First-year SoMu Karolina: “Internship can also be funny”

First-year SoMus are preparing for a new semester in Germany. Before it, they’ve had three months of holiday!!! Some of the students were not only enjoying their free time, but also working. First-year SoMu Karolina Lenkutytė had an internship at the Department of Sociolinguistics  in Vilnius.

During the internship, Karolina had some tasks in the projects carried out at the Department. First, she had to lend a hand in the project “Kalba Vilnius” (“Vilnius Speaking”). “I got some transcribed interviews with Vilnius residents where they shared their memories about Vilnius city and its changes during many years. These interviews were conducted in order to find out more about the linguistic features of people living in this area. I had to read the transcriptions and listen to the recordings once again and to correct the mistakes,” Karolina tells.

Another internship task was to collect SMS to the “Volunteers Database.” Karolina had to collect authentic SMS messages in which unusual Lithuanian or borrowed words were used. Another section in the “Volunteers Database” is “The City.” Karolina explains that people can contribute to this section by finding and uploading unusual linguistic choices found in the city (e.g. café titles, signboards, or linguistic decisions made). However, she contributed to this task the least because there were no such examples in Marijampolė, her native town.

The funniest task for Karolina was collecting and uploading Facebook posts to the database. Karolina recalls that she had to look through her friends’ accounts and find some interesting posts or commentaries in which not only Lithuanian but also other languages were used, Lithuanian words were distorted, or there were other interesting linguistic choices. “When I found some examples, I had to contact my friend and ask if s/he agrees that these posts or commentaries were used in the project,” Karolina tells and adds that this task was really time-consuming, but now there are around 500 funny and interesting examples on the database, which can be accessed by anyone (http://www.sociolingvistika.lt/facebook.htm ).

The final task of the internship was collecting and uploading pupils’ essays; therefore, she had to visit her Lithuanian language teacher at school and collect them. Then the essays were scanned and uploaded to the database. It can also be accessed by anyone online (http://rasineliai.sociolingvistika.lt/paieska.htm?order=6&rand=876). There are some great examples, which can really make your day. However, understanding them would require some knowledge in Lithuanian :)

The initiators of these projects expect to collect a sufficiently large number of SMS, Facebook posts and commentaries, and examples of linguistic variety in the city. This database can be used by pupils, teachers, and researchers when analyzing linguistic choices around us, as well as pupils’ mistakes, ideas, and trends in teachers’ evaluation.

Karolina summarises the advantages of this internship the following:

  • Very friendly and helpful internship coordinators;
  • Possibility of working at home (if you get the log-in to the database)
  • An interesting experience, especially correcting transcriptions and collecting Facebook posts and commentaries;
  • A chance of improving knowledge and finding out more about sociolinguistic projects in Lithuania;
  • Applying the theoretical knowledge practically.

However, there were some disadvantages as well. First, data collection was a really complicated process because, unfortunately, teachers were not willing to cooperate and participate in these projects. Second, Karolina faced the problem of anonymity because not everyone wanted their posts or commentaries to be uploaded on the database.

In general, Karolina finds her internship really useful and interesting. Anyone interested in these projects, willing to contribute to data collection, curious about internship possibilities or SoMu studies in general can write her an e-mail k.lenkutyte@gmail.com :)