Welcome to Episode 72 of Lexis. Raj and Dan talk to Professor Karrin Vasby Anderson, Department of Communication Studies, Colorado State University, USA about: Communication studies - what kinds of communication are studied and how Power and politics Toxic masculinity & Trump Gender and politics The ‘double-bind’ for women in politics The Presidential debates of 2016 and 2024 Language, demagoguery & healthy democracies. Karrin’s University of Colorado page: https://www.libarts.colostate....
May 02, 2025•55 min
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: The Leverhulme Trust project "Sociolinguistic Variation in South East Wales: Change and Contact" What makes Welsh English distinctive Varieties of Welsh English and how they’ve come to be Attitudes to Welsh English accents The power of Gavin and Stacey Charlotte fro...
Mar 22, 2025•35 min
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: What prescriptivism is and how it can de defined Prescriptivism in French and English and the role of the Academy The Your Wrong project that Emma is working on Prescriptivism in popular culture and traditional guides, manuals and grammars Why prescriptivism and descriptivism are no...
Mar 08, 2025•50 min
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: Previous accent attitude research What makes their research different an...
Feb 27, 2025•37 min
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: The WOTY lists of 2024 Why WOTY generates interest and column inches What didn’t make the cut What’s driving lexical ...
Feb 08, 2025•40 min
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 di...
Dec 22, 2024•53 min
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 How we use social media for different purposes and for different audiences The afford...
Dec 01, 2024•42 min
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: Extremist narratives and how they are constructed Who the ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ are in extremist Us vs Them narratives Everyday extremism, plausible deniability and ‘borderline discourse’ Pushing the Overton window Her latest work and what it reveals The Psychologist article about the everyday extremism project: https://www.bps.org.uk/ps...
Nov 23, 2024•28 min
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: Her research on working-class children, non-standard English and style shifting at school Combining approaches from linguistics and psychology to develop a suitable methodology Working memory, executive function and style shifting School and government policies on stand...
Nov 14, 2024•52 min
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: Anti-science discourses The language of climate change denialism The attraction and appeal of anti-science narratives Methodologies for analysing discourses: including why linguists still need to interpret patterns Exploring discourses around Islam and Muslims i...
Nov 07, 2024•41 min
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 Oxford Word of the Year Why she can’t reveal any secrets about WOTY2024… Why some words stick around and others don’t What makes a good WOTY candidate Word formation processes Where and how new words are being generated and disseminated 20 Years of Words that Reflect our World: https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/ Our ...
Nov 01, 2024•29 min
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: Why language labels are so important when discussing sexuality and sexual identity Whether or not such labels categorise and divide more than they validate and unite The expanding lexicon of LGBT terminology and initialisms Why it’s important to start c...
Oct 16, 2024•36 min
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: What stylistics is and what it offers How English language students can apply linguistic analysis to literary texts The Nottingham Stylistics Toolkit project Some of their favourite tools in the toolkit Wh...
Oct 10, 2024•39 min
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://livingth...
Jul 06, 2024•42 min
Show notes for Episode 58 Here are the show notes for Episode 58, in which Dan talks to Professor of Corpus Linguistics, Dr Vaclav Brezina of Lancaster University about: The new Frequency Dictionary of British English What certain words can tell us about a changing language Using corpora to track change Why we need more than just words to understand patterns of language change Why media discourses around change might need to be treated with caution Vaclav’s University page: https://www.lancaster...
Jun 26, 2024•30 min
Show notes for Episode 57 Here are the show notes for Episode 57, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk about some recent Lang in the News, including: Apostrophes and why their disappearance has signalled the end of civilisation Johanna Gerwin’s new paper on how MLE and ‘Jafaican’ have been ‘enregistered’ in the UK press Some articles about MLE A really good student answer to a question on MLE (thanks, Abi 😁 ) And then straight after that, Raj and Dan talk to the actual Dr Johanna Gerwin about her ...
May 23, 2024•57 min
Here are the show notes for Episode 56, in which Raj and Dan talk to Dr Danielle Turton, Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics at Lancaster University and Principal Investigator for a Leverhulme funded project on Lancashire rhoticity. We talk about: Dialect levelling and why it’s a complicated picture Why researching UK dialects is so interesting What’s happening to rhoticity in the North West (and beyond) Media discourses around dialect change Danielle Turton’s Lancaster page: https://www.lancast...
May 03, 2024•36 min
Here are the show notes for Episode 55, in which Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Christian Ilbury, Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at The University of Edinburgh about: Being an online linguist Social media and language change - why it’s complicated Why ‘slang’ is an unhelpful word and why ‘internet vernacular’ is a better term for the kind of styles he is looking at Appropriation and diffusion Media discourses about young peopl...
