Explore every episode of the podcast Lexis
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode 83 - Sarah Hopkyns and English in the Gulf | 14 Mar 2026 | 00:42:26 | |
Welcome to episode 83 of Lexis, another student-led episode, which this time features Oli, an A Level student at the Dubai British School interviewing Dr Sarah Hopkyns, with some help from Dan. Sarah is a Lecturer in TESOL and International Education at the University of St Andrews, Lecturer (Teaching) in Intercultural Communication at the Institute of Education, UCL and Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. We talk about:
You can find Sarah’s university page here: https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/persons/sarah-hopkyns/ Her ResearchGate profile is here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarah-Hopkyns We discuss some of the following: Nizar Habash and David Palfreyman’s ZAEBUC corpus of Arabic-English: https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.9/ ‘The Pact We Made’ by Layla AlAmmar https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-pact-we-made-layla-alammar/82be48b15ed150fc Blair Fussell’s 2011 work based on ‘Gulf English’: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231752461_The_local_flavour_of_English_in_the_Gulf Thanks to Oli and his teacher, Sumayya Kazi for making this episode happen and for all the work put into it. Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey Raj Rana Matthew Butler 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 | |||
| Episode 82 - Rianna Walcott & Black Twitter | 08 Mar 2026 | 00:40:17 | |
Welcome to episode 82 of Lexis, in which Raj, Dan and (guest interviewer and friend of the pod) Amanda Cole talk to Dr Rianna Walcott, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, and Associate Director of the Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab. We discuss her 2023 PhD, A Tweet at the Table - Black British Identity Expression on Social Media. We talk about:
You can download the thesis here (and the most language-focused part is chapter 5): https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/studentTheses/a-tweet-at-the-table Rianna’s website is here and you can find some of the other papers and links mentioned: http://www.riannawalcott.com/ The Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab is here: https://www.bcatlab.org/ Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey Raj Rana Matthew Butler 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 | |||
| Episode 81 - Jessica Aiston & Eltham Hill School students on the language of neurodiversity | 01 Mar 2026 | 00:40:22 | |
Welcome to episode 81 of Lexis, a special student takeover edition which features Freya and Miles from Eltham Hill School in South London in conversation with Dr Jessica Aiston, postdoctoral research assistant in Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London (and who previously appeared on episode 50 talking about critical discourse studies). The episode is all about the language of, and around, neurodiversity, including:
Jess has supplied the following references based on the topics raised in the show:
Jess’s paper on the importance of inclusive linguistics research: Aiston, J., Koteyko, N., & van Driel, M. (2025). Discourse-based approaches to autistic focussed interests: Understanding shared focus, mutual accommodation, and multimodal expression, Applied Linguistics https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amaf006 The project website for Autism in Affinity Spaces can be found here: https://autisminaffinityspaces.org/ Jess on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jessica_Aiston Jess’s work on CDS featured on this episode of Lexis: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/6XMKoRtp90b She has written two pieces for emagazine on CDS and the language of the manosphere: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/emc-magazines/#emagazine Also featured on BBC’s Word of Mouth show with Michael Rosen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002js96 Big thanks to Freya, Miles and their teacher El Power at Eltham Hill for instigating this episode and for all the work around it. Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey Raj Rana Matthew Butler 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 | |||
| Episode 80 - Matthew Hunt on voice pitch | 12 Feb 2026 | 00:46:26 | |
Welcome to episode 80 of Lexis in which Dan and guest interviewer Ben talk to Dr Matthew Hunt, Lecturer of Sociolinguistics, University of Southampton about voice pitch, including:
⚠️Content warning⚠️ We discuss domestic violence and abuse in broad terms in part of this episode. Journal of Sociolinguistics paper on the effect of pitch variation on perceptions of domestic abuse victims: https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12723 The second paper, ‘Gender Penalty? Linguistic Discrimination and Perceptions of Female Football Commentators’ is with Gender & Language and currently in press. We will update the link once it is published. Matthew’s website: https://matthewhuntlinguistics.home.blog/ Matthew’s University of Southampton page: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/626sz2/doctor-matthew-hunt Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 79 - Charlotte Entwistle on language & personality disorders | 06 Feb 2026 | 00:46:05 | |
⚠️Content warning⚠️ We discuss mental health, self-harm and suicide as part of this episode. Welcome to episode 79 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to Dr Charlotte Entwistle, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in Psychology, University of Liverpool. We discuss:
