Word of Mouth

Professor Steven Pinker joins Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright in the studio for a wide-ranging talk about his love of, and life working in, language. Steven is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and he's come up with some of the biggest and most exciting ideas about language. His books include The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and most recently, The Sense of Style:...

It's an experience we've all had - desperately trying to recall a word. You might know the letter it begins with, the letter it ends with, but it just won't pop into your head. So how will Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright cope as we try and induce this most frustrating state: Tip of the Tongue? They are put under the spotlight by psychologist Dr Meredith Shafto, and try to find ways round it with...

We take it for granted that we can maintain our friendships and family relationships now in so many ways: phone, voicemail, email, text, instant message, Facebook, Skype.. but do we have any idea of the effects of these very different modes of communication? Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright look at research into their emotional impact. Leslie Seltzer is Research Associate at the University of Wis...

Michael Rosen & Laura Wright hear about Mouthpiece, a project in which composer Jennifer Bell has been given access to interview people from the Speaker to the barista about their working lives in the Houses of Parliament. She's then created songs from their words to show the human side of life there, and to reflect on the ways in which Parliament voices the country. There is a tradition of us...

Michael Rosen and linguist Dr Laura Wright discuss how well we judge taking it in turns when we're in conversation. Professor Stephen Levinson has new research on the science behind this, and joins them in the studio for a carefully-calibrated discussion.. He believes that the back-and-forth pattern we instinctively fall into may have evolved before language itself. Levinson's research has found t...

Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright guide us through the top 20 words in English. Not the best or most popular (that would include tentacular, ping-pong and sesquipedalian (look it up - it's a cracker). Plus a lot of swearing. No this is the 20 most commonly used. It's actually quite a boring list - full of 'And', 'I', 'of' etc - but look a little closer and it tells you all about the structure of l...

Forget Laurence Olivier and Peggy Ashcroft, Al Pacino and Judi Dench. To take us back to Shakespeare's own time Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright hear Shakespeare as he himself would have spoken. The original, unvarnished version from linguist David Crystal and actor Ben Crystal. They look at the fashion for Original Pronunciation and ask what it can tell us about how we speak now. Michael and Lau...

What is slang, where does it come from, and which subjects attract the most slang words? Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright thrash it out with lexicographer of slang and swearing Jonathon Green. Producer Beth O'Dea Jonathon Green is the author of Slang: A Very Short Introduction.

How come humans learn to speak and use language in extraordinarily sophisticated ways, without any conscious effort, while other animals do not? Recent research suggests that the answer lies, in part, in our genes. And three generations of a British family held the key to discovering which gene. Neuroscientist Dr Frederique Liegeois joins Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright to discuss the genetic ba...

Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright talk to River Cottage natural forager and writer John Wright about the surprising and wonderful Latin names used to describe animals and plants, and how they came to be. What is an Aha ha? John Wright is the author of The Naming of the Shrew: A Curious History of Latin Names. Producer Beth O'Dea.

Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright take us through the A-Z of the alphabet, with the help of Professor Nils Langer. How do we come to have the letters we do? Producer Beth O'Dea.

Michael Rosen & Dr Laura Wright look into how new commercial brand names are invented, with Greg Rowland, the semiotician who came up with the name of a new perfume for Calvin Klein. Which words and sounds work, and which don't, and why? Professor Will Leben talks about how his company came up with the name Blackberry, and the uses of sound symbolism. Producer Beth O'Dea.

In a romantic edition, Michael Rosen, Dr Laura Wright and Professor John Mullan explore the clusters of meanings and differences between the words romance and the Romantic poets, romanticism and the romance languages. Producer Beth O'Dea.

Michael Rosen & Dr Laura Wright discuss with linguist Professor Naomi Baron the quantifiable differences between the experience of reading print books and of reading eBooks, or onscreen. Which allows for deeper reading and a stronger emotional response, and what is the future of reading? Producer Beth O'Dea Naomi S. Baron is the author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World.

First in series. Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright explore the numbers one to ten and look at how we understand - and misunderstand - the language of numbers. Why is a shampoo called Zinc 24 so much more appealing than a shampoo called Zinc 31? How do we cope with offers in supermarkets? Alex Bellos and Michael Blastland explain. Producer Beth O'Dea Alex Bellos is the author of Alex Through the Lo...

Michael Rosen and Laura Wright sob, hum and buzz as they consider whether the sound of a word has any connection with its meaning. With guest Professor Steven Connor. Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery.