Crosstalk in Humanities Computing

We would like to stimulate crosstalk among the humanities in this paper, i.e., interdisciplinary investigation, and more specifically to show how humanities computing might stimulate this. We use the subjects of cultural variation and cultural diffusion to underscore our main argument that such crosstalk might take place at a more fruitful level than earlier, noting first, that culture—meaning material culture, linguistic culture, religious culture, etc.—is at the core of several humanities disciplines, and that it is plausible to hypothesis that the distributions of different cultural expressions follow similar patterns. We illustrate how the study of linguistic culture has benefited from the use of computational techniques, and we suggest several promising avenues within which crosstalk might be pursued. The computing perspective suggests where this interdisciplinary work might progress beyond older views. We have argued earlier for a simple view of the relation between information and communication technology (ICT) and the humanities, essentially that of service: computing should serve the humanities (Nerbonne 2005). In this view we seek answers to scholarly questions in linguistics, history and art history by using the computer, exploiting especially its ability to process large amounts of data and the transparency of its processing. Contrary to other views of the relation between computers and the humanities, we do not advocate a focus on questions of digital culture, nor an emphasis on pedagogical applications of computers, and we see little evidence of a scientific revolution—including the “revolution” that would be signaled by ∗We are indebted to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for support (“Determinants of Dialect Variation”, 360-70-120, P.I. J.Nerbonne), and to Peter Kleiweg for programming.