Lexis: Recent Episodes
lexispodcast
Show notes for Episode 57
Here are the show notes for Episode 57, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk about some recent Lang in the News, including:
- Apostrophes and why their disappearance has signalled the end of civilisation
- Johanna Gerwin’s new paper on how MLE and ‘Jafaican’ have been ‘enregistered’ in the UK press
- Some articles about MLE
- A really good student answer to a question on MLE (thanks, Abi 😁 )
And then straight after that, Raj and Dan talk to the actual Dr Johanna Gerwin about her paper and about the ways the media discourses around MLE have developed since it was dubbed ‘Jafaikan’ back in the day…
The apostrophe stories
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-68942321
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/05/north-yorkshires-dropped-apostrophe-for-street-signs-upsets-residents
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-39459831
Johanna Gerwin’s paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530924000314
Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker article on MLE: http://archive.today/AdcqJ
The Ed West Telegraph article: http://www.eckington.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/03/Jafaican-may-be-cool-but-it-sounds-ridiculous.pdf
Abi’s essay: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YKBmHSxWvQ1Uku44cYEqJxsc0j0B2eiH/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110439791983693362630&rtpof=true&sd=true
Lots of articles about MLE gathered in one place: https://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/2021/03/discourses-around-mle-and-youth-language.html
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Here are the show notes for Episode 56, in which Raj and Dan talk to Dr Danielle Turton, Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics at Lancaster University and Principal Investigator for a Leverhulme funded project on Lancashire rhoticity. We talk about:
- Dialect levelling and why it’s a complicated picture
- Why researching UK dialects is so interesting
- What’s happening to rhoticity in the North West (and beyond)
- Media discourses around dialect change
Danielle Turton’s Lancaster page: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/danielle-turton
Danielle Turton’s own pages: https://danielleturton.rbind.io/
The rhoticity paper can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447023000694
Some of the news stories that we mention: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/researchers-fear-the-spoken-r-is-ready-to-roll-away-from-the-last-bastion-of-rhoticity
Telegraph article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/16/blackburn-bristol-traditional-english-accent/
Archived Telegraph link: http://archive.today/pFeod
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/lancashire-north-west-blackburn-jane-horrocks-england-b2470464.html
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/28/strong-r-sound-of-some-lancashire-accents-in-danger-of-dying-out
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Here are the show notes for Episode 55, in which Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Christian Ilbury, Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at The University of Edinburgh about:
- Being an online linguist
- Social media and language change - why it’s complicated
- Why ‘slang’ is an unhelpful word and why ‘internet vernacular’ is a better term for the kind of styles he is looking at
- Appropriation and diffusion
- Media discourses about young people, online language and technology
- His continuing work on MLE and why ‘MLE’ is still a useful term
Christian’s University of Edinburgh profile: https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/christian-ilbury
Some appearances in the media that we mention: https://theconversation.com/theyre-serving-what-how-the-c-word-went-from-camp-to-internet-mainstream-210214
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/apr/09/bait-ting-certi-how-uk-rap-changed-the-language-of-the-nation
“You have quite a long history of British vernaculars being exported through British cultural forms,” says Christian Ilbury, a lecturer in sociolinguistics at the University of Edinburgh – from Scouse accents with the Beatles to Arctic Monkeys and the presence of industrial working-class accents in indie music. “Grime essentially became the vehicle in which we perceived MLE.” Those kids in suburban England, he says, “don’t speak this variety because of where they grew up. They’re using it to align with a cultural orientation that they appreciate.”
https://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2019/10/
‘Slay’, ‘yaas kween’, ‘squad’ – if you’re a keen social media, you might be familiar with some of these words. Originally from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) – a variety of English spoken by some Black Americans – these terms have quickly become part of the internet grammar. But, how and why have these terms entered our lexicon and what does the use of AAVE in internet communication mean? This and other questions are examined by Christian Ilbury in his recent paper.
The episode of Lexis that we mention in which we interviewed Shivonne gates about MLE in East London: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5leNPWkgQTMFzZ2UHRktnC
Christian’s book recommendation can be found here:
Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs. London: Blackwell.
“In this ground-breaking new book on the Norteña and Sureña (North/South) youth gang dynamic, cultural anthropologist and linguist Norma Mendoza-Denton looks at the daily lives of young Latinas and their innovative use of speech, bodily practices, and symbolic exchanges that signal their gang affiliations and ideologies. Her engrossing ethnographic and sociolinguistic study reveals the connection of language behavior and other symbolic practices among Latina gang girls in California,and their connections to larger social processes of nationalism,racial/ethnic consciousness, and gender identity.”
https://www.norma-mendoza-denton.com/books
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Here are the show notes for Episode 54, in which Raj and Dan talk to Dr Florent Moncomble, Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics at University of Artois, France about what English and French have in common and all the discourses swirling around French that are also relevant to English, including:
- The role of L’Académie Française
- Prescriptivism in French and English
- Complaints about decline, destruction, young people and migration and why they use the same language proxies as their English counterparts.
- What French linguists are doing to address these misunderstandings and misrepresentations.
Florent’s links: https://linktr.ee/f_moncomble
Les Linguistes Atterrées: https://www.tract-linguistes.org/
L'Académie Française: https://www.academie-francaise.fr/
and a Guardian story about it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/16/academie-francaise-denounces-rise-of-english-words-in-public-life
Bernard Cerquiglini on why English isn’t a real language:
https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/la-langue-anglaise-n-existe-pas-un-linguiste-provoque-avec-humour-les-britanniques-20240311
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/08/english-is-not-a-language-its-just-badly-spoken-french/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13181993/English-exist-badly-pronounced-French-linguist.html
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 53
Here are the show notes for Episode 53, an episode aimed primarily at teachers, in which Jacky and Dan talk to Steve Collins (Head of English at Bishop Luffa School, Chichester) and Tim Marr (Visiting Professor at Icesi University, Cali, Colombia) about the ideas in their book, Language Awareness at School: A Practical Guide for Teachers and School Leaders, published in May 2023 by Routledge, including:
- The importance of language education across the curriculum
- Why language matters to each of them
- Why zero tolerance approaches and deficit models help no one
- Why debates about English teaching keep appearing in cycles every few decades
- What can be done to revive the prospects of English Language across the secondary and A-level stages and into university and teacher training.
The book: https://www.routledge.com/Language-Awareness-at-School-A-Practical-Guide-for-Teachers-and-School-Leaders/Marr-Collins/p/book/9781032062334
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 52
Here are the show notes for Episode 52, a migration discourses bumper episode, in which we feature two interviews. First off, Dan and Raj talk to Professor Charlotte Taylor of the University of Sussex about:
- Why corpus linguistics can refresh the parts other approaches cannot reach
- Discourses around migration and the metaphors that are often used - water, commodity and them/us
- Why discourses around migration are usually about immigration
- Why nostalgia is such a powerful theme
- Whether the discourses around migration are worse now than they have been in the past
- Tools for students analysing language discourses
We also talk to Ana Gavalas of the Migrants’ Rights Network about:
- The work of their organisation and why it matters
- The ‘Words Matter’ campaign they have been running
- Why migration is linked to wider struggles
- Why challenging dangerous migration myths involves critically engaging with language.
Charlotte Taylor’s University of Sussex page: https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p329327-charlotte-taylor
Open access paper: Metaphors of Migration Over Time https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957926521992156
Charlotte Taylor on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_ctaylor_
Dan’s article on the language of migration: https://bylinetimes.com/2022/12/16/swamping-cockroaches-invasion-how-language-shapes-our-view-of-migration/
The Migrants’ Rights Network: https://migrantsrights.org.uk
Words Matter campaign: https://migrantsrights.org.uk/projects/wordsmatter/
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 51
Here are the show notes for Episode 51, in which Dan and (new Lexis team member) Raj talk to Professor Emily M. Bender of the University of Washington about:
- Why ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is not really the right term at all
- How Large Language Models work and why we should be sceptical of many of the claims made for them
- The biases inherent in LLMs and what to do about them
- Whether ‘neural networks’ and language processing can shed any light on child language development
- The discourses around ‘AI’: from booster to doomer.
Emily M. Bender’s University of Washington page: https://faculty.washington.edu/ebender/
A great interview from 2023: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html
Time Magazine on the ‘machine-learning myth buster’: https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6308275/emily-m-bender/
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast: https://www.dair-institute.org/maiht3k/
Emily’s book recommendations:
‘Babel’, R.F. Kuang: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/babel-or-the-necessity-of-violence-an-arcane-history-of-the-oxford-translators-revolution-r-f-kuang/6627642?ean=9780008501853
‘A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/a-memory-called-empire-winner-of-the-hugo-award-for-best-novel-arkady-martine/219166?ean=9781529001594
Other links from the interview
Jess Dodge’s work: https://jessedodge.github.io/
Batya Friedman & Helen Nissenbaum, Bias in Computer Systems (1996): https://nyuscholars.nyu.edu/en/publications/bias-in-computer-systems
Some further reading:
Police worried 101 call bot would struggle with 'Brummie' accents
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68466369
BBC News - 'Journalists are feeding the AI hype machine'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68488924
Bias against African American English
Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00742
Register article: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/11/ai_models_exhibit_racism_based/
An Al-Jazeera opinion piece about AI and borders:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/4/20/ban-racist-and-lethal-ai-from-europes-borders
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 50
Here are the show notes for Episode 50, in which Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Jessica Aiston of QMUL about:
- Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Studies
- Why CDA/CDS are such useful approaches for A Level English Language students
- Some of the most useful elements of the CDA toolkit and why they’re helpful
- The work that Jess has done on the representation of women by men in the manosphere
- Using critical discourse approaches with social media data
- The ethics of using social media data
- The work that Jess is currently doing on ‘autism in affinity spaces’
Jess’s QMUL page: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/language-centre/people/academic/profiles/aiston.html
Jess on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jessaiston.bsky.social
- Crompton's paper on the telephone game: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1362361320919286
- Damian Milton on the double empathy problem:https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/double-empathy
- Autism in Affinity Spaces project website: https://autisminaffinityspaces.org/
- Information about the survey: https://autisminaffinityspaces.org/our-survey-is-now-live/ -
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 49
Here are the show notes for Episode 49, in which Jacky and Dan talk to lawyer, community activist and author, Ife Thompson, about:
- Black British English
- Linguistic justice in schools, courts and the rest of the world
- Anti-Blackness in discourses about language in the media
- Drill lyrics and the criminalisation of Black cultural expression
- Why we should give Black people their flowers for lexical innovation and their huge influence on British English
- Why MLE is the wrong term to be using…
BLAM (UK): https://blamuk.org/
https://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/is-it-that-deep-the-impact-of-policing-black-british-language-speakers-in-british-schools
“When Black students’ language is suppressed or outrightly banned in classrooms they begin to absorb messages that imply Black language is incorrect and unintelligent, this can cause them to internalise anti-Blackness. Students who internalise negative ideas about their language and culture may develop a sense of inferiority and lose confidence in their own abilities, and school in general.
“The linguistic stigma of BBE also encourages the inappropriate and racially discriminatory discipline of Black children. In 2021, this was evidenced when a South London school with a large proportion of Black students introduced a language ban that included BBE vocabulary and semantics. Children could be reprimanded and punished for speaking in a way most natural and culturally significant to them, fuelling the practice and policies of UK schools criminalising Blackness.”
BLAM on MLE: https://blamuk.org/2022/06/22/blam-uk-condemns-the-recent-anti-black-language-racism-from-uk-white-owned-media-outlets/
“The misidentification of Black British English as MLE minimises the cultural value and influence of Black heritage in modern-day Britain.”
