Digital Humanities and Historical Lexicology

Abstract

In the realm of a transdisciplinary area of scholarly activity (GOLUB, LIU, 2021) named Digital Humanities (DH), as linguists, we are faced with the challenge of extracting data and knowledge in digital files containing the records of spoken or written language. In this perspective, in Linguistics, we have the tradition of developing studies in the sub-fields of Lexicology and Lexicography, among others, that are devoted to analyze old documents, be them in print or written by hand. Naturally, the idea of old is somewhat relative. DH is at the intersection of Computing and Humanities. When dealing with digital data in chronologies, its enthusiasts develop trans- and multidisciplinary collaborative research, with historians and documentalists, to offer them digital tools and methods to study the Humanities and historical records online. Although DH is in line with the new forms of teaching and research, be them in-person or remotely, its enthusiasts are critical of how the new formats and modalities impact cultural heritage and digital culture. Hence, DH is a growing field of research for which Language and Lexical Studies, especially in combination with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Corpus Linguistics (CL), have a lot to offer. After all, there are many techniques that can be used in linguistics research with some computational support which can be useful for studying historical records, literatures and any other human discourse under investigation in these conditions.