Episode 58 - Vaclav Brezina and the new Frequency Dictionary of British English

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 

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 Why stylistics is a linguistic superpower 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:  Non-fiction: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/courses/acbaed53-8a27-48cc-96b5-db6ce1b1995f/emc-cpd-face-to-face-new-approaches-to-non-fiction-for-a-level-lang-lit/ 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 

Show notes for Episode 59 Here are the show notes for Episode 59, in which Dan talks to Sam Hellmuth, Professor of Linguistics at the University of York about the 2024 York English Language Toolkit workshop. We also talk to Eytan Zweig and James Tompkinson about their sessions.  You can sign up here:  https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops  Previous workshops and case studies are here:  https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Show notes for Episode 58 Here are the show notes for Episode 58, in which Dan talks to Professor of Corpus Linguistics, Dr Vaclav Brezina of Lancaster University about: The new Frequency Dictionary of British English What certain words can tell us about a changing language Using corpora to track change Why we need more than just words to understand patterns of language change  Why media discourses around change might need to be treated with caution Vaclav’s University page:  https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/vaclav-brezina  Some coverage of the research and the publication:  https://portal.lancaster.ac.uk/intranet/news/article/sonew-dictionary-sheds-light-on-frequency-of-words-in-british-english    https://theconversation.com/tea-weather-and-being-on-time-analysis-of-100-million-words-reveals-what-brits-talk-about-most-222088  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/03/english-language-use-more-informal-words-linguistics/ 

Show notes for Episode 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 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.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/05/north-yorkshires-dropped-apostrophe-for-street-signs-upsets-residents  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  Abi’s essay: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YKBmHSxWvQ1Uku44cYEqJxsc0j0B2eiH/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110439791983693362630&rtpof=true&sd=true  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 

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.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  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/lancashire-north-west-blackburn-jane-horrocks-england-b2470464.html  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/28/strong-r-sound-of-some-lancashire-accents-in-danger-of-dying-out  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 

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 people, online language and technology His continuing work on MLE and why ‘MLE’ is still a useful term 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  https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/apr/09/bait-ting-certi-how-uk-rap-changed-the-language-of-the-nation “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 

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 counterparts.  What French linguists are doing to address these misunderstandings and misrepresentations.  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:  https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/la-langue-anglaise-n-existe-pas-un-linguiste-provoque-avec-humour-les-britanniques-20240311   https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/08/english-is-not-a-language-its-just-badly-spoken-french/ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13181993/English-exist-badly-pronounced-French-linguist.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