Ife in conversation with Johanna Gerwin: ttps://londontalksresearch.co.uk/2023/01/20/black-british-english-as-a-label-for-multicultural-london-english/
Our interview with Johanna about London English: https://open.spotify.com/episode/42lkwg3h0k9PjWtJFkJDbU?si=tHWJWE6XTLK1K3bOMLTzCQ
Art Not Evidence campaign: https://artnotevidence.org/
Garden Court Chambers on the Art Not Evidence campaign: https://www.gardencourtchambers.co.uk/news/art-not-evidence-launches-campaign-to-stop-rap-lyrics-being-used-as-evidence
“One day we will ask ourselves how on earth the state was ever allowed to get away with using rap music as evidence to prosecute Black defendants in serious crime cases. Making music isn’t evidence of crime but the prosecuting of it is. As a result, the state creates unsafe convictions, perpetuates racist stereotypes and restricts artistic expression. This has got to stop. Join Art Not Evidence to help liberate rap from the legal system.”
The Manchester 10 case: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/01/fury-in-manchester-as-black-teenagers-jailed-as-result-of-telegram-chat
The first episode of Black British English podcast:
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-black-british/can-uk-slang-be-a-language-wEfv74rgexA/
Ife on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fufuisonme/status/1741037657084276882/photo/2
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 48
Here are the show notes for Episode 48, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Frazer Heritage of Manchester Metropolitan University about:
- Representation of gender in video games
- What’s changed in the representation of gender and sexuality in video games since the 1980s
- Language methods for analysing representation
- Analysing how incels construct representations of gender
- Dealing with difficult data
Frazer’s staff profile at MMU:Dr Frazer Heritage | Manchester Metropolitan University
Some of Frazer’s work for Manchester Game Centre: Language, Equality, and Gaming – LEG project
Frazer’s website: Frazer Heritage
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 47
Here are the show notes for Episode 47, in which Dan talks to Fiona McPherson of the Oxford English Dictionary about:
- Word of the Year 2023
- What makes a good word of the year
- Previous winners (and losers)
- What new words can tell us about the world
Some of the best articles and updates about #WOTY2023 can be found here:
‘AI’ named most notable word of 2023 by Collins dictionary | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
AI named word of the year by Collins Dictionary - BBC News
Rizz named word of the year 2023 by Oxford University Press - BBC News
Got rizz? Tom Holland memes propel popularity of 2023 word of the year | Social trends | The Guardian
Dictionary.com’s 2023 Word Of The Year Is…
The Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year 2023
The Collins Word of the Year 2023 is…
Oxford Word of the Year 2023
Word of the Year 2023 | Authentic | Merriam-Webster
Macquarie Dictionary Blog
Cozzie livs: light-hearted term for cost-of-living crisis named Macquarie dictionary word of the year | Language | The Guardian
» Nominate the 2023 Words of the Year American Dialect Society
Japan chooses ‘tax’ as kanji of the year amid concern over cost of living
Opinion pieces about new words
The Collins word of the year shortlist shows we’re more self-obsessed than ever
Hallucinating AIs and What The Words Of The Year Lists Reveal About our Modern World
Rizz: I study the history of charisma – here's why the word of the year is misunderstood
Thread on Twitter responding to the ‘manosphere’ links
Who's got 'the rizz'? Apparently, just men
I get the need for ‘rizz’, but ‘influencer’ should be banned for ever
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 46
Here are the show notes for Episode 46, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to Paul Kerswill, Emeritus Professor, Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York about what has driven his interests in linguistics, but mostly about Multicultural London English:
- What it is
- How it developed
- How it’s used now
- How it’s been reported on (and why it’s not ‘Jafaican’)
- The discourses and metaphors around it
- What it might sound like in the future
Paul’s University of York page: https://www.york.ac.uk/language/people/academic-research/paul-kerswill/
Some of the presentations and papers Paul Kerswill has produced on MLE:
https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/who-made-mle
https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/jafaican
and the full paper of this workshop is here: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/93713/1/17_Kerswill_corr.pdf
Some links to early reporting on MLE, MEYD and more: https://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/search?q=MEYD
Some of Tony Thorne’s reflections on MLE (he denies coining the term ‘MEYD’ though!): https://language-and-innovation.com/?s=MLE
We talked about Accent Bias Britain too:
https://accentbiasbritain.org/
Here’s a York English Language Toolkit session on this too:
https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/accent-bias-britain
And previous episodes of Lexis in which we’ve discussed MLE:
Shivonne Gates: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5leNPWkgQTMFzZ2UHRktnC?si=wh-4nKMmTpm7Q5on2x2wIQ
Matt Hunt Gardner: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7GBFEsLSNKYEpvX2yHIanO?si=_h-_-ROcRpm1llQLiLoSJw
And we talk about recent reporting on MLE in this episode’s Lang in the News: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0cdODEHoWHIWLfd0gh6xSw?si=pwjAKwHbRyea0jxUBugbiA
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 45
Here are the show notes for Episode 45, in which we talk to Dr Alex Baratta, Senior Lecturer in Language, Linguistics & Communication, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester about:
- Accents, accents… and more accents!
- Teacher accents and ‘professionalism’
- Social connotations and stereotypes of accents - good and bad
- Why one accent isn’t ‘better’ than another and why exposure to accents might be the way to overcome accentism
In our regular Lang in the News segment we talk about how formal greetings and sign-offs might be becoming a thing of the past and why that’s the fault of… well, pretty much everyone that Daily Mail readers don’t like. We also have a quick chat about the European-wide attempts to make language more inclusive, the first round of WOTY2023 and we big up Rob Drummond’s book, You’re All Talk.
Alex Baratta’s University of Manchester page:
https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/alex.baratta
Some of the articles, books and research we mentioned:
https://theconversation.com/teachers-with-northern-accents-are-being-told-to-posh-up-heres-why-88425
http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/british_politics/2017/06/putting-an-accent-on-things-the-need-to-clarify-speech-expectations-for-british-teachers/
https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/clarifying-accent-standards-for-british-teachers
Understanding all kinds of English accent can improve empathy and learning – and even be a matter of life and death
Yours Sincerely is dead…
The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/13/yours-sincerely-is-dead-so-how-should-you-sign-off-an-email
And in the Mail:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12510471/Is-end-sincerely-Old-phrases-die-decade-language-formal-research-finds.html
Attempts to promote inclusive language in European languages
What’s in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe
#WOTY2023
‘AI’ named most notable word of 2023 by Collins dictionary | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
AI named word of the year by Collins Dictionary - BBC News
Opinion piece about new words https://archive.ph/kv2UQ
Rob Drummond’s new book: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/you-re-all-talk-why-we-are-what-we-speak-rob-drummond/7512151?aid=4868&ean=9781914484285
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.socialJacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 44
Here are the show notes for Episode 44, in which we talk to Dr Kingsley Ugwuanyi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Horizon Europe’s RISE UP Research Project, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS about:
- Nigerian English
- Global Englishes and who ‘owns’ a language
- Accent attitudes and identity
- Models and theories of world Englishes
In a Lang in the News bumper segment we talk about recent research into young people’s accents in the south east of England and media reactions to it, including a chat with Dr Amanda Cole of University of Essex about her paper and how it’s been covered.
Kingsley Ugwuanyi’s SOAS page: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/kingsley-o-ugwuanyi
The paper (with Folajimi Oyebola) that we discussed: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Attitudes-of-Nigerian-expatriates-towards-accents-Ugwuanyi-Oyebola/ed2c0e7ac631c4a10fad45021abc8028c1305efc
The BBC article we talked about: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66569668
Kingsley’s PhD: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344951319_English_language_ownership_perceptions_of_speakers_of_Nigerian_English
Amanda Cole's recent accent research
https://theconversation.com/cockney-and-queens-english-have-all-but-disappeared-among-young-people-heres-whats-replaced-them-215478
The Mail covers it… And its readers comment: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12691143/Kings-speech-cockney-silenced-rise-new-accents-popularised-Ellie-Goulding-Adele-Stormzy.html
Telegraph
https://archive.ph/c56Zb
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/30/kings-english-cockney-replaced-new-accents/
BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-67289519
The Guardian Pass Notes: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/31/language-barrier-why-even-harry-has-stopped-speaking-the-kings-english
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/05/cockneys-out-all-speaking-multicultural-now-accents
Accent intelligibility
https://theconversation.com/understanding-all-kinds-of-english-accent-can-improve-empathy-and-learning-and-even-be-a-matter-of-life-and-death-215922
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
BlueSky: @englangblog.bsky.socialJacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 43
Here are the show notes for Episode 43, the second part of a Language & Gender double episode special, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan discuss ways to teach Language and Gender at A Level, from the 3 / 4 Ds models, to slightly tweaked and reverse Ds, through to corpus methods, treating gender as part of a wider ‘identity’ approach and much more.
Some of the resources and links that we mention in this episode
Cameron et al. on tag qns: https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/CameronTags.pdf
Clare Feeney’s Twitter thread with a suggested approach:https://twitter.com/ClareFeeneyUK/status/1672172689224605697?s=20
Cameron, Deborah. and Shaw, Sylvia. (2016). Gender, Power and Political Speech: Women and Language in the 2015 UK General Election - Research Portal | Lancaster University
Corpus for Schools | Corpus resources for A-level English Language and English Language Teaching
Teaching unit 17: Being Asian in London – Ethnicity, gender and social networks Background Audio clips
Alessia Tranchese’s paper on sexualised violence against women: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/publications/covering-rape-how-the-media-determine-how-we-understand-sexualise
Alessia Tranchese’s paper on the language of incels on Reddit: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/projects/online-misogyny-new-media-old-attitudes
Previous Lexis episodes that we mention in this episode.
Episode 10: Lucy Jones gender, sexuality and identity special https://open.spotify.com/episode/1m9UKNUUysD6Vawj61C2kW?si=U8fBAYFyRHSonV9NQ85qag
Episode 14: Emma Moore
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1j6MyddIEivQ8x2e2cObhR?si=uLwnyY10QDy_92UEpk4EhA
Episode 15: Dana Gablasova
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nagsHhogFSfJmexecKlXt?si=U5ehaxmxQWSN57J5dAtjkQ
Episode 19: Elena Semino
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ISaApHlLITDd7l9npXKKj?si=Wlei19KwTTyTeWfbK15qvg
Suggested reading:
Deborah Cameron’s blog, Language: a feminist guide: https://debuk.wordpress.com/
Deborah Cameron’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Cameron_(linguist)
Deborah Cameron wrote this Research Update for Teachers for the EMC back in 2015: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/language-gender-a-research-update-for-teachers
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Here are the show notes for Episode 42, the first part of a Language & Gender double episode special, in which we talk to Deborah Cameron, Professor in Language and Communication at Worcester College, Oxford about:
- Robin Lakoff 50 years on from Language and Woman’s Place
- Where language & gender research has headed post-Lakoff
- Deborah Cameron’s forthcoming book, Language, Sexism and Misogyny
- What kinds of more recent research we could be looking at for the A Level
- Online misogyny and Disney princesses
- The other Deborah (Tannen)
We’ll be back soon with a follow-up episode in which we look at how we can approach the teaching of language and gender in a world that’s changed since the earliest days of research into this field.
