Document detail

Twelve years of measuring linguistic diversity in the internet: balance and perspectives

Paris: UNESCO (2009), v, 56 pp.
Other Editions: also published in French
"FUNREDES and Union Latine have designed an original research method to measure linguistic diversity in cyberspace. The aim was to use search engines and a sample of word-concepts to measure the proportionate presence of these concepts in their various linguistic equivalences (in Latin languages, English and German) in cyberspace. The research, undertaken from 1996 to 2008, has enabled interesting indicators to be built in order to measure linguistic diversity. Additionally, some basic evaluations of the cultural projections associated with these languages (mentioned above) were undertaken. This paper describes the research method and its results, advantages and limitations. It also provides an overview of existing alternative methods and results, for comparison. The paper concludes with the examination of different perspectives in a field which have in the past been considered to have been characterized by a lack of scientific rigor. This has led to some misinformation about the dominant presence of English on the Web. It is a topic that is only now slowly attracting due attention from international organizations and the academic world." (Abstract, p.V)
Contents
1 Introduction, 1
2 Context of a project, 5
3 History of a project, 9
4 Methodology, 11
5 Results, 29
6 Evaluation of the method, 43
7 Evaluation of other methods, 45
8 Perspectives, 55