Compiling the first spoken corpus for Turkish youth talk

This paper addresses issues related to the design and compilation of the first spoken corpus of youth talk in an under-represented language in corpus linguistics, Turkish. Designed to offer a maximally representative sample of Turkish youth talk, the Corpus of Turkish Youth Language (CoTY) is a 168,748-token specialised corpus within the single register of informal, naturally occurring and spontaneous interaction exclusively among friends. The speakers are Turkish-speaking youth aged 14 to 18 from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in T & uuml;rkiye. In this paper, the issues that surfaced during corpus design and construction are presented, with a discussion and justification of the methodological choices in relation to the long-term project objectives. The corpus contributes to the field as a valuable resource and tool for cross-linguistic youth language research. As an overarching fundamental goal, the project also aims to expand on the cumulative linguistic and methodological knowledge in spoken corpus design and construction.