The article in The Conversation that we discuss is here: https://theconversation.com/people-with-personality-disorders-often-use-language-differently-our-research-reveals-how-271109 Charlotte’s university page is here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/charlotte-entwistle | |||
| Episode 78 - John Kelly and the 2025 Words of the Year | 13 Dec 2025 | 00:52:40 | |
Welcome to episode 78 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to John Kelly, former head of content at Dictionary.com, previous contributor to Merriam-Webster and Oxford Dictionaries, emoji lexicographer for Emojipedia, and school teacher. We discuss:
John’s blog is here: https://mashedradish.com/ ‘Fascism’ is here; https://mashedradish.com/2025/11/04/fascism-etymology-of-the-year-2025/ He is also on Bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/mashedradish.bsky.social Some of the WOTY choices we discuss are covered in the articles and posts below: https://theconversation.com/2025s-words-of-the-year-reflect-a-year-of-digital-disillusionment-270769 https://time.com/7334730/word-of-the-year-2025-cambridge-collins-dictionary-oxford-merriam/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewjxqvqzgyo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z9xbh4j
https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/brain-rot-what-the-oxford-word-of https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-words-that-define-our-enshittifed https://bsky.app/profile/hooved-mammal.bsky.social/post/3m7ntojukdc2y Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana 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 | |||
| Episode 77 - Lynne Murphy and the 'Americanisation' of young people's English | 25 Nov 2025 | 00:29:27 | |
Welcome to episode 77 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to Lynne Murphy, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex about a flurry of recent news stories about children’s adoption of American vocabulary (and even accents). We discuss:
Lynne is author of ‘The Prodigal Tongue: the Love–Hate Relationship between British and American English’ , and the Separated by a Common Language blog. You can also find her on Bluesky and other social media platforms under the name Lynneguist. Bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/lynneguist.bsky.social The stories we discuss are here: The Times and Sunday Times feature itself: http://archive.today/9UM7W ‘Trash-talking children are sounding like Americans, say teachers Garbage, candy and apartment are Americanisms that are growing more popular among younger pupils’ Kristina Murkett’s op-ed for The Telegraph, ‘The Americanisation of British English reveals this dark thing about our society Many parents are happy to allow their children consume videos made by companies that have no obligation to care for them’ The Telegraph article links to this absolute stinker of a piece by Simon Heffer from 2024 too, ‘Americanisms are poisoning our language’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/americanism-english-language-simon-heffer/ A more sensible take from Charlotte Crips in The Independent, ‘Mom, can we take the elevator?’ Why I’m fine with my daughter speaking Americanese’ But some quite mixed responses to that piece from their readers: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/americanisms-english-language-british-b2859043.html We mention Ben Yagoda’s book, Gobsmacked https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/gobsmacked-the-british-invasion-of-american-english-ben-yagoda/7669284?ean=9780691262291&next=t and the Guardian featured an extract from it here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/sep/26/other-british-invasion-how-uk-language-conquered-the-us A new one (possibly the worst of the lot) was published in The Spectator between recording the episode and publishing it. You can read the archived version here: https://archive.ph/2025.11.24-063603/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-to-save-the-kings-english/ And we’ve been here before, obviously… Matthew Engel: ‘Say no to the get-go! Americanisms swamping English, so wake up and smell the coffee’ (here, along with some teacher resources and student responses that Jacky and I put together years ago and the actual article: https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/english/AQA-ALEVEL-ENG-HUB-SPR19-PAPER2-BOOKLET.PDF ) Mark Liberman’s response to Engel on Language Log in 2011: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3290 Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 76 - Dani Yin & Cheryl Wakslak on gender and exclamation marks in digital communication | 20 Nov 2025 | 01:00:49 | |
Welcome to episode 76 of Lexis which features Raj & Dan (and guest interviewer & friend of the pod, Amanda Cole) talking about gender and exclamation marks in digital communication with Yidan (Dani) Yin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Organization at the Smeal College of Business, Penn State University and Dr Cheryl Wakslak, Associate Professor of Management and Organization at USC Marshall. Their JESP (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) paper (with Gil Appel): Nice to meet you.