The Digital Humanities Science Festival “Keyword” is a large-scale scientific event organized by the Linguistic Portrait of Georgia research group in collaboration with the Central Library of Tbilisi State University.

Several events have already taken place as part of the festival, including an online language activism campaign in which students from various schools participated; a Dialect Corpus meeting with a large audience at the Tbilisi Book Fair; and a public lecture by Marina Beridze, followed by a reading of texts from the Dialect Corpus. This reading included participants from different professions, such as writers, editors, mountaineers, translators, scientists, and students.

A workshop was held for students: Language Activism and Linguistic Heritage.

Seminar participants worked on several issues related to the Georgian linguistic heritage. These issues included the historical and ethnographic boundaries of Georgian language dialects, migration and language, 20th-century migrations, and the new map of the Georgian linguistic space. Other issues included documentary linguistics in practice, endangered languages ​​in Georgia, language documentation, the ethics of fieldwork, and the stages of speech documentation. As part of the practical work, they participated in a simulated expedition and met with Fereydani language activists.

On May 25, the Corpus met with Fiction. The event was dedicated to the literary representation of dialect corpus texts. A public lecture entitled “KDK - Text, Context, Memory” was held. In parallel, a literary workshop marathon called “Keyword” took place. During this event, contestants tried to create literary texts from dialect material according to the given task.

June 4 is the final day of the festival, which will recap the events held and bring together their participants. The event will begin in the lobby of TSU Library’s central building, where a book stand (“Linguistic Portrait of Georgia”), an exhibition of handwritten dialect texts, and a “Dialects as Music” video-audio zone will be presented. There will also be a block of children’s events, including a reading of “Dialectal Versions of Natsarkekia” during a fairy tale hour, a creative workshop, where participants will draw dictionary words, guess their meanings, and color a dialect map, and a final summary with the distribution of commemorative “word cards.” In parallel, an educational program will be held in the Anthim the Iberian Hall. It will begin with pupil and student presentations on language activism, continue with a short public lecture on the topic “Language Corpus - A New Rule of Reading,” and end with a literary hour to summarize the results of the literary workshop. The event is supported by the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, the TSU Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics, and the TSU Library.