Mapping Lexical Variation with Reddit

In my dissertation, A geographic analysis of lexical variation in North American English using Reddit corpora, I analyzed variation in the usage of 127 lexical variables across 153 Reddit communities for North American cities. On this page, you can browse maps for 17 of the variables which I thought yielded the most significant and interesting results.

Reference map

• A map with the names of the cities whose subreddits appeared in the dataset

Variables

• among vs. amongst

• anyway vs. anyways

• beside vs. next to

• besides vs. other than

• cent vs. penny

• country vs. nation

• covid vs. coronavirus

• especially vs. particularly

• favorite vs. fave

• garbage vs. trash

• gun vs. firearm

• highway vs. freeway

• lawyer vs. attorney

• marijuana vs. cannabis

• maybe vs. perhaps

• police vs. cops

• shit vs. crap

• though vs. although

• toward vs. towards

• until vs. till