(!) Gendered norms in punctuation usage can be found here and is a fascinating read: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/397148363_Nice_to_meet_you_Gendered_norms_in_punctuation_usage We pick up on some of the media coverage of their paper and also reference Deborah Cameron’s blog about the paper and its coverage. Financial Times coverage: https://archive.ph/cCOiL The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/28/exclamation-marks-why-do-women-use-them-three-times-as-much-as-men London Evening Standard: https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/exclamation-marks-female-gender-norms-punctuation-b1255212.html Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2025/09/dont-overthink-your-use-of-exclamation-points Deborah Cameron’s blog: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2025/11/06/enough-already-punctuation-silly-women-and-soundbite-science/ We also mention Gretchen McCulloch’s thoughts on the full-stop: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49182824 Dani Yin: https://sites.google.com/view/yidan-yin Cheryl Wakslak: https://www.marshall.usc.edu/personnel/cheryl-jan-wakslak And then in our Lang in the News segment, Lisa, Jacky and Dan discuss more media tales of the woes of inclusive language and discuss some of these stories: ‘Man the phones’ is offensive, insurers told Trade body accused of ‘pandering to woke dogma’ after issuing language guide advising against use of everyday terms Health trust breached equality commitments over gender neutral language https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wvrl084g7o Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 75 - Teachers' Accents special | 27 Oct 2025 | 01:21:36 | |
Welcome back to Lexis. This is episode 75 and it’s a bumper edition. We pick up on a recent survey of teachers by Teacher Tapp about teachers’ accents and run with it… We talk to teacher, Arun Sharma about his experiences, we interview Alex Baratta, Amanda Cole and Rob Drummond and we discuss the survey results in more detail and cover some other stories about accents in the news. Teacher Tapp’s blog about this: https://teachertapp.com/articles/how-teachers-feel-about-their-accents/ Teacher Tapp: https://teachertapp.com/ The stories we discuss in Lang in the News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv638r2dglo?app-referrer=deep-link Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 74 - Laura Smith-Khan and the language of law | 12 Jun 2025 | 00:44:02 | |
Welcome to Episode 74 of Lexis. Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Laura Smith-Khan, Senior Lecturer - School of Law, University of New England, Australia about…
Laura Smith-Khan’s university profile: https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/law/Dr-Laura-Smith-Khan_Profile Laura is part of the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Research Network - more here: Law and Language – Sharing research, news and events related to law and language as well as the Language on the Move research group - blog and podcast https://www.languageonthemove.com/author/laura/ Some of the studies and research mentioned in the show: Legal literacy in a linguistically diverse society – Language on the Move Learning to speak like a lawyer – Language on the Move Trust and suspicion at the airport – Language on the Move Refugee credibility assessment and the vanishing interpreter – Language on the Move
The post we discussed about judges, clarity and distance: How Judges Think About Language – Language on the Move
The Bluey episode mentioned is Bluey Season 3, Episode 49 | The Sign and the episode’s impact on people looking up road rules received attention from the QLD government and the media, eg What are the rules around children sitting in the front seat of a car? And is it safe? - ABC News
Reading Challenges with lists of recommended books (2025 has yearly links back to 2018): Language on the Move Reading Challenge 2025 – Language on the Move
Category – Language on the Move (posts organized by topic) Authors – Language on the Move (full list of contributors, each with a short bio and link to posts)
Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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
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| Episode 73 - York English Language Toolkit preview 2025 | 07 Jun 2025 | 00:27:16 | |
Welcome to Episode 73 of Lexis. Dan talks to Sam Hellmuth, Catherine Laing, Lauren Harrington and Salina Cuddy about the forthcoming York English Language Toolkit event for A Level English Language teachers. 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 Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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
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| Episode 72 - Karrin Vasby Anderson on gender, politics and power | 02 May 2025 | 00:54:55 | |
Welcome to Episode 72 of Lexis. Raj and Dan talk to Professor Karrin Vasby Anderson, Department of Communication Studies, Colorado State University, USA about:
Karrin’s University of Colorado page: https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/karrin/ The article in The Conversation about Trump and Zelenskyy that we discuss: https://theconversation.com/how-trumps-compulsion-to-dominate-sabotages-dealmaking-undermines-democracy-and-threatens-global-stability-251210 Some of the other articles that Karrin has written that we would recommend: https://theconversation.com/biden-crashes-trump-lies-a-campaign-defining-presidential-debate-232672 ‘Toxic femininity’: https://theconversation.com/the-movie-barbie-has-put-the-phrase-toxic-femininity-back-in-the-news-heres-what-it-means-and-why-you-should-care-205884 Anti-feminist backlash in politics: And the book that she recommends: https://theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/spring-2020/demagoguery-and-democracy/ Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 71 - Mercedes Durham & Welsh English | 22 Mar 2025 | 00:35:28 | |
Welcome to Episode 71 of Lexis. Lisa, Dan and guest presenter Amanda Cole talk to Professor Mercedes Durham, from the Centre for Language and Communication, Cardiff University about her work on Welsh English. We talk about:
