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Agreement in the House of Lords? Not likely!
A vintage engraving from 1861 showing tumult in the House of Lords Anyone who has watched Question Time in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords of the British Parliament will know that...
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Mumbling is macho
Men who pronounce their words less distinctly are perceived as more macho, or so the research of Kevin Heffernan suggests. Many previous studies have found a gender difference in how we articulate our...
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Candidate understandings in conversation
A: I just bumped into whatsisname….the guy in the next office…in [the canteen] B: [you mean] John?...
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Do you smile with your nose?
Do smileys ever have a nose?Emoticons are a good way of representing what gets lost when we switch from speaking to texting. We can’t use intonation or facial expressions to show whether we’re joking...
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Going banana’s* about the greengrocer’s apostrophe
* To go bananas is an idiomatic, informal expression meaning to get angry or emotional about somethingYou may have noticed the recent negative attention that has been given to the use of an apostrophe...
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Representing gender in children's reading materials
would a boy have been shown with flowers in the 1970s?Are girls and boys portrayed differently in children’s reading materials today than in the past? During the 1970s and 80s, studies of children’s...
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Logos and language
Do we associate a logo with a particular type of social identity? And with a particular way of speaking?We all make social judgements about people based on the way they speak. But what kinds of social...
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Are dolls houses for boys or girls? And how do we talk about them?
Should boys and girls be taught the same subjects?Do we view the world through ‘male’ or ‘female’ eyes? Do hidden messages in society concerning our gender reflect in the language we use to evaluate...
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Registration deadline extended to 30th November 2012 for a few remaining places.........Analysing spoken English: Resources and techniques for teachersWorkshop for English Language teachers to be held...
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Linguistic cleanliness – will we ever accept variation and change?
How do you react when you hear people saying innit or like or how about when you see signs such as potato’s or tomatoe’s(see our previous post on the ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe’) in shop displays? For...
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Is ‘Star Wars’ pronounced the same in Dorset as in New York?
Dorset or Dawset? Losing the /r/ sound in the southwest of England.How do you pronounce ‘Star Wars’? Can you hear the /r/ in either or both words? If you can, you are using what linguists call...
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Say it like you mean it
If you've ever heard someone talk to a young child, or have done it yourself, you've probably noticed that it's quite different from how adults talk to other adults. Research comparing talk directed to...
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Article 12
Season's Greetings to all our readers.We look forward to your continued interest in 2013.Best wishes from the Linguistics Research Digest team.
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Throwing light on language variation
Which sounds more natural to you?(1) she turned on the light or (2) she turned the light on;(3) he cut open the melon or (4) he cut the melon openIf you find (2) and (4) more natural, the chances are...
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All the lads and lasses!
There are still lots of lads and lasses in the northeast of EnglandIn data collected in the 1950s for the Survey of English Dialects (SED) it was found that there was a ‘north-south’ divide in the use...
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Growing up bilingually
one language or two: does it make a difference?Do bilingual children develop language more slowly than children acquiring only one language? This is the question that a team of researchers from Florida...
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Coming to the end
Speaker A: “Let’s discuss the use of final particles in conversational English”Speaker B: “Ok … What does that mean though?”Alexander Haselow was interested in the fact that,...
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Are regional dialects dying out?
is increasing mobility the cause?It’s often thought that local dialect forms are withering away as people adopt more widespread ‘supralocal’ forms. In England, for example, glottal stop pronunciations...
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R u tryin to b formal?
Nowadays, it’s hard for us to imagine a life without mobile phones. Texting and instant messaging are as much, if not more, a part of our daily life as phone calls and emails. For example, since 2008...
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Interesting, isn't it?
it's on the left, isn't it?It’s on the left isn’t it is a typical English tag question: there’s a statement (it’s on the left) followed by a reduced question (isn’t it?). The form is sometimes linked...
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