Deborah Cameron’s blog, Language: a feminist guide: https://debuk.wordpress.com/
Deborah Cameron’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Cameron_(linguist)
Robin Lakoff’s 1973 article for Language in Society can be found here: https://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist156/Lakoff_1973.pdf
Somer articles about Deborah Cameron’s Myth of Mars and venus from around the time it was published: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/01/gender.books
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/03/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety1
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/oct/02/gender.familyandrelationships
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/language-common
Deborah wrote this Research Update for Teachers for the EMC back in 2015: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/language-gender-a-research-update-for-teachers
Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer, ‘The Princess Problem’: https://www.kareneisenhauer.org/projects-and-publications/
A Q&A with Karen Eisenhauer about her work: https://english.news.chass.ncsu.edu/2017/04/20/language-gender-and-disney-princesses/
The Washington Post on the Disney Princess research: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/25/researchers-have-discovered-a-major-problem-with-the-little-mermaid-and-other-disney-movies/
Alessia Tranchese’s paper on sexualised violence against women: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/publications/covering-rape-how-the-media-determine-how-we-understand-sexualise
Alessia Tranchese’s paper on the language of incels on Reddit: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/projects/online-misogyny-new-media-old-attitudes
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 41
Here are the show notes for Episode 41, in which Dan talks to Dr Johanna Gerwin, a sociolinguist at QMUL and DFG (German Research Foundation) post-doctoral researcher for the London Talks project about London English, including:
- The London Talks and Real Talk East projects
- What ‘enregisterment’ means and how language styles and varieties become enregistered
- ‘Metalinguistic’ discourses about London English - MLE, Cockney and Estuary
- The power of discourses around language
- Slang swag
Johanna’s QMUL staff page: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/research-staff/profiles/johanna-gerwin.html
Johanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jo_gerw
The London Talks project website: https://londontalksresearch.co.uk/
Real Talk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealTalkEast
In our regular Lang in the News segment, Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk about ‘cis’ and how it’s been termed a slur by Elon Musk. We discuss where ‘cis’ comes from and all the related issues about language policing in a changing world.
Elon Musk claims ‘cis’ is a slur…
Elon Musk sparks outrage with threat to ban ‘cisgender’ as a ‘slur’ on Twitter | The Independent
Elon Musk claims use of 'cis' and 'cisgender' on Twitter is 'harassment', threatens to suspend users
Researcher who coined term 'cisgender' hits back at Elon Musk
Cisgender refers to people whose gender identity aligns with the one assigned at birth. The researcher who coined the term, Dana Defosse, first used the word in a 1994 post on an early internet forum, which Oxford English Dictionary cited when it added the term to the dictionary in 2015
No, Elon Musk, cis is not a slur | The Independent
OED update December 2015:
New words notes December 2015 | Oxford English Dictionary
“Another sign of our increasingly complex understanding of personal identity in the twenty-first century is the inclusion of a cluster of words beginning with the prefix cis–: cis, cisgender, cisgendered, and cissexual. Derived from the Latin preposition cis, meaning ‘on this side of’, until relatively recently this prefix was chiefly visible in English in the adjectives cisalpine and cismontane (‘on this side of the Alps/mountains’), and in the names of certain chemicals displaying a particular type of molecular symmetry. Since 1994 however, when the word cisgendered was used by an American academic appealing for help with a study of transgender issues, cis– has taken on a new lease of life in a group of words which provide a direct equivalent to identity terms such as transgender and transsexual when referring to people who are not trans, i.e., those whose sense of their own personal identity corresponds to their birth sex.”
What does 'cisgender' mean? | Merriam-Webster
Etymology of ‘cis’: The Word “Cisgender” Has Scientific Roots | Office for Science and Society - McGill University
And Jill is no longer part of the Lexis team - thanks to her for being involved and for all her contribution and insights!
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 40
Here are the show notes for Episode 40, a bumper edition in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to four linguists from the University of York about their York English Language Toolkit website and teacher CPD sessions. We talk to:
- Sam Hellmuth about the Toolkit and some of her favourite sessions in the past 10 years.
- Tamar Keren-Portnoy about her child language research
- George Bailey about the Our Dialect app
- Claire Childs about her work on perceptions of non-standard grammar
The York English Language Toolkit website can be found here: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies
This year’s sessions can be found here: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops
York English Language Toolkit on Twitter: https://twitter.com/YorkToolkit
Sam Hellmuth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/samhellmuth
Claire Childs on Twitter: https://twitter.com/childs_claire
George Bailey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/grbails
University of York Department of Language and Linguistic Science: https://twitter.com/UoYLangLing
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Jill Lavender
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 39
Here are the show notes for Episode 39, in which Lisa and Dan talk to Dan Collen, an online hate researcher from Canada about his work on the Weaponized Laughter: Memes and Hate in the Canadian Digital Landscape report he has helped produce. We talk about:
- Memes: what they are and how they work
- What is classified as hate speech and the ‘hallmarks of hate’
- The discourses at work in hate speech
- Online communities and their role in shaping and influencing wider culture
- Dog whistles and plausible deniability
- Hope for the future?
🚩As might be obvious when looking at hate speech, this episode comes with a content warning for themes of racism and discrimination.🚩
And for a Lang in the News special, we talk to Heddwen Newton about her newsletter English in Progress, some recent news stories that have caught her eye and how to stay on top of news stories about language.
Dan Collen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpinelessL
The Weaponized Laughter Memes report: https://cdn.sanity.io/files/rdq6owff/production/6b78f8630669069025ea145da2221ef2c1fac032.pdf
Hatepedia site: Hatepedia
“Hatepedia is an online database and resource centre built with original research to provide educators, parents, lawmakers, and researchers with tools to identify and counter the proliferation of online hate.”
Heddwen’s Language in Progress newsletter: https://englishinprogress.substack.com/
Heddwen’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Heddwen
Susie Dent’s ‘banished words list’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65634829
And the Tweet that started it: https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1658380887698931712?s=20
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Mastodon:
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Jill Lavender
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Here are the show notes for Episode 38, in which Lisa and Dan talk to Dr Anna Islentyeva of Innsbruck University, Austria about the representation of masculinity in advertising, including:
- The “Real Men Score” paper she has recently published with her team
- Stereotypes around gender representation
- Methodologies and approaches to data
- Multimodal approaches to visual texts
Anna’s university page: https://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/staff/islentyeva/islentyeva.html
Anna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hei_anni
The “Real Men Score” paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HZsad35JBMD0kM4FqpXpWn8xWnIzAiL-/view?usp=share_link
Anna Islentyeva, Elisabeth Zimmermann, Nadia Schützinger & Andrea Platzer (2023) ‘Real Men Score’: Masculinity in Contemporary Advertising Discourse, Critical Discourse Studies, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2023.2173625
The study that Anna mentioned into perfume advertising was by Helen Ringrow and this is her book The Language of Cosmetics: The Language of Cosmetics Advertising | SpringerLink
And in our regular Lang in the News segment, Jacky and Dan talk about linguistic accommodation, the power of accents and why politicians love to talk down to us.
Northern lessons for southern Tories
https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1649520363926110210?t=pCM6q2gelPqBiOFGy4bQcA&s=19
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/21/how-do-you-sex-a-limpet-susie/
Rishi Sunak’s downwards convergence
Here’s the clip: https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1640280827086143488
Is it “hilariously inauthentic”(Alex Andreou)?
Is it “sheer desperation by an out of touch rich boy trying to show he is in tune with the public” (Dave Lawrence in replies to tweet above https://twitter.com/dave43law/status/1640326877842685954?s=20 )?
Or is it just another example of politicians (of all parties) trying to sound more human and a perfectly natural way of doing language?
Jane Setter article about people keeping/losing accents:
https://theconversation.com/why-some-people-lose-their-accents-but-others-dont-linguistic-expert-201986
George Osborne:
'Mockney' George Osborne backs working Briddish with dodgy accent
George 'Mockney' Osborne: Chancellor in Estuary accent shocker
George Osborne, gawd bless yer | Victoria Coren | The Guardian
Academics 'dropping regional accents' to fit in at elite universities (linked story to accommodation)
Ed Miliband with Russell Brand:
Accent on common ground as Miliband takes on Russell Brand's estuary twang
The cultural significance of Ed Miliband's mockney accent | The Spectator
Has Ed Miliband changed his accent to get elected?
Tony Blair:
London Journal; Britons Prick Up Their Ears: Blair's a Li'l Peculiar
I don’t have a posh accent – am I bothered? | Suzanne Moore | The Guardian
Accents in Higher Education:
Academics 'dropping regional accents' to fit in at elite universities
British academics try to hide regional accents, study finds
Alex Barratta’s work on accents and teaching
Research exposes prejudice over teachers with northern accents
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Mastodon:
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Jill Lavender
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 37
Here are the show notes for Episode 37, in which Dan and Jill talk to Dr Heidi Colthup of the University of Kent about the language of gaming, including:
- Her journey into academia
- How we define what a game is
- The language used around and about gaming
- Narrative and the power of storytelling in games
Heidi’s university page: https://www.kent.ac.uk/cultures-languages/people/1705/colthup-heidi
Heidi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Heidi_Colthup
Some of Heidi’s recommended reading:
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262240451/rules-of-play/
Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Narrative_as_Virtual_Reality.html?id=cjAWAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y
And in our regular Lang in the News segment, Lisa and Dan talk about Oxfam’s guide to “inclusive language” and why it has upset some people.
Pronouns and inclusive language
Oxfam and gender neutral language:
Words matter: that’s why Oxfam is launching an inclusive language guide - Views & Voices
“These principles and language guidelines are designed to prompt thought when using language. They are not set rules and should not be viewed as restrictions. They are intended to complement existing messaging frameworks and positionings.
We recognize that language is context- and audience-specific, and shifts between time and place; we would encourage you to think about what works best for your purpose.”
New Statesman
The furore over Oxfam’s “woke” language guide misses the point - New Statesman
Is it a choice between “Blustering bigotry or preening sanctimony”?
“Language is neither progressive nor regressive. It does not move along a line of continuous, consensus-led improvement, nor will it wholly degrade into meaningless relativism. What it does do is change – change being the mess made by the passage of time. It evolves as nature evolves: scruffily, multifariously and incrementally, its infinite variety matching that of the needs and circumstances of the people it serves. This is what gives words their power to disrupt the status quo –they are radically demotic, belonging to everyone and no one. No top-down initiative or prescription, whether from a right-on NGO or a thundering middle-market tabloid, can rob them of that quality. No actor, however powerful, can control or shape the whole.”
Mail Online
Oxfam's new 92-page inclusivity guide calls English 'the language of a colonising nation' | Daily Mail Online
Telegraph
Don’t say mother or father as it could offend, Oxfam tells staff
Pink News
Oxfam hits back at critics of trans-inclusive guidance who claim its 'erasing mums and dads'
An Oxfam spokesperson told PinkNews: “We are proud of using inclusive language; we won’t succeed in tackling poverty by excluding marginalised groups. This guide is not prescriptive, it is intended to help authors communicate with the diverse range of people with which we work.
“We are disappointed that some people have decided to misrepresent the advice offered in the guide which clearly states that authors should respect the desires of those who want to be described as a mother or father.”
Why inclusive language doesn't have to exclude:
https://twitter.com/msolurin/status/1638908370274119682?t=yAnw7WkwLYQTKY0DbOUkgg&s=19
Dennis Baron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrGrammar/status/1638682725585657856
And his book “What’s Your Pronoun?” is really good on the history of much of this.
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/What_s_Your_Pronoun_Beyond_He_and_She.html?id=SCqfDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
Interesting piece on pronouns and language change
‘It’s complicated – but you can’t shy away from it’: everything you wanted to know about pronouns (but were afraid to ask) | Gender | The Guardian
Here are the show notes for Episode 36, in which Dan and Lisa talk to Dr Claire Hardaker about:
- Forensic linguistics
- What language can reveal about us
- The benefits and problems of technology in forensic linguistics
- The role of the forensic linguist in an unequal society
- The future of forensic linguistics
Claire’s Lancaster University page: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/claire-hardaker
Claire’s en clair podcast: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/enclair/
Claire on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drclaireH
Claire on Mastodon: https://mastodonapp.uk/@drclaireh
And in our regular Lang in the News segment, Lisa and Dan talk about Words of the Year- which ones have been chosen so far, how they have been selected, why they work (or don’t?) and what they might tell us about 2022.