Mercedes Durham’s Cardiff University profile page: https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/durhamm Some of the coverage of the ongoing work: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/2684264-whats-occurin-dialects-in-barry,-caerphilly-and-pontypridd-subject-of-academic-study Welsh accents: Is commuting changing how people speak? - BBC News Wenglish: Experts research how the English language is used in day-to-day life in Wales The Traitors: how trustworthy is a Welsh accent? A sociolinguist explains Welsh language: Is mixing with English causing 'erosion'? - BBC News The Speak For Yersel pages: https://speakforyersel.ac.uk/wales/ Mercedes’ favourite book about language: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/language-and-gender-a-reader-2e-j-coates/3651256?ean=9781405191272 Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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
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| Episode 70 - Emma Humphries & prescriptivism | 08 Mar 2025 | 00:50:18 | |
Welcome to Episode 70 of Lexis. Raj and Dan talk to Dr Emma Humphries, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast about all things prescriptivism. We talk about:
Your Wrong website: https://yourwrong.co.uk/ Submit your examples: https://yourwrong.co.uk/submit Contact Emma: popularprescriptivism@gmail.com Emma’s Queen’s University page: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/emma-humphries Emma’s favourite book about language: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/language-myths-laurie-bauer/762943?ean=9780140260236 Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 69 - Natalie Braber & Alice Paver on accent stereotypes | 27 Feb 2025 | 00:37:09 | |
Welcome to Episode 69 of Lexis. Dan is joined by guest interviewer Amanda Cole for this episode as we talk to Dr Natalie Braber, Professor in linguistics at Nottingham Trent University and Alice Paver, Research Assistant at the Phonetics Laboratory, University of Cambridge about their new paper, ‘Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts: listener perceptions of social traits and types of behaviour’. We talk about:
⚠️As part of the discussion, we touch on issues of criminality, including sexual assault⚠️ Alice Paver’s profile page: https://www.phonetics.mmll.cam.ac.uk/staff/alice-paver Natalie Braber’s profile page: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/arts-humanities/natalie-braber Their paper (with David Wright and Nikolas Pautz): https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1462013/full Some of the media coverage: The Traitors: Why Charlotte’s fake Welsh accent could be a stroke of genius | The Independent Cambridge study raises concern about regional accents stereotypes - BBC News UK's hierarchy of accents: 'I thought mine made me sound stupid' - BBC News Jorja Smith puts hometown accent on map Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 68 - Tony Thorne on the new words of 2024 & 2025 | 08 Feb 2025 | 00:40:26 | |
Show notes for Episode 68 Here are the show notes for Episode 68, in which Lisa, Jacky, Raj and Dan talk to lexicographer extraordinaire, connoisseur of coinages and expert slangster, Tony Thorne,Language consultant at King’s College London, about the words of 2024, those on his radar for 2025 and what new words tell us (or don’t) about the world we live in today. We talk about:
As part of the discussion, we touch on some explicit language and themes of an adult and politically controversial nature. Tony’s website:https://language-and-innovation.com/ Tony’s 2024 piece for The Conversation:https://theconversation.com/most-words-of-the-year-dont-actually-tell-us-about-the-state-of-the-world-heres-what-id-pick-instead-246190 And Tony’s 2023 piece:https://theconversation.com/im-an-expert-in-slang-here-are-my-picks-for-word-of-the-year-218286 We talk about words featured in some of the following articles: Collins WOTY brat:https://www.collinsdictionary.com/woty Charli XCX's Brat crowned Collins Dictionary word of the year - BBC News Telegraph on brat:http://archive.today/2024.11.01-074903/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/01/brat-collins-dictionary-charli-xcx-eras/ The Times on brat:http://archive.today/2024.11.01-004723/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/collins-word-of-the-year-brat-20m337nhc Celebrities make ‘manifest’ appear as 2024 word of the year | Social media | The Guardian 2024 Word of the Year Is “Rawdog” - American Dialect Society How did ‘rawdogging’ become part of polite conversation? | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian Dictionary Dot Com WOTYdemure:https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year-2024/ Macquarie WOTYenshittification:https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/26/enshittification-macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-explained https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/arts/brain-rot-oxford-word.html (alternative link:http://archive.today/2024.12.03-205352/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/arts/brain-rot-oxford-word.html ) OUP on Oxford WOTY:https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/ ‘Brain rot’: Oxford word of the year 2024 reflects ‘trivial’ use of social media Dan’s for Byline Times:https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/brain-rot-what-the-oxford-word-of (alt link:http://archive.today/2024.12.06-210125/https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/brain-rot-what-the-oxford-word-of ) Dan’s piece for Byline Times piece on ‘enshittification’:The Words That Define Our 'Enshittified' World alt link:http://archive.today/2024.11.16-094738/https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-words-that-define-our-enshittifed 2024 Word of the Year | School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics Nancy Friedman:https://bsky.app/profile/fritinancy.bsky.social Lexis is on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog:https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter:Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: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 | |||
