Episode 68 - Tony Thorne on the new words of 2024 & 2025

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 definedPrescriptivism in French and English and the role of the AcademyThe Your Wrong project that Emma is working onPrescriptivism in popular culture and traditional guides, manuals and grammarsWhy prescriptivism and descriptivism are not locked in a war and why it’s more than a goodies vs baddies, left vs right binaryThe kinds of arguments prescriptivists put forwardWhy complaints about language are often - but not always - proxies for complaints about peopleHow to convert a prescriptivistHow to get involved in the Your Wrong projectYour Wrong website: https://yourwrong.co.uk/ Submit your examples: https://yourwrong.co.uk/submit Contact Emma: [email protected] 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 ContributorsLisa 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/JackyGlanceyRaj RanaMatthew 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 

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 and more expansive Criminality and morality in relation to accent attitudes  The rise (and fall) of Brummie 😕 The real world, legal implications of accent prejudice What happens in a voice parade⚠️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 IndependentCambridge study raises concern about regional accents stereotypes - BBC News People with working-class accents more likely to be suspected of committing crimes | UK criminal justice | The Guardian 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 ContributorsLisa 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/JackyGlanceyRaj RanaMatthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Show notes for Episode 68Here 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 2024Why WOTY generates interest and column inchesWhat didn’t make the cutWhat’s driving lexical changeWhy new words aren’t all about fun and frivolityWhat the words that are bubbling under for 2025 tell us about the year that could be to comeAs 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 Brat, delulu and raw-dogging make Collins dictionary 2024 - can you decode this Gen Z slang? - Mirror OnlineCharli XCX's Brat crowned Collins Dictionary word of the year - BBC NewsTelegraph 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 mediaDan’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 ‘Government by the worst’: why people are calling Trump’s new sidekicks a ‘kakistocracy’ | Trump administration | The Guardian Words of the year: maybe I’m delulu, but these don’t seem like words people actually use | Crosswords | The Guardian Nancy Friedman:https://bsky.app/profile/fritinancy.bsky.social Lexis is on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social ContributorsLisa 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/JackyGlanceyRaj Rana & Matthew Butler Twitter:https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive:https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Show notes for Episode 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: https://eviljoemcveigh.com/  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: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/White_Kids.html?id=mtqrQIzIM4wC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y  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 

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 affordances of different platforms Constructing & performing identity online Using ‘move analysis’ with social media texts Media discourses about social media The Linguistics of Social Media: An Introduction - 1st Edition  Dr. Andreea Calude  The Language Game  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  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys

Here are the show notes for Episode 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/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  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys

Show notes for Episode 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 standard English and how they affect classroom practice, especially for working-class students How her A-Level study prepared her for degree and post-graduate work in linguistics Katie’s previous work on representations of Meghan Markle in the UK press  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  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys

Show notes for Episode 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 in the UK press Dealing with difficult data and problematic topics 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 https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Discourse-and-Disinformation/Maci-Demata-McGlashan-Seargeant/p/book/9781032124254  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 

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 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  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys

Show notes for Episode 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 conversations around this language to learn more  Advice for navigating the changing, choppy and sometimes contentious waters of the language of sexual identity in the A-Level classroom 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