Lexis – Details, episodes & analysis

Show notes for Episode 59

Here are the show notes for Episode 59, in which Dan talks to Sam Hellmuth, Professor of Linguistics at the University of York about the 2024 York English Language Toolkit workshop. We also talk to Eytan Zweig and James Tompkinson about their sessions. 

You can sign up here: 

https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops 

Previous workshops and case studies are here: 

https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies 

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 58

Here are the show notes for Episode 58, in which Dan talks to Professor of Corpus Linguistics, Dr Vaclav Brezina of Lancaster University about:

• The new Frequency Dictionary of British English

• What certain words can tell us about a changing language

• Using corpora to track change

• Why we need more than just words to understand patterns of language change 

• Why media discourses around change might need to be treated with caution

Vaclav’s University page: 

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/vaclav-brezina 

Some coverage of the research and the publication: 

https://portal.lancaster.ac.uk/intranet/news/article/sonew-dictionary-sheds-light-on-frequency-of-words-in-british-english   

https://theconversation.com/tea-weather-and-being-on-time-analysis-of-100-million-words-reveals-what-brits-talk-about-most-222088 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/03/english-language-use-more-informal-words-linguistics/ 

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.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 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.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 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