| Episode 67 - Joe McVeigh on how to spot a bad linguistics article | 22 Dec 2024 | 00:52:50 | |
Show notes for Episode 67 Here are the show notes for Episode 67, in which Jacky and Dan talk to Joe McVeigh, Senior Lecturer in Communication at the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, PhD candidate at University of Helsinki and formerly a Linguistics lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland about how to spot (and critique) a bad linguistics article, including how to look at: 1) misleading framing 2) contradictions, and 3) no evidence (or anecdotal evidence). The articles we discuss are here and we’d recommend reading them before listening! FT article on Liberals Speak a Different Language: https://www.ft.com/content/cd01b007-7156-4da4-8d0f-e34e9ebfcc82 Archived version here: http://archive.today/2024.11.16-063838/https://www.ft.com/content/cd01b007-7156-4da4-8d0f-e34e9ebfcc82 The thread on Bluesky that started this: https://bsky.app/profile/eviljoemcveigh.bsky.social/post/3lbu6quucdc2v The Atlantic article on ‘How social media broke slang’ is here: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/06/social-media-american-slang-crisis/678754/ Joe's website: Joe's recommended reading: William Labov, ‘Dialect Diversity in America’: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vrCKA3TDDrMC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false And he also talked about Mary Bucholtz. This is a good place to start with her work: Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 66 - Andreea Calude & the language of social media | 01 Dec 2024 | 00:41:57 | |
Here are the show notes for Episode 66, in which Raj and Dan talk to Dr Andreea Calude, author of The Linguistics of Social Media: an introduction (Routledge, 2024). Andreea is Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Waikato, in New Zealand, Associate of the Human Lang Tech Research Centre in Romania, and Lennoy chair in multilingualism at VUB in Brussels. Our conversation includes discussion of
The Linguistics of Social Media: An Introduction - 1st Edition Dimensions of Register Variation BBC Radio 4 - Word of Mouth, Social media language Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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
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| Episode 65 - Jullietta Stoencheva on everyday extremism | 23 Nov 2024 | 00:28:12 | |
Here are the show notes for Episode 65, in which Raj and Dan talk to Jullietta Stoencheva, PhD candidate in Media and Communication Studies at Malmo University about:
The Psychologist article about the everyday extremism project: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/memes-and-mugs-everyday-extremism-digital-mainstream More about the OppAttune project: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/how-to-participate/org-details/927578603/project/101095170/program/43108390/details JM Berger’s Extremism: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535878/extremism/ Jullietta’s NordMedia page: https://nordmedianetwork.org/researchers/jullietta-stoencheva/ Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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
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| Episode 64 - Katie Mansfield on working-class children & standard English in the classroom | 14 Nov 2024 | 00:51:31 | |
Show notes for Episode 64 Here are the show notes for Episode 64, in which Raj and Dan talk to Katie Mansfield, PhD Researcher at The University of Sheffield & Lecturer in Education at The University of Gloucestershire about:
Katie’s ResearchGate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Katie-Mansfield University of Sheffield Alumni profile: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/english/undergraduate/alumni-profiles/katie-mansfield A discussion of the research methodologies used in this PhD project: https://beonlineconference.com/do-differences-in-working-memory-and-executive-functioning-affect-the-use-of-standard-english-in-working-class-childrens-speech/ The Meghan Markle research: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363693792_The_Architecture_of_Racism_Sexism_and_Misogyny_A_Critical_Discourse_Analysis_of_the_Representation_of_Meghan_Markle_by_the_British_Press Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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
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| Episode 63 - Isobelle Clarke and anti-science discourses | 07 Nov 2024 | 00:40:58 | |
Show notes for Episode 63 Here are the show notes for Episode 63, in which Raj and Dan talk to Dr Isobelle Clarke, Lecturer in Security and Protection Science in the Dept of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University about:
Isobelle Clarke’s Lancaster University page: https://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/people/isobelle-clarke(447fc73a-d7fa-4f7b-922e-604f12549485).html Media Bias Fact Check: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ LancsBox: https://lancsbox.lancs.ac.uk/ The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/ The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/ Peter Hotez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hotez Kate Fox, Watching the English: https://dauntbooks.co.uk/shop/books/watching-the-english/ The Routledge Handbook of Discourse and Disinformation Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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