Collins: ‘Sums up 2022’: Permacrisis chosen as Collins word of the year | Culture | The Guardian
A year of ‘permacrisis’ - Collins Dictionary Language Blog
Oxford Dictionaries:
https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2022/#WOTY2022vote
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/goblin-mode-meaning-word-of-the-year-oxford-dictionary-b2239839.html
‘Goblin mode’: new Oxford word of the year speaks to the times | Language | The Guardian
Slobbing out and giving up: why are so many people going ‘goblin mode’? | Life and style | The Guardian
Cambridge Dictionary:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/editorial/woty
Merriam Webster: Word of the Year 2022 | Gaslighting | Merriam-Webster
Macquarie:
Teal named Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year – ‘an emblem of Australia’s political landscape’
Dictionary dot com:
Dictionary.com’s 2022 Word Of The Year Is…
Dictionary.com announces word of the year: ‘woman’ | US news | The Guardian
Dan’s Independent article about WOTY2022:
2022’s Words of the Year and what they tell us | The Independent
» Words of the Year American Dialect Society
Here are the show notes for Episode 35, an opinion articles special, in which Dan and Jacky talk to Harriet Williamson, the Voices Commissioning Editor at The Independent about:
- Opinion articles and what makes a good one, including pieces about language issues
- The job of a commissioning editor
- Paths into journalism
- Educating the public about language
Harriet’s Independent page: https://www.independent.co.uk/author/harriet-williamson
Harriet on Twitter: https://twitter.com/harriepw
Indy Voices on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IndyVoices
Harriet’s article on accent-shaming: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/accent-bias-shaming-bbc-english-b2216735.html
Harriet on why, if you want to be a writer, it pays to be a reader: https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/editors-letters/better-writer-journalism-reading-stephen-king-b2140181.html
Victoria Richards’ article on language and refugees:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/suella-braverman-invasion-migrants-firebombing-b2214905.html
And in our regular Lang in the News segment, Lisa, Jacky and Dan discuss and analyse an article by Michael Deacon of the Daily Telegraph that lays into the BBC’s Amol Rajan over his views on accents at the BBC. We also look at two letters from Telegraph readers in response to (and in support of) the Deacon article. We also see how many times we can say Amol Rajan’s name in the space of 30 minutes…
Make sure you have the article to hand as we pull it apart!
Michael Deacon article here (paywalled version): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/09/28/amol-rajans-attack-posh-presenters-pure-inverted-snobbery/
Michael Deacon article here (Pressreader version): https://pressreader.com/article/281573769572585
Letters here: https://pressreader.com/article/282093460615450
Amol Rajan’s Cracking the Class Ceiling programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fygr
And reviewed here
Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2022/12/06/how-crack-class-ceiling-review/
Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/dec/06/tv-tonight-amol-rajan-class-ceiling-bbc-jamie-claudia-winkleman-the-traitors
Amol Rajan’s initial points reported here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/27/amol-rajan-accuses-bbc-posh-having-accent-bias
Show notes for Episode 34
Here are the show notes for Episode 34, in which Dan and Jill talk to Arran Stibbe, professor of Ecological Linguistics, and teacher on the BA English course at the University of Gloucestershire (https://www.glos.ac.uk/enl) about:
- Ecolinguistics - what it is and why we need it
- The power of storytelling and the environment
- Critical language awareness and its role in fighting back against climate catastrophe
- Challenging ecologically damaging narratives, ‘greenwashing’, economic ‘growth’ metaphors and more…
Arran’s university page: Arran Stibbe - Staff Profiles
Taylor & Francis author interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTiktxHF_pY
The book: Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By - 2nd Edi
The Stories We Live By site: Stories We Live By
And in our regular Lang in the News segment, Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk about how language is used to represent the environment, how it is used in discussions and political campaigns around green issues and how some metaphors for the economy might not be the best ones to use…
Just Stop Oil: research shows how activists and politicians talk differently about climate change
Economists question 'black hole' in UK finances - BBC News
Economists urge BBC to rethink 'inappropriate' reporting of UK economy | IPPR
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Jill Lavender
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 33
Here are the show notes for Episode 33, in which Dan and Jill talk to Katy Brown from the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at University of Bath about:
The mainstreaming of far-right discourses around migration & race What we mean by ‘discourse’ and ‘discourses’ and the power of discourse Analysing discourses, metaphors and narratives around social and political issues Dog whistles and the reception of messages by audiences Methodologies for analysing patterns and specificities in language data
Katy’s University of Bath page: https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/katy-brown Blog post on mainstreaming (with Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter): The far right, the mainstream, and mainstreaming - RACE.ED
⚠️⚠️⚠️Content warning: we discuss themes of racism, xenophobia and hate speech as part of this episode, so the discussion might not be suitable for all listeners⚠️⚠️⚠️
And in our regular Lang in the News segment, Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk about how language is used to represent migration, migrants and refugees. We reference two papers that analyse the language used to represent migration, one by Tamsin Parnell and one from Charlotte Taylor.
Charlotte Taylor 2021 paper on conceptual metaphors for migration: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0957926521992156
Tamsin Parnell 2022 paper on representation of immigrant identities in Brexit-related government documents: The representation of migrant identities in UK Government documents about Brexit A corpus-assisted analysis | Request PDF
Suella Braverman’s description of migration as an ‘invasion’. Suella Braverman ‘putting lives at risk’ with ‘migrant invasion’ claims day after firebomb attack | The Independent
Suella Braverman sparks furious backlash after branding migrant crisis an 'invasion' - Mirror Online
David Shariatmadari on why the language matters: https://twitter.com/D_Shariatmadari/status/1587183760138715136
Older article by him: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/10/migration-debate-metaphors-swarms-floods-marauders-migrants
Counter-narratives: https://twitter.com/elliemaeohagan/status/1587151926482935808
Changing the Conversation on Asylum: A Messaging Guide | Freedom from Torture
CLASS report on countering divisive narratives: http://classonline.org.uk/pubs/item/the-divide-and-rule-playbook
CLASS on race and class: http://classonline.org.uk/pubs/item/the-uk-race-class-narrative-report
Suella Braverman's talk of a refugee 'invasion' is a dangerous political gambit gone wrong
Suella Braverman was warned ‘hate speech’ could inspire far right
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Jill Lavender Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 32
Here are the show notes for Episode 32, in which Lisa, Dan and Jill talk to Kate Barber from Cardiff University about:
Forensic linguistics Researching discourse in online communities using corpora Discourse analysis of misogyny in the manosphere and far-right online communities Challenging and ‘inoculating’ against these narratives
Many of the themes - misogyny, sexual violence and racism - and potentially some of the language, that we’ll be discussing in this interview will be disturbing and upsetting so please be aware that this might not be suitable for all listeners
Kate’s page on the Cardiff University website: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/research-students/view/1066269-barber-kathryn Kate on Twitter: https://twitter.com/katebarber2015 MANTRaP: https://www.markmcglashan.org/projects/mantrap Some coverage of Andrew Tate: Teachers urged to listen for 'manosphere' talk in school corridors amid misogynistic social media trends Inside the violent, misogynistic world of TikTok’s new star, Andrew Tate Andrew Tate: how the 'manosphere' influencer is selling extreme masculinity to young men
Lang in the News links
The original clip of the Suella Braverman “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati” jibe Suella Braverman blames ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’ for disruptive protests – video | Politics
ShockProof Beats tells it like it is: https://twitter.com/shockproofbeats/status/1582644846002458624
You can buy the slogan on a mug, badge and tshirt now as well https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1329225869/tofu-eating-wokerati-mug?click_key=440d43995cc8e52a6ff851637ee54dfd8c9e3d41%3A1329225869&click_sum=9eef5300&ref=hp_rv-5&cns=1&sts=1
More on Braverman’s insults here: Tofu? Please Suella Braverman, you're embarrassing us all here
From polenta to lemons: the everyday foods demonised by Britain’s class wars | Jonathan Nunn | The Guardian
Rakie Ayola interviewed on BBC: https://twitter.com/thatbloodyMikey/status/1584523823675625473
More here: Woke - a great response to its use https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rakie-ayola-takes-down-woke-criticism-bbc-breakfast_uk_6357a411e4b051268c585f3e?utm_campaign=share_twitter&ncid=engmodushpmg00000004
https://twitter.com/RakieAyola/status/1584969705047015424
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Jill Lavender Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 31
Here are the show notes for Episode 31, in which Lisa, Dan and (drumroll) new Lexis team member, Jill Lavender (end drumroll) talk to Edinburgh University PhD student and ‘that etymology guy’, Danny Bate about:
- Etymology (obvs)
- Connections between English and other languages
- What words can tell us about language change
- ‘Sound laws’ and historical linguistics
Danny’s website: https://dannybate.com/
Danny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DannyBate4
Lang in the News links
Swearing - It's been in the news a fair bit… https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/20/krishnan-guru-murthy-taken-off-air-for-swearing-about-steve-baker
https://preply.com/en/blog/cities-that-swear-most/
The power of swearing: how obscene words influence your mind, body and relationships
Good episode of The Bunker podcast about this: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bunker-bonus-swearing-by-it-why-we-ing-love-to-curse/id1496246490?i=1000582791786
The success of compound swears - ‘shitgibbon’’ ‘fucktrumpet’ and ‘flagshagger’...
The rise of the shitgibbon – Strong Language
Compound pejoratives on Reddit – from 'buttface' to 'wankpuffin'
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Jill Lavender
https://twitter.com/JillLavs
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 30 Here are the show notes for Episode 30, in which Jacky, Dan and Lisa talk to Dr Jessica Norledge, Assistant Professor in Stylistics at the University of Nottingham, about: Stylistics - what it is and how we can use it The language of and in dystopia ‘Text worlds’ and cognitive linguistics Her favourite dystopian novels Jess has just published The Language of Dystopia with Palgrave (see here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-93103-2) - (40% off until Oct 31st 2022 with HAL40 code!) We also talk in our regular Lang in the News segment about recent news stories on emojis, the ‘word gap’ and how ‘culture wars’ news stories are framed, with advice about reading them critically. Jessica Norledge’s University of Nottingham webpage: Jessica Norledge Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessnorledge The book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-93103-2 (40% off until Oct 31st with HAL40 code) Lang in the News links Thumbs up emojis get the thumbs down from Gen Z (or not): Daily Mirror: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/thumbs-up-emoji-branded-inappropriate-28219379 NY Post: Gen Z has canceled the thumbs-up emoji because it's 'hostile' emoji thumbs up NYPost Oct 2022.pdf Thread here: https://twitter.com/EngLangBlog/status/1580276631473516544 The non-story aspect of all this is covered here: https://twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/1580348731215740928 But also the link to other non-stories about generational outrage is worth discussing: Linguists say full stops ‘intimidate young people’ as they seem angry | Metro News Another emoji story this week: geek emoji Article here: geek emoji Nottingham Post Oct 2022.pdf and also covered briefly in Telegraph and Mail Links to an older story in summer about generational use of emojis: Mail emojis generations July 2022.docx Ian Cushing gets the Daily Mail treatment for his critiques of ‘word gap’ discourses Ian’s thread: https://twitter.com/ian_cushing/status/1579731095884820481 The Mail article: Schools branded 'racist' for trying to improve pupils' vocabulary | Daily Mail Online Cushing Mail + later comments Oct 2022.docx Ian’s paper: Full article: Word rich or word poor? Deficit discourses, raciolinguistic ideologies and the resurgence of the ‘word gap’ in England’s education policy Ian’s thread on this: https://twitter.com/ian_cushing/status/1551555550395129856?s=20&t=dNK7RVsA-DrIIgr4C7VXPQ Ian and Julia Snell’s Ofsted paper: The (white) ears of Ofsted: A raciolinguistic perspective on the listening practices of the schools inspectorate | Language in Society | Cambridge Core Discussion of standardised English and Ofsted in the TES: Ofsted: Teaching pupils to speak standard English is 'social justice' Lynne Murphy’s emagazine article ‘How To Read the Language News – Sceptically’ is in emagazine 82 and available (if you have an emag subscription) through this link: emagazine For Advanced Level English Students Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Music: Freenotes End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 29
Here are the show notes for Episode 29, in which Dan and Lisa talk to Dr JPB Gerald about the tensions around standard language ideology when teaching English as a foreign language, the problems with the English teaching ‘industry’, and the spread of English around the world, along with many other themes featured in his new book, Antisocial Language Teaching: English and the Pervasive Pathology of Whiteness coming soon (30th September) from Multilingual Matters, Bristol.
