Double eagle is the Swiss word of the year 2018
Double eagle, charge mentale and gesto dell'aquila are the words of the year Switzerland 2018. They show what society is thinking about and what moves it. ZHAW researchers used the largest text database in Switzerland as a basis, and the jury's feeling for language decided the choice.
Double eagle, charge mentale and gesto dell'aquila are the words of the year for Switzerland. In second and third place are Rahmenabkommen and 079 for German, sécheresse and infox for French, and notte tropicale and criptovalute for Italian (see box). "These words have shaped the discourse in Switzerland in 2018 - scientifically proven in the text database and confirmed by the choice of the linguists," explains ZHAW linguist Marlies Whitehouse, operational head of the Word of the Year Switzerland project.
Italian for the first time
In 2017, the ZHAW Department of Applied Linguistics took over responsibility for the Word of the Year. Since then, the election has been multilingual, research-based and interactive. In 2018, the Word of the Year Switzerland was chosen in Italian for the first time, and in 2019, Romansh will be added. For each language, the election goes through three stages:
Researchers analyze the ZHAW text database Korpus Swiss-AL and determine the twenty words per language that were used more frequently in 2018 than in previous years. Then a jury of language professionals selects the three most striking words from this list, from audience suggestions, and based on their own experience. Finally, the researchers show how these words developed in language use in Switzerland in 2018 and what social changes they represent.
The three juries each consist of around ten linguists from German-, French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland. The Department of Applied Linguistics at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW in Winterthur is responsible for the database and project management.
More about the word of the year Switzerland: Zhaw.ch
