Lexis

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:http://archive.today/2025.09.23-223722/https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/sex-relationships/article/it-only-took-a-term-at-oxford-for-my-grimsby-accent-to-go-posh-z52g9pqfh https://archive.ph/2025.10.05-173953/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/why-actors-are-ditching-queens-english-for-their-old-regional-accents-rtr29rcdt https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv638r2dglo?app-referrer=deep-linkLexis 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 74 of Lexis. Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Laura Smith-Khan, Senior Lecturer - School of Law, University of New England, Australia about…How she got into the linguistics of lawWhere and how law and language overlapClarity, accuracy and the power dynamics in legal languageMigration, borders, refugees and the lawAssessing ‘credibility’ and some of the processes of refugee lawCritically assessing media discourses around migrationLaura Smith-Khan’s university profile: https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/law/Dr-Laura-Smith-Khan_ProfileLaura is part of the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Research Network - more here: Law and Language – Sharing research, news and events related to law and languageas 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 MoveTrust and suspicion at the airport – Language on the MoveRefugee 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 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 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 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 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 howPower and politicsToxic masculinity & TrumpGender and politicsThe ‘double-bind’ for women in politicsThe Presidential debates of 2016 and 2024Language, demagoguery & healthy democracies. 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/americas-dad-vs-the-manosphere-walz-vance-debate-highlights-two-versions-of-masculinity-240319 https://theconversation.com/kamala-harris-effectively-baited-donald-trump-during-the-debate-drawing-out-his-insecure-white-masculinity-238850 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: https://theconversation.com/watch-more-tv-to-understand-the-backlash-against-the-women-in-the-running-for-vice-president-143725 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 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 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 distinctiveVarieties of Welsh English and how they’ve come to beAttitudes to Welsh English accentsThe power of Gavin and StaceyCharlotte from The TraitorsThe Speak For Yersel project that links Welsh English to other varieties around the UK and IrelandMercedes 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 NewsWenglish: 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 explainsWelsh language: Is mixing with English causing 'erosion'? - BBC News   The Speak For Yersel pages:https://speakforyersel.ac.uk/wales/ University of Glasgow - Colleges - College of Arts & Humanities - About Us - College of Arts & Humanities news - Your voice needed as language survey expands to Ireland and 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 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 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