Lexis

Welcome to Episode 87 of Lexis in which Neil and Dan talk to Sam Hellmuth, Professor of Linguistics at University of York and Devyani Sharma, Professor of Language and Communication at University of Oxford about the 2026 York English Language Toolkit sessions at York.  We talk about: What the York English Language Toolkit is and what it’s designed to do.  What’s on this year. The Generations of Lo...

Show notes for Episode 86 ⚠️🤬⚠️Contains swearing (obvs) and quite a lot of it…handled seriously and with academic rigour (🧐)⚠️🤬⚠️ Welcome to episode 86 of Lexis in which we go in mob-handed with 5 (count ‘em!) interviewers and Dr Chris Montgomery, Senior Lecturer in Dialectology in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. Lisa, Jacky, Dan, Amanda and guest interviewer, Neil Hutchin...

  Show notes for Episode 85 ⚠️⚠️⚠️We talk about some topics and forms of language - the language of incels and the manosphere, for example - that might be considered unpleasant and upsetting for some listeners⚠️⚠️⚠️ Welcome to episode 85 of Lexis in which Dan talks to Dr Rob Topinka, Reader in Digital Media and Rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London. We talk about:  Why language is important t...

Welcome to episode 84 of Lexis in which we have both an interview and a Lang in the News segment. Amanda and Dan talk to Dr Daria Bahtina, Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at UCLA about a lot of things, including: Generational slang and online vernacular Whether any slang is ever truly ‘meaningless’ The rapid pace of slang generation, diffusion and disappearance in an online wo...

Welcome to episode 83 of Lexis, another student-led episode, which this time features Oli, an A Level student at the Dubai British School interviewing Dr Sarah Hopkyns, with some help from Dan. Sarah is a Lecturer in TESOL and International Education at the University of St Andrews, Lecturer (Teaching) in Intercultural Communication at the Institute of Education, UCL and Visiting Research Fellow a...

Welcome to episode 82 of Lexis, in which Raj, Dan and (guest interviewer and friend of the pod) Amanda Cole talk to Dr Rianna Walcott, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, and Associate Director of the Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab. We discuss her 2023 PhD, A Tweet at the Table - Black British Identity Expression on Social Media . We talk about: Black...

Welcome to episode 81 of Lexis, a special student takeover edition which features Freya and Miles from Eltham Hill School in South London in conversation with Dr Jessica Aiston, postdoctoral research assistant in Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London (and who previously appeared on episode 50 talking about critical discourse studies). The episode is all about the language of, and around,...

Welcome to episode 80 of Lexis in which Dan and guest interviewer Ben talk to Dr Matthew Hunt, Lecturer of Sociolinguistics, University of Southampton about voice pitch, including: What it is and how we measure it What it ‘means’, including its ‘social meaning potential’ The judgements that we make about pitch and why these matter Gendered perceptions of pitch His work on domestic violence cases a...

⚠️ Content warning ⚠️ We discuss mental health, self-harm and suicide as part of this episode.  Welcome to episode 79 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to Dr Charlotte Entwistle, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in Psychology, University of Liverpool. We discuss: Her path from A levels to research How language analysis can be used in psychology What language reveals about our minds and h...

Welcome to episode 78 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to John Kelly, former head of content at Dictionary.com, previous contributor to Merriam-Webster and Oxford Dictionaries, emoji lexicographer for Emojipedia, and school teacher. We discuss: How WOTY decisions were made at Dictionary.com Whether we should celebrate WOTY for getting us talking about words, or be cynical about it as a marketi...

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...

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 Or...

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...

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 Crit...

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 o...

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, demagog...

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 h...

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 pop...

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...

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...

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)...

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...

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...

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 metho...

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: inc...