We also talk in our regular Lang in the News segment about recent news stories about accent reduction and infant-directed speech.
JPB Gerald’s podcast: https://anchor.fm/unstandardized
Website: https://jpbgerald.com/blog/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JPBGerald
The book! https://multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?k=9781800413269
Lang in the News links
Infant-directed speech research
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/08/14/1116524222/scholars-confirm-what-itsy-bitsy-babies-around-the-world-already-know?t=1661938173030
And this from University of York links nicely:
The York English Language Toolkit - changing IDS
Making your accent whiter
The AI startup erasing call center worker accents: is it fighting bias – or perpetuating it? | Technology | The Guardian
Linked thread here: https://twitter.com/EngLangBlog/status/1562322119022845952
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 28 Here are the show notes for Episode 28, in which Dan talks to Dr Kendra Calhoun, University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, UCLA about her work on online communication, how racialised identities are performed and constructed online and the power of interdisciplinarity (fine if you can say it).
Kendra Calhoun’s UCLA page: https://anthro.ucla.edu/person/kendra-calhoun/
Kendra’s website: https://kendrancalhoun.com/ research pages (where many of the projects we talk about are covered) https://kendrancalhoun.com/research/ and her teaching pages https://kendrancalhoun.com/teaching/ ‘They edited out her nip nops’: Linguistic Innovation as Textual Censorship Avoidance on TikTok - this is the work on TikTok, censorship avoidance and linguistic creativity that we discussed: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BkagHBlDpZNqkMqXTlxsJcL9swApokqu
Kendra Calhoun’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/_kendracalhoun
Contact us @LexisPodcast.
Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify Contributors
Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 27
Here are the show notes for Episode 27, an MLE in the media special, in which we talk to Dr Matt Hunt Gardner from the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford about recent stories and articles on Multicultural London English and look at the language, the views, the framing and the timing of those pieces in a bit more detail.
Matt Hunt Gardner’s website: https://www.matthuntgardner.com/
Matt’s pages at University of Oxford: https://www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-matt-hunt-gardner
Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/matthuntgardner
The articles themselves
The Telegraph Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1536696753717665792
The Telegraph piece: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/13/wagwan-street-slang-britains-main-dialect/ The Guardian piece: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/14/wagwan-why-are-more-and-more-britons-speaking-multicultural-london-english
The Mail Online piece: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921527/Wagwan-language-urban-dialect-takes-IRAM-RAMZAN-says-not-change-good.html
Some selected Mail Online comments: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dx0UfZPxEAXxjX9abBNtyCGz6SRo_BlL/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110439791983693362630&rtpof=true&sd=true
Evening Standard piece: https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/britain-london-slang-accents-regional-diversity-lenny-henry-b1006546.html
The i piece: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/multicultural-london-english-dialect-40-years-old-middle-class-britain-terrified-1690448
Other sources on MLE: Multicultural London English – part 1 The 'M' in 'MLE' – Youth Slang's Origins | tony thorne Old MLE complaints from EngLangBlog: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RNLPjiCIv4X8Pw_VhLzSbj6olcISUn_1/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110439791983693362630&rtpof=true&sd=true
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 26
Here are the show notes for Episode 26, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk to Dr Robert McKenzie of Northumbria University about implicit biases in accent attitudes, the benefits of approaching language study with a multidisciplinary approach and the Speaking of Prejudice project.
Robert McKenzie’s Northumbria University webpage https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/en/persons/robert-mckenzie
The Speaking of Prejudice project website: https://research.northumbria.ac.uk/languageattitudesengland/
Student resources from Speaking of Prejudice project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10ui8etPOB2z2OvO6k2ebTIe-56t24rHR/view?usp=sharing
Speaking of Prejudice on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpeechPrejudice
Robert McKenzie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/robertm98205445
Teacher resources from Speaking of Prejudice project:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CjuWwWJHMupN_ZRB1CRjQKFo2ZgraZGk/view?usp=sharing
The British Academy showcase event can be found here: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/british-academy-summer-showcase-2022/programme-exhibits/
The forthcoming book: https://www.routledge.com/Implicit-and-Explicit-Language-Attitudes-Mapping-Linguistic-Prejudice-and/McKenzie-McNeill/p/book/9780367703530
Robert’s book recommendations:
Language Myths by Laurie Bauer
and
English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the U
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Here are the show notes for Episode 25, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk to Fiona McPherson and Freia Reimink-Layfield about their work on the OED: how they view the role of dictionaries, expand their pool of sources and reassess word definitions as time goes by.
OED100: Repainting the dictionary
https://public.oed.com/blog/oed100-repainting-the-dictionary/
Blog | Oxford English Dictionary
Varieties of English Archives | Oxford English Dictionary
Lang in the News
Man arrested for allegedly threatening Merriam-Webster over definition of female - ABC News
Man arrested for threatening to 'bomb' Merriam-Webster over trans-inclusive definitions
A corpus-based approach to discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in UN and newspaper texts. - Research Portal | Lancaster University
Cameron, Deborah. and Shaw, Sylvia. (2016). Gender, Power and Political Speech: Women and Language in the 2015 UK General Election - Research Portal | Lancaster University
'I want a voice that fits me': teenager's quest for communication aid with Walsall accent
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 24
Here are the show notes for Episode 24, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk to Dr Kamran Khan of the University of Copenhagen about security studies, discourses around refugees and Muslims and the role of language in national identity, especially around language testing and citizenship.
Kamran Khan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SecurityLing
Kamran’s ResearchGate page: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kamran-Khan-45
https://archive.discoversociety.org/2020/01/08/the-counter-extremism-shift-in-esol-policy-and-the-double-securitisation-of-muslims/
The New York Times’ Trojan Horse Affair podcast can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html
Lang in the News
We talked about this paper by Ian Cushing and Julia Snell:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/white-ears-of-ofsted-a-raciolinguistic-perspective-on-the-listening-practices-of-the-schools-inspectorate/E6ECBB4A5DDE794CD44270C67CAEDF19
You can read more about it here (check out the comments and Ian’s patient replies too!):
https://theconversation.com/ofsted-has-been-dictating-what-proper-english-is-heres-why-thats-a-problem-176742
And we refer to the TES article that you can find here: https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/does-ofsted-have-problem-language-policing
LancsBox is here: http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/lancsbox/download.php
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 23
Here are the show notes for Episode 23, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk to Dr Gareth Carrol of Birmingham University about his new book, Jumping Sharks and Dropping Mics and about modern idioms - where they come from, how they work and how they spread into popular discourse.
Jumping Sharks and Dropping Mics: modern idioms and where they come from website: Jumping sharks and dropping mics from Iff Books
Modern Idioms on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Modern_Idioms
Gareth Carrol on Twitter: https://twitter.com/garethcarrol
Dan was out of practice and forgot to send Gareth our usual quickfire questions so here are his answers:
Favourite book – “Through the Language Glass” by Guy Deutscher. It’s a really accessible take on the Language and Thought (Sapir-Whorf) debate, with some fascinating evidence and examples. Honourable mention goes to “Is That a Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation” by David Bellos.
Favourite fact / idea – that being bilingual is the norm, not the exception in the world (over half the world’s population speaks more than one language).
Advice to a budding linguist – be as flexible as you can in how you think about language (and anything else really). There is so much room for fuzziness/variation/ambiguity in how we think about language, and seeing it in these terms (rather than trying to be too rigid and look for clean answers) is a great help in understanding the whole picture.
For anyone who hasn’t heard the expression ‘as bent as a nine bob note’: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/as+bent+as+a+nine-bob+note
Lang in the News
Accents Customer asks for refund from York Theatre Royal because actors performed play in Yorkshire accents
Child refugees in city to learn Hull accent and sayings including 'larkin out'
Big piece about accents in The Times in March What does your accent say about you? | Times2 | The Times
Several related stories, some featuring criticism of Amanda Cole and her Essex colleagues: Their blog here: Ask or aks? How linguistic prejudice perpetuates inequality | Blog | University of Essex
University specialists say there is no such thing as 'correct' language and terminology | Daily Mail Online
https://twitter.com/DrAmandaCole/status/1506182631783866368
LBC Vanessa Feltz interview with Amanda Cole: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0bqyvm6 (from 02:16:30 onwards)
Ann Widdecombe in the Daily Express linked here: https://twitter.com/EngLangBlog/status/1506727875134869514
"ACCORDING to academics at the University of Essex there is no such thing as correct language, pronunciation or terminology. Instead they advocate what amounts to linguistic anarchy with anything acceptable such as pronouncing "ask" as "aks" and dismiss any standardisation of usage as "prejudice". Unfortunately for the students, employers who are looking for articulate applicants with a good command of the language will be perfectly happy to exhibit such prejudice and to choose someone who does not use "like" a dozen times in almost as many words."
Anti-Welsh accent prejudice here: https://twitter.com/ElunedAnderson/status/1506015005027807237
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 22
Here are the show notes for Episode 22, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk to Dr Katie Edwards about grammar pedantry, accent shaming and why ‘grammar nazis’ need to get a life (and a new name).
Warning: this episode contains some explicit language!
Katie Edwards’ website: https://www.katiebedwards.com/ Katie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatieBEdwards
Katie’s (fairly) recent language articles (some of which we discuss):
Gerraway with accentism – I’m proud to speak Yorkshire | Katie Edwards No, You’re Shit: Grammar Pedantry and Knowing Your Place Putting the Accent On Prejudice. Rather than being yet another way to… | by Katie Edwards | Medium
Katie refers to ‘The Apostrophiser’, the grammar vigilante: Meet the 'Grammar Vigilante' of Bristol
Jeremy Paxman’s comments about grammar were “People who care about grammar are regularly characterised as pedants. I say that those who don’t care about it shouldn’t be surprised if we pay no attention to anything they say — if indeed they’re aware of what they’re trying to say.” (from here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-pedant-8kpmpkc8x08)
Katie’s reading recommendation is Speaking Up: Understanding Language and Gender by Allyson Yule: http://allysonjule.com/books/speaking-up/
The letter to The Guardian about ‘talking properly’ that we discuss:
The ‘slang ban’ story that provoked the letter: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/sep/30/oh-my-days-linguists-lament-slang-ban-in-london-school
A thread Dan did on the problems with this letter: https://twitter.com/EngLangBlog/status/1446358649635549206
An article Dan wrote for emagazine about school ‘slang bans’: https://www.dropbox.com/s/81efwb4qfazopns/school%20rules%20article%20final.pdf?dl=0
You can follow Katie’s work by signing up here: https://katieedwards.substack.com/
Katie’s favourite book about language was this: http://allysonjule.com/books/speaking-up/
Language in the News
The older ‘slang ban’ stories can be found here: https://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/search?q=slang+ban
The Mail’s coverage of the recent south London academy story: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10047177/Oh-days-School-bans-slang-terms-like-bare-raise-literacy-standards.html
Some of the comments that followed the Mail piece: https://twitter.com/mmgiovanelli/status/1444395623315353613
Marcello Giovanelli on Channel 5 News discussing the story and others: https://twitter.com/5_News/status/1444000068118458369
Aston University Sociology style guide story in the Times:
Some of the comments that followed the story on Aston Uni: https://twitter.com/EngLangBlog/status/1446745305777573895
Evan Smith’s No Platform book: https://www.routledge.com/No-Platform-A-History-of-Anti-Fascism-Universities-and-the-Limits-of-Free/Smith/p/book/9781138591684
Evan Smith interviewed on the Radikaal podcast: https://podtail.com/podcast/radikaal/12-evan-smith-on-no-platform-and-so-called-cancel-/
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
End music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys
Show notes for Episode 21
Here are the show notes for Episode 21, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk to Dr Robbie Love about his work on corpora, spoken English and how he has been looking at changes in swearing patterns in spoken English.