Apr 30, 2024•39 min
Here are the show notes for Episode 54, in which Raj and Dan talk to Dr Florent Moncomble, Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics at University of Artois, France about what English and French have in common and all the discourses swirling around French that are also relevant to English, including: The role of L’Académie Française Prescriptivism in French and English Complaints about decline, destruction, young people and migration and why they use the same language proxies as their English count...
Apr 24, 2024•49 min
Show notes for Episode 53 Here are the show notes for Episode 53, an episode aimed primarily at teachers, in which Jacky and Dan talk to Steve Collins (Head of English at Bishop Luffa School, Chichester) and Tim Marr (Visiting Professor at Icesi University, Cali, Colombia) about the ideas in their book, Language Awareness at School: A Practical Guide for Teachers and School Leaders, published in May 2023 by Routledge, including: The importance of language education across the curriculum Why lang...
Apr 05, 2024•39 min
Show notes for Episode 52 Here are the show notes for Episode 52, a migration discourses bumper episode, in which we feature two interviews. First off, Dan and Raj talk to Professor Charlotte Taylor of the University of Sussex about: Why corpus linguistics can refresh the parts other approaches cannot reach Discourses around migration and the metaphors that are often used - water, commodity and them/us Why discourses around migration are usually about immigration Why nostalgia is such a powerful...
Mar 27, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Show notes for Episode 51 Here are the show notes for Episode 51, in which Dan and (new Lexis team member) Raj talk to Professor Emily M. Bender of the University of Washington about: Why ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is not really the right term at all How Large Language Models work and why we should be sceptical of many of the claims made for them The biases inherent in LLMs and what to do about them Whether ‘neural networks’ and language processing can shed any light on child language development...
Mar 19, 2024•33 min
Show notes for Episode 50 Here are the show notes for Episode 50, in which Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Jessica Aiston of QMUL about: Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Studies Why CDA/CDS are such useful approaches for A Level English Language students Some of the most useful elements of the CDA toolkit and why they’re helpful The work that Jess has done on the representation of women by men in the manosphere Using critical discourse approaches with social media data The ethics of u...
Feb 08, 2024•58 min
Show notes for Episode 49 Here are the show notes for Episode 49, in which Jacky and Dan talk to lawyer, community activist and author, Ife Thompson, about: Black British English Linguistic justice in schools, courts and the rest of the world Anti-Blackness in discourses about language in the media Drill lyrics and the criminalisation of Black cultural expression Why we should give Black people their flowers for lexical innovation and their huge influence on British English Why MLE is the wrong ...
Feb 07, 2024•54 min
Show notes for Episode 48 Here are the show notes for Episode 48, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Frazer Heritage of Manchester Metropolitan University about: Representation of gender in video games What’s changed in the representation of gender and sexuality in video games since the 1980s Language methods for analysing representation Analysing how incels construct representations of gender Dealing with difficult data Frazer’s staff profile at MMU: Dr Frazer Heritage | Manchester Metropo...
Jan 24, 2024•49 min
Show notes for Episode 47 Here are the show notes for Episode 47, in which Dan talks to Fiona McPherson of the Oxford English Dictionary about: Word of the Year 2023 What makes a good word of the year Previous winners (and losers) What new words can tell us about the world Some of the best articles and updates about #WOTY2023 can be found here: ‘AI’ named most notable word of 2023 by Collins dictionary | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian AI named word of the year by Collins Dictionary ...
Dec 16, 2023•28 min
Show notes for Episode 46 Here are the show notes for Episode 46, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to Paul Kerswill, Emeritus Professor, Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York about what has driven his interests in linguistics, but mostly about Multicultural London English: What it is How it developed How it’s used now How it’s been reported on (and why it’s not ‘Jafaican’) The discourses and metaphors around it What it might sound like in the future Paul’s Univ...
Nov 26, 2023•42 min
Show notes for Episode 45 Here are the show notes for Episode 45, in which we talk to Dr Alex Baratta, Senior Lecturer in Language, Linguistics & Communication, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester about: Accents, accents… and more accents! Teacher accents and ‘professionalism’ Social connotations and stereotypes of accents - good and bad Why one accent isn’t ‘better’ than another and why exposure to accents might be the way to overcome accentism In our regular Lang in...
Nov 11, 2023•43 min
Show notes for Episode 44 Here are the show notes for Episode 44, in which we talk to Dr Kingsley Ugwuanyi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Horizon Europe’s RISE UP Research Project, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS about: Nigerian English Global Englishes and who ‘owns’ a language Accent attitudes and identity Models and theories of world Englishes In a Lang in the News bumper segment we talk about recent research into young people’s accents in the south east of England and m...
Nov 06, 2023•1 hr 8 min
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/P...
Jul 27, 2023•41 min
