Linguistic Repertoires Embodied and Digitalized: A Computer-Vision-Aided Analysis of the Language Portraits by Multilingual Youth

The present study sets out to investigate how multilingual youth perceive and represent their linguistic repertoires. To achieve this goal, we introduced a computer-vision-aided analytical method to deal with the obtained visual data, which comprised digital images of language portraits created by a group of young multilingual speakers. An OpenCV module is used to build and complete the graphic data processing, enabling quantitative evaluations of participants’ colored clusters and linguistic codes that express their language repertoires. In combination with oral narratives provided in their language portraits, the findings demonstrate that Macanese heritage speakers show a higher degree of “scope” than the Chinese mainland sojourners in Macao but a lower degree of “access”. Follow-up interviews further corroborated the self-perceptions of their linguistic resources across different registers. Overall, the computer-vision-aided analysis of language portraits enhances the current understanding of the “scope” and “access” of multilingual repertoires in lived experience.