CLARIN-CH Day 2026

Studying the connection between language and emotion is not a new topic, and in the past decade, it has often been informed by quantitative and computational approaches such as sentiment analysis. At the same time, the interdisciplinary field of affect studies (Ahmed 2004, Wetherell 2012 and others) has developed an understanding of affect as a cultural, political and stylistic practice, leading away from empiricist concepts of discrete emotions as countable and quantifiable. This is particularly relevant for the interactional and fluid linguistic practices that we encounter in digital contexts. How can we do linguistic research on the affective dimensions of digital linguistic practice? What are meaningful and insightful data that we can work with to understand networked and sometimes short-lived articulations of digital affect, from ick to cringe to aura? And what are some of the procedural and ethical hurdles that may be specifically relevant when engaging with such contexts? In my talk, I will present findings from my work on the sociolinguistics of digital affect (Heyd in press). I will first discuss some underpinnings and implications of understanding sociolinguistic affect in digital discourse data through the lens of affect theory, and present selected case studies and data points. The second part of my talk will reflect on the methodological aspects of working with such affective data, some of which are messy, hard-to-locate and come with ethical and platform-specific challenges.