Outsourcing teenage language: a participatory approach for exploring speech and text messaging

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a remote method used for engaging teenagers as citizen sociolinguists within the research project Teen Speak in Estonia. The project, launched in January 2020, aims to investigate young people’s language by creating the first systematic dual corpus of Estonian teenagers’ spoken language and text messaging. Previously, youth language in Estonia has not been the subject of much research. Yet scholarly attention to teenage language usage has been on the rise internationally, with corpora compiled in English and several other languages. The article describes the process of recruiting and training participants, as well as adjustments made to data collection in connection with the outbreak of COVID-19 and the restrictions which followed. While the pandemic did modestly interfere with the participatory approach, the data collection was successfully carried out, thanks primarily to well-networked and dedicated 9- to 18-year-old participants. Notwithstanding a gender imbalance, the corpus of 97 h of speech and nearly 60,000 words of text messages will facilitate research into Estonian teenagers’ Estonian–English codeswitching and other linguistic features, across two registers. The remote method is recommended for use elsewhere, especially in places where mutual trust prevails, and teenagers claim a fair amount of independence, responsibility and facility with online applications.