Visualizing map data for linguistics using ggplot2: A tutorial with examples from dialectology and typology

Maps are important in many areas of linguistics, especially dialectology, sociolinguistics, typology, and historical linguistics, including for visualizing regional patterns in the distribution of linguistic features and varieties of language. In this hands-on tutorial, we introduce map making for linguistics using R and the popular package ggplot2. We walk the reader through the process of making maps using both typological data, based on the World Atlas of Language Structures, and dialect data, based on large corpora of language data collected from German and American social media platforms. This tutorial is intended to be of use to anyone interested in making maps of linguistic data, and more widely to anyone wanting to learn about mapping in R.