Bilingual Voices in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Phase 2: Preserving, Expanding & Elaborating Sociolinguistic Collections

FAIN: PW-290585-23

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (Edinburg, TX 78539-2909)
Katherine O'Donnell Christoffersen (Project Director: July 2022 to present)
Ryan Bessett (Co Project Director: February 2023 to September 2024)
Ana Maria Carvalho (Co Project Director: February 2023 to present)
Julio Ciller (Co Project Director: September 2023 to present)
Isabella Calafate (Co Project Director: September 2024 to present)

The preservation, expansion, and elaboration of two collections of bilingual sociolinguistic interviews, which document language varieties along the U.S.-Mexico border—the Corpus Bilingue del Valle (CoBiVa) and the Corpus del Espanol en sel Sur de Arizona (CESA).  

This project contributes to the development of two unique collections of bilingual sociolinguistic interviews which document the language varieties along the U.S.-Mexico border by linguists at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) and the University of Arizona (UA). This project builds upon the prior successful Foundations project by accomplishing three main goals: 1) preserving 240 bilingual interviews through library digital preservation systems, 2) expanding the collections by diversifying and balancing the dataset with 50 new interviews, and 3) elaborating the corpus websites with auto-filled metadata spreadsheets, data visualization including graphs and maps, and contextualization of the collections. This Implementations project will have far-reaching impacts on scholarship, Hispanic students, and local communities as this rich data provides insight on Spanish-English bilingual linguistic practices in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.