🔺Warning: this episode contains explicit language!🔻
Robbie Love’s website: https://robbielove.org/ Robbie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lovermob
A link to the paper in Text and Talk: Love, R. (2021). Swearing in informal spoken English: 1990s – 2010s. Text and Talk, 41, Special Issue: ‘Corpus Linguistics across the Generations: In Memory of Geoffrey Leech’. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/text-2020-0051/html
Some of the media coverage for Robbie’s recent research is covered in the ‘Media’ page of Robbie’s site: https://robbielove.org/media/ Some great resources here for A level teachers and students!
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 20
Here are the show notes for Episode 20, a Language in the News special, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk to Dr Sandra Jansen of Paderborn University about linguistics stories in the media and discuss stories around accent bias, dialect change and suggestions for reading and evaluating stories about language in the media.
Sandra Jansen’s Paderborn University page: https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/person/66815/ Sandra on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sj2915 Sandra says she can send the English Today article, Predicting the Future of English, that’s mentioned in the article if you want to contact her.
Alex Scott & Digby Jones Original tweets here: https://twitter.com/Digbylj/status/1421164856527437825
Alex Scott’s response here: https://twitter.com/AlexScott/status/1421257347419213831
Digby Chicken Caesar doubles down here: https://twitter.com/Digbylj/status/1421448009238388737
Excellent thread from a linguist, Bethan Tovey-Walsh here: https://twitter.com/LinguaCelta/status/1421460631304146951
And another thread (from Claire Hardaker) here: https://twitter.com/DrClaireH/status/1421398857255116801
Longer read from Claire Hardaker: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/drclaireh/2021/08/02/digby-lord-jones-the-man-who-took-on-linguistics-and-lost/
Katie Edwards piece here:: https://katiebedwards.medium.com/putting-the-accent-on-prejudice-a2894d5d0670
Deborah Cameron on the Alex Scott/Digby Jones story and attacks on women’s speech: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/speakin-while-female/
Accentism thread of reader comments: https://twitter.com/AccentismProj/status/1421899858391228419
Predicting Dialect change
Full paper here: Inferring the drivers of language change using spatial models Summary here: Northern English verbal mannerisms being lost News stories here: Ee bah gone? How northern accents could be dead in 45 years Northern accents could sound southern by 2066, study finds Northern accents are dying out and could DISAPPEAR BY 2066 Northern accents could be wiped out in less than 50 years, scientist says
Opinion piece based on the story here
Thread from Tamsin Blaxter (Cambridge linguist behind the language side of the project) here: https://twitter.com/tweetolectology/status/1421126516012986370
‘The Sound of 2066’ project (paper on ResearchGate): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308793528_Watt_D_Gunn_B_2016_%27The_sound_of_2066_A_report_commissioned_by_HSBC%27_26th_September_2016
Some of the stories around it: It's the end of the frog and toad for regional slang, says report 'Th' sound vanishing from English language with Cockney and other dialects set to 'die out by 2066' How will Brits speak in 50 years? The Sound of 2066 Regional accents to end within 50 years according to new report
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 20 of @LexisPodcast are here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k4x7bnh8jgsz1EuDxrgLPy-6By8IGvLX_HMEgFt5IcY/edit?usp=sharing It's a Language in the News special with @sj2915 to help kick off your new academic year.
Show notes for Episode 19
Here are the show notes for Episode 19 in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk to Professor Elena Semino of Lancaster University about:
The power of metaphor The universality of metaphor Metaphors for Covid, health campaigns and vaccinations
Elena Semino’s Lancaster University webpage: Professor Elena Semino Elena on Twitter: Elena Semino (@elenasemino) Reframe Covid pages: #ReframeCovid Questioning Vaccine Discourse project: Quo VaDis: Questioning Vaccine Discourse Project (@vaccine_project)
We’ll be back with a Language in the News special for episode 20 later this summer.
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Explicit warning
Show notes for Episode 18 Here are the show notes for Episode 18 - our first birthday episode! - where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about: ‘So’ and why it annoys language pedants and prescriptivists. Language discourses around two texts discussing ‘so’. And we talk to Dr Emma Byrne, author of ‘Swearing Is Good For You: the amazing science of bad language’ about...swearing. Obvs. Emma Byrne’s Swearing is Good for You page: Swearing is Good for You – Emma Byrne, Science Writer and Broadcaster Emma Byrne in The Guardian: Swear by it: why bad language is good for you | Emma Byrne Emma Byrne in Time Magazine: The Benefits of Swearing Emma Byrne in Elle: There's a Swearing Double Standard—and Women Can Change It - Emma Byrne on Gendered Perception of Swearing Broca’s area in the brain: The Broca Area and Language Production Wernicke’s area in the brain: WikiPedia: Wernicke's area Sophie Scott on Why we Laugh Sophie Scott: Why we laugh | TED Talk Sophie Scott on Why do Humans Laugh Why do humans laugh? So Alec Marsh in The Spectator on ‘so’ The remorseless rise of 'so' Lane Greene has responded on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lanegreene/status/1392805484768468993 He links to this https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/so-and-so-that-coordinating-or-subordinating-conjunctions?page=1 And there’s already been several peeve fests about ‘so’ over the years: So Here's Why Everyone Is Starting Sentences With The Word 'So' How A Popular Two-Letter Word Is Undermining Your Credibility So Shoot Me – Frank McNally on the sentence-opener of the century (so far) Today presenter John Humphrys declare war on the use of the word 'so' So, here's a carefully packaged sentence that shows me in my best light | Oliver James And this is a good piece on it: https://www.npr.org/2015/09/03/432732859/so-whats-the-big-deal-with-starting-a-sentence-with-so?t=1620925294688 In defence of the word 'so' - a much better take on ‘so’ from Elizabeth East. Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 17
Here are the show notes for Episode 17 where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
‘Woke’... are we woke? Are we fighting a war on woke? What does it even mean and why is it being used to attack people for just being nice humans? Meghan Markle’s representation in the tabloid press
And we talk to Dr Amanda Cole from the University of Essex about accents, identity and how accents in the South East of England have been changing.
Barbara Windsor: you're more likely to hear a cockney accent in Essex than east London now
Accentism is alive and well – and it doesn't only affect the north of England
There's still a hierarchy of accents in Britain and why talking with the 'wrong' one might hold you back
Ethnic minorities ‘deemed less intelligent because of their accents’ (paywalled)
Amanda Cole on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmanditaCole Amanda Cole University of Essex page: https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/colea17303/amanda-cole
Amanda Cole is speaking at the next emagazine English Language conference for students! More details here: EMC Online: English Language A Level Student Conference (30th June 2021 2-4pm) | Conferences
Woke
The Woke Handbook for Boomers | Magazine (paywalled)
What does 'woke' really mean and why is Tesla CEO Elon Musk mocking it?
'WOKE' NOT WOKE
What does 'woke' mean? The origins of the term, and how its meaning has changed
How the word ‘woke’ was weaponised by the right (Trigger warning: contains images of both Laurence Fox and Toby Young)
Meghan Markle
Here Are 20 Headlines Comparing Meghan Markle To Kate Middleton That Might Show Why She And Prince Harry Are Cutting Off Royal Reporters
Comparing How Meghan Markle is Discussed in the Press vs. Kate Middleton | GreenBook
Quick note: at 45:10 we mention ‘abstract verbs’. We obviously meant ‘abstract nouns’: please forgive us.
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 16
Welcome to Episode 16 of the Lexis podcast and our first new episode of 2021, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
The language of news reports on violence against women The power of language to represent and frame events
And we talk to Ffion Brown about her work on the representation of mental health.
Some of Ffion’s reading suggestions: Methods of Critical Discourse Studies - Ruth Wodak (Editor) Michael Meyer (Editor) https://uk.bookshop.org/books/methods-of-critical-discourse-studies/9781446282410
The Little Prince https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-little-prince-colour-illustrations/9781909621558
Language in the News
https://twitter.com/_chris_hart/status/1370868282216026113?s=20
‘Elite police officer appears in court charged with woman’s murder’ - Times headline
https://twitter.com/JNRaeside/status/1370774580948824065?s=20
Reporting on the Atlanta Spa Shootings https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/17/jay-baker-bad-day/
“He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did,” Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jay Baker said Wednesday. He was describing the 21-year-old man accused of killing eight people, mostly Asian and almost all women, in a rampage across three Atlanta-area spas.
UK headlines about an attack on a teenage girl in Derby
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1370799588160983042?s=20
Jackson Katz: Violence Against Women - it’s a men’s issue https://www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue/transcript
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 15
Welcome to Episode 15 of the Lexis podcast, our last for the hellscape that has been 2020, in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
Words of the Year Words entering the dictionary Words leaving the dictionary
And we talk to Dr Dana Gablasova from Lancaster University about Corpus Linguistics:
what it involves what it can offer to students investigating language the ways it can open up questions to explore in data some important recent studies the Corpus in Schools project
Dana Gablasova’s Lancaster University page: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/dana-gablasova Dana’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/danagablas The Corpus for Schools homepage: Corpus in classrooms | Corpus for Schools Future Learn’s Corpus Linguistics MOOC: Corpus Linguistics Analysis - Online Course The BNC: [bnc] British National Corpus The BNC 2014: British National Corpus 2014 Baker, Gabrielatos, McEnery, Sketching Muslims: (PDF) Sketching Muslims: A Corpus Driven Analysis of Representations Around the Word 'Muslim' in the British Press 1998-2009 Semino, Demjen, Hardie, Payne: Metaphor, Cancer and the End of Life: (PDF) Metaphor, Cancer and the End of Life: A Corpus-Based Study Elena Semino on Covid metaphors: 'A fire raging': Why fire metaphors work well for Covid-19 - Making Science Public Reframe Covid: #ReframeCovid - Contribute Louise Mullany and Loretta Trickett: A comic strip to fight misogyny hate crime Paul Baker on corpus methods to explore the representation of gay men in the UK press: Language, Sexuality and Corpus Linguistics: Concerns and Future Directions Paul Baker Abstract In this paper I discuss the poten
Language in the News
Summary of selected WOTY choices Oxford: too many to decide... Collins: lockdown Cambridge: quarantine
Australian Dictionary: iso Macquarie: rona & doomscrolling Merriam Webster (USA): pandemic
Oxford report: Oxford Word of the Year 2020 | Oxford Languages
The American Dialect Society has different categories and voted for a range of good ones, even if their main WOTY (covid) was a bit dull: American Dialect Society
Collins Dictionary WOTY: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/woty
Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2020/11/24/cambridge-dictionarys-word-of-the-year-2020/
David Shariatmadari in The Guardian: Pandemic, lockdown and Megxit: the most influential words of 2020
Irish Times: The word of the year is defined as 'watching Normal People in your pyjamas'. What is it?
