FLOM has been made possible through technical and financial support from the University of Washington's Department of Linguistics, Language Learning Center, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and Royalty Research Fund.
(FLOM) The Folk Linguistic Online Mapping application is designed as an open-source, customizable suite of tools for collecting mental maps for linguistic research. The core of this project is based around the JavaScript library of Leaflet with use of the FreeDraw module and a hack made available by Bostongraphy. (Please note that we are using the legacy version of Leaflet and FreeDraw for the version currently being demo'ed on this site.)
FLOM is a tool for collecting perceptual dialect maps and subjective reactions to language variation online. This tool enables researchers to create online surveys that incorporate maps as a means of framing the responses. Survey takers can directly respond to research questions by:
Researchers can use their own maps and sound files, as well as develop customized survey questions (such as respondent demographics). We are currently working on a user-friendly interface based around JavaScript, React, and Docker, to facilitate the use of FLOM by researchers with varying degrees of technical backgrounds. However, all versions of the program we are developing for the foreseeable future will require the researcher to have access to their own web server and Docker installation.
The goal of FLOM is to ameliorate methodological problems with PD especially with regard to analysis of data. Because we can now use GIS to analyze hand-drawn lines on PD maps, FLOM allows us to eliminate aspects of human error in the analysis stages by enabling participant responses (lines or labels) to go directly to a database. The coordinate (latitude/longitude) data collected by the tool, stored as WKT (Well Known Text) strings, can be used to create visual displays in a Geographic Information Software (GIS) program (software-specific and general guides coming soon). In addition, it provides a platform and methodology that many researchers can use thus enabling results from many studies to be compared.
Below is a brief overview of FLOM. (The video demonstrates an earlier version of FLOM.)
FLOM is currently in the development stage but it is available for pilot studies.
If you are interested in using FLOM for your research study, please contact us with the basic details of your study. We may be able to host your study on our dedicated FLOM server and reduce the setup time and resources required for you to begin your research. We are in the process of updating the FLOM code and documentation on Github. If, for some reason, it won't be feasible to host your study on our server, or you prefer to run the installation on your own server, please let us know and we will contact you when the updated version of FLOM is available.
contact usFLOM has been made possible through technical and financial support from the University of Washington's Department of Linguistics, Language Learning Center, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and Royalty Research Fund.