Geographical analysis of the vernacular

Abstract

The BBC Voices project of 2005 resulted in a large repository of lexical, phonological and grammatical data from the UK, which included geographical references. In order to investigate the relationship between language and geography, various clustering algorithms have been applied to the BBC Voices data. Results show a clear spatial relationship, with well-defined, contiguous regions of UK language being identified. In order to prove the clustering methodology, Bayesian models have been generated for each region, and these have been tested using a set of non-standard expressions contributed by a small number of participants. Results of this second stage indicate that the models are, in most cases, able to identify the geographical region of each test participant based on the linguistic items they use.