Merriam Webster on US WOTY: Word of the Year 2020 | Pandemic
Piece on Australian WOTY: https://theconversation.com/rona-iso-quazza-words-of-the-year-speak-to-our-australian-take-on-covid-150949
Macquarie’s Covid words of 2020: The Macquarie Dictionary COVID Word of the Year shortlist
Macquarie’s overall list (Karen, Covidiot and Doomscrolling): https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/view/word/of/the/year/2020
UK education top ten words of 2020: Word of the year 2020: the teachers' choice
Essex Girl removed from dictionary https://news.sky.com/story/essex-girl-removed-from-dictionary-after-campaigners-claim-term-is-offensive-12151727
'Essex girl' removed from dictionary following campaign
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CI3kZ7rZq5C70AyM2D-XVm3vF_DUno3vuSkIWrNNoa4/edit?usp=sharing
Here’s to a better 2021...
Show notes for Episode 14
Welcome to Episode 14 of the Lexis podcast in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
How language frames and represents people and events Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp Advice to women about personal safety
And we talk to Professor Emma Moore from the University of Sheffield in a wide-ranging interview about:
non-standard English and how it’s used for different purposes the importance of understanding the societal origins of attitudes to language why we need to understand the differences between spoken and written systems ...and how sociolinguistics saved our lives!
Emma Moore’s Sheffield University page: Professor Emma Moore | English Emma Moore’s Eden Village Girls study: “I were out with Lucy last week. She were in a right good mood.” What Did You Say? https://festivalofthemind.sheffield.ac.uk/2020/futurecade/what-did-you-say/ What Did You Say? Podcast episode: https://festivalofthemind.sheffield.ac.uk/2020/spiegeltent/what-did-you-say-podcast/ Jenny Cheshire’s Reading study: Jenny Cheshire – Linguistic Variation and Social Function – All About Linguistics Penelope Eckert’s High School study: Penelope Eckert – High School Ethnography Peter Trudgill’s Norwich study: Peter Trudgill, Norwich Lesley Milroy’s Belfast studies: Milroy's Belfast Study
Language in the News
The representation of (convicted murderer of Reeva Steenkamp) Oscar Pistorius:
Sonia Sodha on Twitter: "My god BBC. “The extraordinary story of paralympic and Olympic sprinter” who “suddenly found himself at the centre of a murder investigation.” Extraordinary? Found himself? INSPIRATIONAL?! No way to talk about a convicted murderer. Talk about minimising the murder of women.… https://t.co/dW8dZoRpiZ"
Anya Palmer on Twitter: "They've changed it to say he killed her. Still not saying he murdered her. He was charged with murder when he MURDERED his girlfriend.… https://t.co/4gAOrU3UML"
https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1321367689475067904 Debbie Cameron on Twitter: "So, we can add 'found himself at the centre of a murder investigation' to the already long list of convoluted formulas the media use to gloss over men's violence against women and make the perpetrators into tragic heroes. (See also the play on the word 'trials' in the title)… https://t.co/koQUBG2eYV"
Police advice to women: https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1316307733147246594?s=20 https://twitter.com/MisterLJones/status/1316810550190407680?s=20
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes Transcript:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iaQEzsVjifbKajiYJPob54-AHGoAGiAwk-mfLjD5M_o/edit?usp=drivesdk
SHOW NOTES (TRANSCRIPT AT BOTTOM)
Show notes for Episode 13
Welcome to Episode 13 of the Lexis podcast in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about accent in an accent prejudice special, including:
Negative attitudes to regional and social accents Social attitudes to ‘regional’ accents Humour, pride and regional/social identity online Doric covid warnings
As part of this we also talk to Lauren White whose report into accent and social attitudes at Durham University spurred several of these stories.
Lauren’s report is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344434314_A_REPORT_ON_NORTHERN_STUDENT_EXPERIENCE_AT_DURHAM_UNIVERSITY
Language in the News
Students from northern England facing 'toxic attitude' at Durham University (this is the one based on Lauren’s report)
Guardian main story on accent discrimination and class: UK's top universities urged to act on classism and accent prejudice
Guardian on accent discrimination: 'It's had a lasting impact': students on being bullied over their accents
UK students: Have you been ridiculed over your accent or background?
Accentism against Essex: Accentism is alive and well – and it doesn't only affect the north of England
Rob Drummond discussing use of ‘regional’ re accents: https://twitter.com/RobDrummond/status/1319923837824356352
University of York on accent attitudes: https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2019/research/regional-accents-doesn't-hold-back-top-jobs/
Various articles on attitudes to accents based on a marketing survey from OnBuy: Yorkshire most trustworthy accent in the UK, says survey | Bradford Telegraph and Argus
Yorkshire Accent Has Been Voted Most Trustworthy Accent In The UK
Brummie accent named least trustworthy in the UK, study reveals
Sexiest accents from (ahem) Illicit Encounters survey (Trigger Warning: features a picture of Barry Chuckle): Men from Yorkshire have England's sexiest accent, poll finds
Accents/dialects discriminated against on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EngLangBlog/status/1319014609781739520
Interesting and effective use of representation of accent/dialect:
https://twitter.com/AngelaRayner/status/1319021626311180291?s=20
Doric Covid warnings:
https://www.grampianonline.co.uk/news/doric-coronavirus-advice-tells-ye-fit-ye-need-ta-dee-195854/
Accent Bias in Britain project: https://accentbiasbritain.org/ The Accentism Project: http://accentism.org/ Eccentricity podcast: https://www.accentricity-podcast.com/
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 12
Welcome to Episode 12 of the Lexis podcast in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
Children’s language development via Twitter videos of babies with huskies, lullabies and big-scale projects that measure children’s lockdown language.
We also talk to Dr Vanja Karanovic about bilingual children’s language development.
Vanja’s Twitter page: https://twitter.com/DrVanjaK
Some of the texts referred to: Grosjean, F, 2012, Bilingual: Life and Reality, Harvard University Press Crystal, D, 1989, Listen to Your Child (2nd edition), Penguin (Chapter 7) De Houwer, A.,2009, BIlingual First Language Acquisition, Multilingual Matter
Language in the News Baby and Husky: https://imgur.com/gallery/sakCQNd Constance Bainbridge on lullaby research: https://twitter.com/conBainbridge/status/1318294620778995716 Julien Mayor: https://twitter.com/julien__mayor/status/1321922810634227712
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Welcome to Episode 11 of the Lexis podcast in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
Interruptions: in the US presidential debate, in online classrooms via TikTok and how gender and power are factors in how we are treated in conversations.
We also talk to Dr Catherine Laing from Cardiff University’s Centre for Language and Communication Research about child language development and infant-directed speech.
Catherine Laing’s University page: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/921190-laing-catherine
Catherine’s Twitter account: https://twitter.com/cathelaing24
Schieffelin and Ochs’s paper (1986) on how child-directed speech isn’t used in some societies: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/ochs/articles/Schieffelin_Ochs_1986_Language_Socialization.pdf
Casillas, Brown and Levinson on verbal interaction with children in a southern Mexico village https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13349
Cristia, Dupoux, Gurven & Stieglitz on verbal interaction with children in lowland Bolivia: https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.12974
Babel, The Language Magazine: https://babelzine.co.uk/
The Vocal Fries podcast https://vocalfriespod.com/
Language in the News
Interruptions in the US presidential debate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-interruptions-first-presidential-debate-biden.html
Interruptions between Trump and Clinton in 2016: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/9/27/13017666/presidential-debate-trump-clinton-sexism-interruptions
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-third-presidential-debate-how-many-times-interruptions-sexism-a7371286.html
Interruptions of a woman in STEM (via TikTok): https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/woman-in-stem-interruptions-tiktok/
Deborah Cameron on interruptions and gender: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2020/08/15/woman-interrupted/ Language in Conflict: https://languageinconflict.org/
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 10
Welcome to Episode 10 of the Lexis podcast in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
Another bad article about language, which takes a swipe at people who ask for people to respect their pronoun choices.
We also talk to Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at the University of Nottingham, Dr Lucy Jones about language, sexuality, gender and identity.
Lucy Jones’ blog: https://queerlinglang.wordpress.com/
Lucy Jones’ University of Nottingham page: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/people/lucy.jones
Lucy’s Twitter account: https://twitter.com/jones_lucy
Robert Podesva’s study on falsetto and identity: https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/Courses/l1562018/Readings/Podesva2007.pdf
Language in the News
Here’s the article by Joanna Williams in The Times that we analysed: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/declaring-your-pronouns-is-pure-narcissism-7rffv2mrz A couple of the bits we talked about are reproduced below: Declaring your pronouns is pure narcissism An identity-obsessed minority with too much time on its hands has lost touch with reality Joanna Williams
I’m Joanna, she/her. You probably guessed that from my name and my photo. But declaring one’s pronouns is all the rage and I’d hate to appear out of touch. I’m all for denying biology. I pretend I’m not getting older and can still drink too much without suffering the next day. I pretend I can fit into clothes I bought 20 years ago. But I don’t insist other people confirm my delusions. Demanding to be called they/them rather than he/she is to insist that the rest of the world share in your fantasy. When Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the Pink News awards late last year he began his speech by saying: “My name is Jeremy Corbyn, pronouns he/him.” Surely no one in attendance doubted Corbyn’s manhood, or that men are commonly referred to as “he”. People devise all kinds of ways to signal their political beliefs, particularly when they decide that doing so makes them out to be especially virtuous. Pronoun-declaring is, in truth, a game played by an identity-obsessed minority with far too much time on its hands. Forced attempts at normalising pronoun introductions may be done in the name of inclusivity but they reveal only how hopelessly out of touch those who run our universities, local authorities and political parties have become. They no longer have any idea how normal people talk to each other.
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 9
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Lexis podcast in which Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
Good and bad articles about language, featuring an absolute peeve-fest from James Innes-Smith in The Spectator and a much better one from Stan Carey on emoji panics on the MacMillan Dictionary blog.
We also talk to author, lexicographer, slang expert and visiting language consultant at King’s College, London, Tony Thorne about new words and lots more!
Tony’s Twitter page: https://twitter.com/tonythorne007
Tony Thorne’s King’s College page: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/foundations/tony-thorne/who-is-tony-thorne
Language and Innovation: Tony’s blog which chronicles much of his recent work on new words: https://language-and-innovation.com/
Coronaspeak: #CORONASPEAK – the language of Covid-19 goes viral
Kate Burridge and Howard Manns onn pandemic vocabulary: 'Iso', 'boomer remover' and 'quarantini': how coronavirus is changing our language
Language in the News
Here’s the article from The Spectator that we analysed: War of the words: have we stopped making sense?
(Hat Tip to Havant and South Downs College for the link to the Spectator article: https://twitter.com/HSDCEngLang)
We also made reference to this article by Lindsay Johns: Ghetto grammar robs the young of a proper voice
If you want to see some responses to the Lindsay Johns article, many of which are relevant to the Spectator one too, try here: EngLangBlog: Ghetto grammar and here: Thoughts on Lindsay Johns and 'Ghetto Grammar'
We liked this article by Stan Carey, though: Will emojis ruin English?
Find more of Stan’s writing through here: https://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/author/stan-carey and here: https://twitter.com/StanCarey
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 8
Here are the show notes for Episode 8 which is a special edition on Northern accents where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew (2 proper Northerners, a Welsh person and a soft, southern shandy drinker) talk about:
Northern accents, dialect levelling and reports of a new ‘educated middle class northern English accent’ emerging.
And we talk to Dr Georgina Brown from Lancaster University about the study itself.
