The diachronic electronic corpus of tyneside English and the talk of the toon: Issues in preservation and public engagement

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways in which issues of corpus sustainability and dissemination have been addressed in the creation of the Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English (DECTE, Corrigan et al. 2012. The Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English (DECTE) and The Talk of the Toon. Newcastle University) and, in particular, in the design and development of the project’s public-facing multimedia website, The Talk of the Toon. This open-access site is at the heart of the outreach activities through which the DECTE project seeks to fulfil the aim of fostering mutually beneficial and productive relationships with diverse non-academic user groups in the wider community, in keeping with the concept of linguistic gratuity advocated by Wolfram (1993) and the requirements of the current public engagement and impact agendas in UK higher education.