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| Episode 62 - Fiona McPherson and 20 Years of Oxford WOTY | 01 Nov 2024 | 00:29:20 | |
Show notes for Episode 62 Here are the show notes for Episode 62, in which Raj and Dan talk to Fiona McPherson, senior editor at the Oxford English Dictionary about:
20 Years of Words that Reflect our World: https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/ Our 2023 conversation with Fiona: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lexispodcast/episodes/Episode-47---Fiona-McPherson-of-the-OED-and-Words-of-the-Year-2023-e2db526 Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 We are on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
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| Episode 61 - Lucy Jones on Words We Live By: A Guide to LGBTQ+ Language | 16 Oct 2024 | 00:35:47 | |
Show notes for Episode 61 Here are the show notes for Episode 61, in which Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Lucy Jones, Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at the University of Nottingham about Words We Live By: A Guide to LGBTQ+ Language, including:
The project webpage is here: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/cral/projects/words-we-live-by/about.aspx Lucy Jones’ University of Nottingham profile page: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/people/lucy.jones Our previous episode with Lucy is here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1m9UKNUUysD6Vawj61C2kW?si=3LdfVQjEREaUvWgxopxLEg
Thanks to Ali Cotton (and friends) for some question suggestions and input. Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 60 - Stylistics with Peter Stockwell and Jessica Norledge | 10 Oct 2024 | 00:39:11 | |
Show notes for Episode 60 Here are the show notes for Episode 60, in which Raj and Dan talk to Peter Stockwell, Professor of Literary Linguistics at the University of Nottingham and Jessica Norledge, Assistant Professor in Stylistics at the University of Nottingham about stylistics, including:
The (free!) Nottingham Stylistics Toolkit is here: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/common/stylisticstoolkit/StylisticsToolkit/content/#/ Peter Stockwell’s University of Nottingham profile page: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/people/peter.stockwell Jessica Norledge’s University of Nottingham profile page: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/people/jessica.norledge Our previous interview with Jess about the language of dystopia: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3gnJ0ZiPSKkXvzx3G6HRDe?si=A6u-5LwHQ7avOIMHAxe6Eg Pocahontas Colors of the Wind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i0HDygKdLM Carol Ann Duffy reads Valentine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFhFgyImwtE Jess and Peter will be running some teacher CPD with Dan at The English and Media Centre in London in December and January. You can find out more here: Reading fictional minds: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/courses/61cd442a-68d2-4cd2-a172-f2a4d2206d31/emc-cpd-face-to-face-reading-fictional-minds-viewpoints-character-in-english-lan/ And keep an eye out for an A-Level Lang Lit student conference in April 2025 at University of Nottingham. Contributors Lisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton blog: 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 | |||
| Episode 59 - York English Language Toolkit 2024 | 06 Jul 2024 | 00:41:31 | |
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
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| Episode 58 - Vaclav Brezina and the new Frequency Dictionary of British English | 26 Jun 2024 | 00:30:02 | |
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:
Vaclav’s University page: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/vaclav-brezina Some coverage of the research and the publication: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/03/english-language-use-more-informal-words-linguistics/
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| Episode 57 - Lang in the News and Johanna Gerwin on MLE | 23 May 2024 | 00:57:08 | |
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:
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.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 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
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| Episode 56 - Danielle Turton and dialect study | 03 May 2024 | 00:35:39 | |
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:
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 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
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| Episode 55 - Christian Ilbury and online language | 30 Apr 2024 | 00:38:40 | |
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:
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 “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
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| Episode 54 - Florent Moncomble | 24 Apr 2024 | 00:48:57 | |
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:
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: 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
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| Episode 53 - Language Awareness at School with Tim Marr & Steve Collins | 05 Apr 2024 | 00:39:14 | |
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:
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 | |||
| Episode 52 - Migration discourses with Charlotte Taylor & Ana Gavalas | 27 Mar 2024 | 01:11:01 | |
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:
We also talk to Ana Gavalas of the Migrants’ Rights Network about:
