and computational assessment
Subject Area
General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
Term
from 2021 to 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 468416293
Indigenous people belong to the particularly vulnerable groups in the COVID-19 era are disproportionally affected by epidemics and other crises, as acknowledged by the United Nations. Beyond the general problems related to the socio-economic marginalization and the concomitant inaccessibility of health-care services (in particular in rural regions and remote communities), a major threat for indigenous people arises through miscommunication, either due to the sparsity of information material in indigenous languages or due to cultural differences hindering the interpretation/application of the recommended health measures; see recent reports on Latin American indigenous people in. Dissemination of reliable COVID-19-related information, adapted to cultural and linguistic background of indigenous peoples is a major priority in the current crisis.The major aim of the present project proposal is to determine what role the linguistic and cultural background of indigenous people from Latin America plays in dissemination of relevant information about COVID-19 propagated by high-impact news outlets (henceforth the Reference Corpus). This aim entails the development of interdisciplinary methods (including sociolinguistic and computational linguistic metrics) for assessing belief states and measuring the degree to which these belief states mirror the Reference Corpus. Special attention is given to complement questionnaire-based data collections with more socially natural data-gathering methods (e.g. free interview), which are particularly important in order to include individuals who are less accustomed to performing highly controlled tasks. In order to reach the major aim of the project proposal, we created an interdisciplinary group of experts, already cooperating in various related projects. The group combines expertise in linguistic analysis and sociolinguistics, social and medical anthropology, computational methods in social sciences and sociolinguistics, statistic modelling, bilingualism research in Latin America and research of indigenous languages in Latin America, in particular Ecuador, Peru and Yucatán.Based on the results of this study, the project partners envisage to submit a larger proposal with the contribution of experts from further regions for the study of the role of indigenous languages and cultures in the dissemination of information with social relevance.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Austria, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru
