Lexis

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: What these stories are about and whether we can even tell if this 'Americanisation' is happening The main themes in them and their precursors in previous panics about ‘Americanisation’  The discourses within and behind these stories What motivates them and how to approach them critically  How British English is also making its way into American English 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’ http://archive.today/cZ4kF  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’ https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/americanism-english-children-b2857680.html  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 

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 http://archive.today/dLoSb  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 

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-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 

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 law Where and how law and language overlap Clarity, accuracy and the power dynamics in legal language Migration, borders, refugees and the law Assessing ‘credibility’ and some of the processes of refugee law Critically assessing media discourses around migration 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  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  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

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.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  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 

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 from The Traitors The Speak For Yersel project that links Welsh English to other varieties around the UK and Ireland 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/  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  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

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 not locked in a war and why it’s more than a goodies vs baddies, left vs right binary The kinds of arguments prescriptivists put forward Why complaints about language are often - but not always - proxies for complaints about people How to convert a prescriptivist How to get involved in the Your Wrong project 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 

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 Independent Cambridge 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  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 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 change Why new words aren’t all about fun and frivolity What the words that are bubbling under for 2025 tell us about the year that could be to come 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/  We talk about words featured in some of the following articles:  Collins WOTY brat:https://www.collinsdictionary.com/woty  Mirror article on brat:Brat, delulu and raw-dogging make Collins dictionary 2024 - can you decode this Gen Z slang? - Mirror Online BBC on brat: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  Cambridge Dictionary’s WOTY (manifest) :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 WOTY demure:https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year-2024/    Macquarie WOTY enshittification: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 WOTYhttps://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/  Guardian on Oxford WOTY:‘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  Australian National Dictionary Centre’s WOTY (Colesworth):2024 Word of the Year | School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics  Kakistocracy:‘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  BBC News - Word of the Year: Kindness wins children's 2024 vote - BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cre8q4r38edo  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 

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  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  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/