World Languages and Cultures
Undergraduate Research with Spanish Corpus Linguistics
What is CECWA?
CECWA is a Digital archive that collects samples of the Spanish spoken in Central Washington creating a "Linguistic Corpus of Spanish in Central Washington".
CECWA is filled with oral interviews with Central Washington bilinguals showcasing the intricacies of the local Spanish dialects and their contact with English and Yakama languages.
The samples of "Spanish-English" natural speech in CECWA allow students in the Spanish Program to study language variation, language contact, and language change in our region in real-time.
CECWA engages in Undergraduate Research
Students participate in the Creation of the Corpus by enrolling in SPAN 414, and upper division Spanish elective. In SPAN 414, students:- Train to become researchers (Citi Training & IRB application)
- Work in sociolinguistic labs
- Conduct sociolinguistic interviews
- Follow transcription protocols
- Design and execute a sociolinguistic research project using the CECWA database.
- Students present their Sociolinguistic Research projects at SOURCE.
In the future, the goal is to have interdisciplinary researchers use CECWA to examine linguistic, cultural, and anthropological issues relevant to our community.
Cataloging Spanish in Central Washington
CECWA has threefold goal:
- Engage CWU university students in undergraduate sociolinguistic research
- Collect digital samples of oral narratives produced by Spanish Speakers from Central Washington
- Create a digital Corpus of the Spanish spoken in CWU to conduct sociolinguistic research.
Spanish Facts of Central Washington
- 54 million Spanish Speakers in the US, more than in Colombia and Spain.
- 2010 Census reported more than 357, 260 Spanish speakers living in Central Washington.
- CECWA is the first and only Corpus that collects samples of Spanish spoken in Central Washington.
"When you say Central Washington or Washington state, I don’t think people realize just how many people here speak Spanish,” she said. “It’s interesting for me to hit this region, not just for socio-linguistic interest, and also to help build a digital archive that can be a platform for all these voices that have flown under the radar for so long." - Dr. Andrea Herrera-Dulcet (Crimson & Black, 2023)
Contact for more information
Dr. Andrea Herrera-Dulcet
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Coordinator of the Spanish Heritage Language Program, Applied Linguistics and Spanish Teaching.
Andrea.Herrera-Dulcet@cwu.edu
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