Georgina Brown’s Lancaster University page: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/georgina-brown
Northern accents are becoming more similar, suggests new research
A link posted by project leader Patrycja Strycharczuk about the Manchester research: Strycharczuk et al.’s Frontiers paper sparks controversy
The paper itself can be found here: General Northern English. Exploring Regional Variation in the North of England With Machine Learning
Patrycja Strycharczuk (@PatStrycharczuk)
Kevin Watson on Scouse: Scousers are proud of their accent
Cambridge University’s app to measure dialect change: Do you say splinter, spool, spile or spell? English Dialects app tries to guess your regional accent
Cambridge app maps decline in regional diversity of English dialects
Media reports on the paper Guardian: Northern English accents becoming more similar, researchers find Mail Online: Northern accents 'are becoming more similar' Daily Telegraph: Northern accents becoming more similar as middle-class 'General Northern English' emerges, study finds Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/northern-accents-more-similar-distinct-cities-manchester-leeds-sheffield-a9623071.html
A great Twitter account to follow if you want to see how Twitter can be used for dialect research: https://twitter.com/tweetolectology
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 7
Here are the show notes for Episode 7 where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
- ‘Irregardless’ and why this word causes prescriptivists such angst.
- The Daily Mail going overboard on ‘man overboard’ and why challenging sexist language gets such a bad press.
And we talk to Dr Philip Seargeant of the Open University about emoji and political storytelling.
Philip Seargeant’s university page: http://www.open.ac.uk/people/ps4549
Philip Seargeant’s website: Philip Seargeant
Twitter: https://twitter.com/philipseargeant
Philip Seargeant on emoji: https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/emoji-digital-language-of-emotion-phillip-seargeant/
Philip Seargeant on political storytelling: https://www.ft.com/content/d0d0f4ec-a4d2-11ea-92e2-cbd9b7e28ee6 (paywalled)
The Special Adviser's Tale, or Political Storytelling in the Time of Covid
Irregardless
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/06/is-irregardless-a-real-word-dictionary
Peter Sokolowski of Merriam Webster Dictionaries discusses ‘irregardless’ in a Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/PeterSokolowski/status/1280585356908388352
‘Man overboard’
Sailors told to stop using Navy terms like 'unmanned' and 'man power'
Royal Navy bans terms 'unmanned' and 'manpower' because it's 'sexist'
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 6
Here are the show notes for Episode 6 where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about:
language change related to the term ‘Karen’ and how its meaning has drifted and been debated the changing of the name of Washington’s American Football team
And we talk to Kelly Wright in a wide-ranging interview about her work in experimental sociolinguistics, how race and ethnicity are represented in language, blackness and whiteness in voices and lots more...
Kelly Wright’s website: Covert Racism | Wright Linguistics
Publications and interviews: https://kellywright5.wixsite.com/raciolinguistics/recent-publications
John Rickford on Rachel Jeantel’s testimony at the George Zimmerman trial: Stanford linguist: prejudice toward African American dialect can result in unfair rulings
A link to a presentation on housing discrimination: https://youtu.be/2YiSTziPt5o
Kelly Wright on Twitter: https://twitter.com/raciolinguistic
Groundbreaking report reveals racial bias in English football commentary
The RunRepeat study: Racial Bias in Football Commentary (Study)
Karen
How 'Karen' went from a popular baby name to a stand-in for white entitlement
What is and where did it come from? This from the Indy: What is the Karen meme and is it a misogynistic slur? | indy100
Hadley freeman in the Guardian on Karen being sexist: The 'Karen' meme is everywhere – and it has become mired in sexism
Karen Attiah in the Washington Post about why it's not oppressive: Opinion | The ‘Karen’ memes and jokes aren’t sexist or racist. Let a Karen explain.
A bit of a more nuanced suggestion that it allows white women to uphold white supremacy: I am no longer Outside in a AMG on Twitter
Changing the Washington NFL team name (We’ve chosen not to use the team name here but you’ll find it referred to in some of these articles.)
An NFL Name Change That Has Been a Long Time Coming
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53390944
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/07/18/renaming-the-washington-redskins
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 5
Here are the show notes for Episode 5 where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about language change and some of the arguments around banning and censoring language
- the word game, Scrabble ‘banning’ racial slurs
- slaves and masters, master bedrooms and nitty gritty: words that are being challenged and reviewed
- political correctness, cancel culture and wokeness
And we talk to Dr Ian Cushing about language in schools, the policing of language and the role, politics and importance of Standard English in education.
You can find the links to the stories and research we’ve mentioned in this programme, below.
Ian Cushing’s work on language in schools:
Teachers' slang bans 'likely to cause long-term damage'
Should schools be allowed to ban slang words like 'peng'?
The Policy and Policing of Language in Schools: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/policy-and-policing-of-language-in-schools/6C4BC80399E27747D34819060E186A62#fndtn-information
Comment on Ian’s article: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/comment-on-the-policy-and-policing-of-language-in-schools-by-ian-cushing/780222C30D0C8C011B8ACEB0FD8EC964
Ian’s response: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/power-policing-and-language-policy-mechanisms-in-schools-a-response-to-hudson/ACEE15C4A9A3BDC555B1DFCCF0446E5C
Ian Cushing on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ian_cushing
Language in the News
Scrabble ‘bans’ slurs: US Scrabble bans racist and LGBTQ slurs from tournaments Scrabble community mulls banning racial and homophobic slurs
Slaves and masters: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53050955
Master bedroom ‘banned’: Estate agents banned from saying 'master bedroom' due to concerns over slavery and sexism links
Nitty gritty - is it a racist term? 'Nitty gritty' on Sky Sports' banned list of words due to supposed links to slavery
Where does the phrase nitty gritty come from - and why has Sky Sports banned it?
It's not just the n-word in the woodpile - from 'no can do' to 'hooligan' we reveal English's hidden racism
Police forbid politically incorrect phrases | UK news Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Here are the show notes for Episode 4 where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about
- sacking headlines: who’s been sacked and who’s doing the sacking?
- TikTok teens and K-Pop stans trolling Trump
- and talk to Dr Shivonne Gates about Multicultural London English and how language is used by teenagers to express their social identities.
You can find the links to the stories and research we’ve mentioned in this programme, below.
Some of Shivonne Gates’ work mentioned in the interview:
Voices and Practices in Applied Linguistics: Diversifying a Discipline
Why the Long FACE?: Ethnic Stratification and Variation in the London Diphthong System
Shivonne’s book recommendation: https://wordery.com/homegirls-norma-mendoza-denton-9780631234906
Headlines:
The Guardian
Rebecca Long-Bailey sacked from Labour shadow cabinet by Keir Starmer – UK politics live Daily Mail
Starmer reignites Labour civil war
Story of Trump’s Tulsa Rally being trolled by Tiktok users:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Show notes for Episode 3
Here are the show notes for Episode 3, where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about
- the language of subtitles: turning non-standard into Standard English?
- the changing meanings and interpretations of gestures: taking a knee and what it might mean
- and talk to Professor Devyani Sharma of QMUL about accents, identity and how to deal with accent bias… among other things!
You can find the links to the stories and research we’ve mentioned in this programme, below.
Accent Bias in Britain project (QMUL)
website: https://accentbiasbritain.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/accentbias
Teach Real English! (QMUL)
http://www.teachrealenglish.org/
Devyani Sharma’s staff page: Devyani Sharma - School of Languages, Linguistics and Film
A Level English numbers up for first time in 7 years:
Provisional Entries for GCSE, AS and A level: Summer 2020 exam series
Professor Dick Hudson’s site has mapped the trends in A Level English over the years:
https://dickhudson.com/trends-english/
Marcus Rashford interview with the BBC: Marcus Rashford talks food poverty, his childhood and campaigning for free school meals
A Twitter thread on the potential ‘linguicism’ of ‘correcting’ subtitles: https://twitter.com/DrVanjaK/status/1272603255932170245
BBC subtitling guidelines: https://bbc.github.io/subtitle-guidelines/
Dominic Raab on ‘taking a knee’: Dominic Raab's obliviousness to taking a knee feels eerily like a government ploy to enrage black people
Changing meaning of OK gesture
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48293817
Trolling, hoax or attempt to disguise hate symbol?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48293817
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Here are the show notes for Episode 2, where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about
- the language used to report political protests, demonstrations and movements around the Black Lives Matter campaign
- the language of the placards on the recent BLM London demonstration
- and talk to Dr Rob Drummond from Manchester Metropolitan University about youth language, accents and how linguists can educate the public about language issues.
You can find the links to the stories and research we’ve mentioned in this programme, below.
Rob Drummond
Website: http://www.robdrummond.co.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobDrummond
Accentism project: http://accentism.org/
Manchester Voices: https://www.manchestervoices.org/
Lisa’s blog on the BLM placards: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/2020/06/15/the-language-of-protest-signs-blm/
Ben Zimmer on riots, rebellions and uprisings: https://time.com/5849163/why-describing-george-floyd-protests-as-riots-is-loaded/
Language in Conflict blog: http://languageinconflict.org
Newspaper headlines:
The Mail on Sunday: https://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/front-pages-today.cfm?frontpage=60256
https://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/front-pages-today.cfm?frontpage=60315
The Guardian:
https://time.com/5849163/why-describing-george-floyd-protests-as-riots-is-loaded/
The Observer:
https://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/the-observer/front-pages-today.cfm?frontpage=60316
Some others you might find interesting: https://twitter.com/BoswellsMediaSt/status/1270013908225527809
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes
Lexis Podcast
Show notes for episode 1
Here are the show notes for Episode 1, where Jacky, Dan, Lisa and Matthew talk about - trending hashtags in the Dominic Cummings scandal - track and trace employees ‘sounding professional’ - the introduction of a Northern accent for the Beeb - and English with Lucy
You can find the links to the stories and research we’ve mentioned in this programme, below.
Dominic Cummings and Twitter #s. Here’s the blog post Lisa did on it: livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/2020/05/26/twitter-lesson-cummgate/Omnishambles names Word of the Year 2009 by Oxford English Dictionary: Omnishambles named word of the year by Oxford English Dictionary
Some examples of the -gate suffix in this post: Hit Me Up with some culturomics: new words for 2010
Michele Zappavigna on ‘ambient affiliation’: Ambient affiliation: A linguistic perspective on Twitter - Michele Zappavigna, 2011 Computer security blogger, Graham Cluley on the threat of track and trace scammers: Apparently Coronavirus-tracing scammers won't sound professional... (Yeah, right!)
Dr Claire Hardaker on ‘sounding professional’: Dr Claire Hardaker (she/her) on Twitter: "here's the bit from yesterday's #DowningStreetBriefing where deputy CMO Jenny Harries fields a question about how people would know that a call from the Track & Trace service was legitimate and not a scammer her answer essentially boils down to "they'll sound professional" 1/8… https://t.co/Mvp3r9D5KP"
Geoff Pullum (back in 2004) talking about the language of scam emails and 419s: Forensic syntax for spam detection & Inexpert and expert phishing spam
Accent Bias in Britain: an overview of the findings Results: overview The Twitter threads on ‘English With Lucy’ and British accents: https://twitter.com/RobDrummond/status/1267040918349193217 and https://twitter.com/RobDrummond/status/1267511340291284992
‘Hey Beeb’ and BBC accents: 'Hey Beeb': new BBC digital assistant gets northern male accent
Alex Baratta on accents and trainee teachers: Research exposes prejudice over teachers with northern accents
BBC ‘On This Day’ BBC Archive on Twitter: "#OnThisDay 1943: Should a woman or even a Yorkshireman be allowed to read the BBC news? Of course not. John Snagge explained why.… https://t.co/DvCtL7sbNW"
Contact us @LexisPodcast. Subscribe: Lexis Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Contributors Matthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewbutlerwy Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Music: Freenotes