random ling

Just recently, the <a href="https://linguistics.as.uky.edu/">Linguistics</a> Program's <a href="https://linguistics.as.uky.edu/user/2068">Andrew Byrd</a> was interviewed by the BBC's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00w940j">Newsday</a> radio series. The interview served to highlight Byrd's work studying the "Proto-Indo-European" language which dates back thousands of years. In the interview, Byrd gives listeners a glimpse of the language's history and a chance to hear the language given breath. 

A special thanks to the BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio">World Service</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsn9">The World Today</a> as well as the <a href="http://www.as.uky.edu/">College of Arts & Sciences</a> and the Linguistics Program for making this podcast possible.

https://linguistics.as.uky.edu/podcasts/linguistics-professor-andrew-byrd-interviewed-bbcs-newsday

This podcast was produced by <a href="https://www.as.uky.edu/users/pdodow2">Patrick O'Dowd</a>.

Linguistics Program's Andrew Byrd Discusses Proto-Indo-European Language With BBC Newsday

Applying science (linguistics to be precise) to your restaurant menu Dan Jurafsky on what he's learned about food, culture &  language by going a la carte.

Culture File: Menu linguistics (Part 1 of 4)

A discussion on the linguistics of climate change activism.

Linguistics Of Activism Final Edit

Do class, ethnicity, and education affect the severity of an accent? Region of focus: Boston 

Mary Kate's Linguistics Podcast

More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/linguistics-name-calling.

Sticks and bones may break your bones, but names can also hurt you. And language gives us surprisingly many ways to deride, hurt and demean – from a subtly sneering intonation to hurtful and offensive names. How does such language work? And why is there so much of it around these days? Has our acerbic political culture ushered in a new era of name-calling? Or is name calling a phenomenon as old as language itself? John and Ken welcome back linguist and NPR commentator Geoffrey Nunberg, author of "Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, The First Sixty Years."

The Linguistics of Name Calling

Prof Irina Nikolaeva Inaugural Lecture: The Mystery of One of Russia's Smallest Ethnic Groups: the Language and Origin of the Yukaghirs
20 June 2012
The Yukaghirs are one of the smallest ethnic groups in Russia. The seventy remaining speakers of the Yukaghir language live in a few scattered villages in the extreme North-East of Siberia. There is no obvious genetic relationship between Yukaghir and the other languages of the area, or indeed anywhere else. This lecture considers some linguistic evidence that may help to solve the mystery of the origin of the Yukaghirs and their place in the prehistory of Northern Asia.

More about this event: http://www.soas.ac.uk/about/events/inaugurals/20jun2012-prof-irina-nikolaeva-inaugural-lecture-the-mystery-of-one-of-russias-smallest-ethnic-group.html 

Irina Nikolaeva was a postgraduate at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Leiden, where she received her PhD in Linguistics in 1999. After working at several universities in Germany and the UK, she joined SOAS in 2007 as Lecturer in Language Documentation and Description.

Prof Irina Nikolaeva: The Mystery of One of Russia's Smallest Ethnic Groups: the Yukaghirs

The MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism at the University of Birmingham, was delighted to host Professor Stephen May who is a Professor in Te Puna Wānanga (School of Māori Education) in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New Zealand. 

Linguistic superdiversity as a “new” theoretical framework in applied linguistics

Mount Allison University linguistics student Lirah Steeves analyzes McMarketing, the language in fast food advertising.

Fast Food ads & linguistics

Following a long period in which formal theory dominated the discipline of linguistics, the endangered languages movement has revived and stimulated a keen interest in language description and empirical field research. This has been a wonderfully positive development. However, naïve ideology has led to a plethora of dubious assumptions regarding linguistic fieldwork. These assumptions, which have been accepted at face value without serious question, concern (a) the choice of language to be studied, i.e., it is better to study a small undescribed language than a larger one; (b) the object of the research, i.e., it is better to study a language in its entirety (including its associated culture) rather than focus on specific linguistic phenomena; and (c) the methodological approach to field research, i.e., it is better to collect large quantities of raw data by means of “documentary linguistics” rather than devote time in the field to analyzing materials or testing theories. The purpose of my talk is to challenge these assumptions and show how practices emanating from the endangered languages movement run counter to the tenets of linguistics as a science. I close with constructive suggestions on how to carry out endangered languages field research in a scientifically sound and productive manner.

Paul Newman is regarded as the world’s foremost authority on the Hausa language. His academic career has included positions at Yale University, Bayero University (Kano, Nigeria), Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden (The Netherlands), University of Michigan, and Indiana University, where he holds the title of Distinguished Professor. He has had short-term appointments as Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford) and the Centre for Linguistic Typology at the  Australian National University (Canberra), as Visiting Professor of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth (Germany), and as Fulbright Specialist in Law at the University of Haifa (Israel).

Law of Unintended Consequences: How the Endangered Languages Movement Undermines Field Linguistics

'LOL' as a filler word throughout college students text message conversations.

Linguistics 320 - Podcast

How English really works, with the grumpy liberal linguist (and co-author of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language). Take cover: copy editors, ‘pork-for-brains’ consultants, blog commenters and HSBC.

The Writer's podcast

The god of linguistics: Professor Geoff Pullum

Soundbites from episodes two and four of the 2017 Discovery Channel drama, followed by a 23-minute interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" program, edited from the original running time 38:31.
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/22/545122205/fbi-profiler-says-linguistic-work-was-pivotal-in-capture-of-unabomber

"Manhunt: Unabomber" & Forensic Linguistics of the FBI

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/can-speech-kill.