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
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| Episode 51 - Emily M. Bender and 'AI' hype | 19 Mar 2024 | 00:33:07 | |
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:
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 | |||
| Episode 50 - Jess Aiston and Critical Discourse Analysis | 08 Feb 2024 | 00:57:38 | |
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:
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
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 | |||
| Episode 49 - Ife Thompson and Black British English | 07 Feb 2024 | 00:53:42 | |
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:
BLAM (UK): https://blamuk.org/ “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.” “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
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| Episode 48 - Frazer Heritage on representation of gender in videogames (and more) | 24 Jan 2024 | 00:49:28 | |
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:
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
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| Episode 47 - Fiona McPherson of the OED and Words of the Year 2023 | 16 Dec 2023 | 00:28:06 | |
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:
Some of the best articles and updates about #WOTY2023 can be found here: AI named word of the year by Collins Dictionary - BBC News Rizz named word of the year 2023 by Oxford University Press - BBC News 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… Word of the Year 2023 | Authentic | Merriam-Webster » 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
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| Episode 46 - Paul Kerswill & MLE | 26 Nov 2023 | 00:41:55 | |
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:
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
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| Episode 45 - Alex Baratta and accentism | 11 Nov 2023 | 00:42:40 | |
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:
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 https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/clarifying-accent-standards-for-british-teachers Yours Sincerely is dead… The Guardian: And in the Mail: Attempts to promote inclusive language in European languages What’s in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe #WOTY2023 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
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| Episode 44 - Kingsley Ugwuanyi + Amanda Cole | 06 Nov 2023 | 01:08:27 | |
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:
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 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://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 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
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| Episode 43 - language & gender special part 2 | 27 Jul 2023 | 00:40:34 | |
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 Corpus for Schools | Corpus resources for A-level English Language and English Language Teaching 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
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| Episode 42 - Deborah Cameron, language & gender special part 1 | 16 Jul 2023 | 00:56:48 | |
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:
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 Some 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 | |||
| Episode 41 - Johanna Gerwin and London English | 26 Jun 2023 | 00:45:59 | |
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:
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
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| Episode 40 - York English Language Toolkit | 07 Jun 2023 | 00:56:35 | |
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:
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 | |||
| Episode 39: Dan Collen on weaponized laughter memes & Heddwen Newton on Lang in the News | 28 May 2023 | 01:07:19 | |
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:
🚩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
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| Episode 38 - Anna Islentyeva and the representation of masculinity in advertising | 23 Apr 2023 | 00:48:29 | |
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:
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: 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 | |||
| Episode 37 - Heidi Colthup and the language of gaming | 25 Mar 2023 | 00:52:59 | |
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:
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
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. Interesting piece on pronouns and language change
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| Episode 36 - Claire Hardaker and forensic linguistics | 30 Dec 2022 | 00:59:20 | |
Here are the show notes for Episode 36, in which Dan and Lisa talk to Dr Claire Hardaker about:
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 ‘Goblin mode’: new Oxford word of the year speaks to the times | Language | 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 | |||
| Episode 35 - an opinion articles special with Harriet Williamson | 23 Dec 2022 | 00:59:34 | |
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:
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/ Amol Rajan’s initial points reported here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/27/amol-rajan-accuses-bbc-posh-having-accent-bias | |||
| Episode 34 - Arran Stibbe and ecolinguistics | 26 Nov 2022 | 00:46:36 | |
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:
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 | |||