Abstract:

Currently, digital humanities claims to prioritize linguistic research, but its focus is actually limited to fields such as computational linguistics, lacking a comprehensive understanding of the current development of the linguistics as a discipline. The article is an interview with Dr.Huang He from the Institute of Modem Languages and Linguistics, Fudan University, an active scholar in the field of linguistics, especially dialectometry. The purpose is to clarify the relationship between linguistics and digital humanities. Dr.Huang believes that“digital humanities” should refer to humanities research assisted by digital technology, while linguistics is a complex group of disciplines, with fields that lean towards the humanities, such as literary linguistics; fields that lean towards the natural sciences, such as neurolinguistics; and those with a nature of social sciences, such as geolinguistics. The application of quantitative methods in the latter two is already widespread, which might be one of the reasons why the concept of“digital humanities” is less emphasized in linguistics. The label“digital humanities” is meaningful during a certain historical period, but its scope will gradually narrow, and it does not meet the basic requirements to constitute an independent discipline. Furthermore, using dialectometry as an example, Dr.Huang points out some problems in current quantitative research in this field and the essential elements that a good quantitative study should have, providing insights for digital humanities research in various fields.

Key words:

digital humanities , geolinguisitics , dialectometry , digital humanities scholars