Free speech is one of the core tenets of our democracy. We’re inclined to think that more speech is always better. Although the Supreme Court has outlined some minor restrictions to our right to free speech, the most courts are willing to admit is that speech can lead to violence—it cannot itself do violence. But is it possible for speech to do both? If hate speech is used against a marginalized group, couldn’t the speech act literally do harm? And how does the answer to this question affect our commitment to free speech in a liberal democracy? The Philosophers do no harm with Lynne Tirrell from the University of Connecticut, author of “Genocidal Language Games.”

Can Speech Kill?

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library Podcast

Episode 1
The first episode of Linguistics at the Library introduces the British Library’s Evolving English Collection, which is a sound archive capturing the diversity of English accents and dialects. Podcast hosts Andrew Booth and Rowan Campbell are working with this archive as part of a PhD placement, and every few weeks will be bringing you a fresh discussion about linguistics and how to identify different accents. 

This week’s ‘What’s the feature?’ used a clip from:

BBC Voices Recording in Newcastle. BBC, UK, rec. 2005 [digital audio file]. British Library, C1190/32/01. Available: http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices/021M-C1190X0023XX-0101V0

Interesting links: 
The glottal stop in Glasgow: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/17/glasgow-accent-scottish-dialect-homogenised-london 
The Bristol ‘l’: http://blogs.bl.uk/sound-and-vision/2014/03/bristolian-my-ideal-of-an-idea-dialect.html 
An in-depth look at the Newcastle accent: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/case-studies/geordie/

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library - Episode 1

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library Podcast

Episode 2

In the second episode of Linguistics at the Library, Andrew and Rowan discuss some of the differences between regional accents and ‘RP’ (Received Pronunciation), and why people might feel that they have to change the way they speak to work in certain jobs. Using clips from the British Library’s Evolving English Collection, we look at the concepts of stigma and prestige, and how social factors can influence the way we perceive accents.

Tweet us your questions! @ VoicesofEnglish

This week’s ‘What’s the feature?’ used a clip from:

BBC Voices Recording in Driffield. BBC, UK, rec. 2004 [digital audio file]. British Library, C1190/16/02. Available: http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices/021M-C1190X0016XX-0201V0

Interesting links:
Have you experienced discrimination due to your accent? Submit your story to the Accentism Project: http://accentism.org/ 

Peter Trudgill’s piece on modern RP: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/trudgill.htm 

Social Mobility Commission report: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/less-affluent-kids-are-locked-out-of-investment-banking-jobs

Prejudice against English teachers with Northern accents: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/research-exposes-prejudice-over-teachers-with-northern-accents/

Overt and covert prestige: https://linguistics.knoji.com/language-and-socioeconomic-status-overt-vs-covert-prestige/

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library - Episode 2

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library Podcast

Episode 3

Is the UK in danger of losing its wide variety of local accents? In the third episode of Linguistics at the Library, Andrew and Rowan investigate why we might tone down our accent when talking to people from different areas, and whether the media is making all British accents sound the same. 


Tweet us: @VoicesofEnglish

This week’s ‘What’s the feature?’ used a clip from:

Millennium Memory Bank Recording in Quorn, Leicestershire. BBC, UK, rec. 1999 [digital audio file]. British Library, C900/09097. Available: https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Millenium-memory-bank/021M-C0900X09097X-2100V1 

Studies mentioned:

Penelope Eckert, 2003. Elephants in the room. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3): pp. 392-397. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9481.00231/full 

Bronwen G. Evans and Paul Iverson, 2007. Plasticity in vowel perception and production: a study of accent change in young adults. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121(6): pp. 3814-26. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17552729 

Lesley Milroy, 2007. Off the shelf or under the counter? On the social dynamics of sound changes.  In Christopher M. Cain and Geoffrey Russom (editors): Managing Chaos: Strategies for Identifying Change in English, pp. 149-172

W. W. Gill, 1934. Manx dialect: words and phrases (No. 4). Arrowsmith http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/md1933/index.htm

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library - Episode 3

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library Podcast

Episode 4

What happens when lots of languages and dialects come into contact with each other? This week, Andrew and Rowan discuss contact effects in super-diverse cities like London, and what happens to English as more and more people speak it around the world. We also answer a question from Twitter about the noises we make in conversation to show that we’re listening.

Tweet us: @VoicesofEnglish

This week’s ‘What’s the feature?’ used a clip from:
Millennium Memory Bank Recording in Birmingham. BBC, UK, rec. 1999 [digital audio file]. British Library, C900/18580. Available: https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Millenium-memory-bank/021M-C0900X18580X-1600V1

Links:
Multicultural London English databank: http://linguistics.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/linguistics/english-language-teaching/databank-of-spoken-london-english/

Donahue, R. T. (1998). Japanese culture and communication: Critical cultural analysis. University Press of America.

Cheshire, Jenny, Kerswill, Paul orcid.org/0000-0002-6540-9312, Fox, Susan et al. (1 more author) (2011) Contact, the feature pool and the speech community : The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 151–196. ISSN 1360-6441 http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/75321/1/Emergence_paper_for_JS_23_2_11_singlespacel.pdf

Oxford Dictionaries – 10 ways speakers of World English are changing the language https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/09/25/10-ways-speakers-of-world-english-are-changing-the-language/

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library - Episode 4

Professor Errington is interested in the linguistic dimensions of social life, ranging from the social implications of patterns of verbal communication, to forms and uses of sociolinguistic hierarchies, to the linguistic effects of large scale dynamics. His research and writing have focused on linguistic dimensions of modernization and identity in Java and Indonesia, reflecting his broader interests in semiotics and the politics of language. We talk with Professor Errington about his book, Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power.

Joseph Errington: Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power

Southern linguistics

A sound clip of my grandmother, who is a native speaker of Spanish, speaking English. Used for Linguistic analysis purposes.

random ling

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