The Language Legend

E-Julie has left the building

2006-01-19T21:43:00.000Z

So, this post is going to be a bit different to the rest, cos in this one you get to watch live as E-Julie disappears into the far horizon.

Is that the sound of screeching brakes of shock and horror?! Well...

The Language Legend started out as an experiment with a particular AS English Language class, to find out whether making material available in an online format would encourage wider reading and a more independent engagement with the subject. It kinda worked pretty well, so through an email discussion forum for teachers of this course, other students/teachers were invited to check it out. As time went by, all kinds of bloggers joined in the fun, and additional ideas about interactivity and the creation of online communities were explored.

It's been a cool project, and this weekend E-Julie's alter-ego is presenting the research findings, involving this and another blog project, at the annual conference of the National Association of Teachers of English. If E-Julie's far less brash, confident, articulate alter-ego doesn't first pass out on the floor in a pathetic display of hyperventilating nervousness, she will be exploring why the Language Legend has to die.

One of the problems with an educational blog is that for it to become widely used, it needs to speak with some kind of knowledge and authority on the subject, but in so doing it becomes less the kind of mutable, interactive space for the creation of shared and contested knowledge that grassroots blogs are, and more the kind of fixed world of teacher-centred incontestable knowledge that is at the hollow heart of much educational practice. In a bizarre twist, E-Julie has ended up recreating the world she sought to help her students tunnel out of.

So, while her serious and reclusive alter-ego continues to go to work everyday at the chalkface of education, E-Julie is taking a well-earned fictional Gap Year. No doubt she'll be back - she has that prodigal daughter kind of attitude - and who knows what adventures she will have in educational cyberspace in the future. But in the meantime, E-Julie has left the building.

E-Ink

2006-01-15T09:04:00.000Z

When I was at school, way back some time in the dark ages, I had a cartridge pen. This technological dinosaur was a pen with a nib fuelled by a little cartridge of ink. You could write seventeen and a half words and then you had to change the cartridge. I'm sure the manufacturers would have argued for a higher word count, but they wouldn't make any allowance for the gallon of ink seeping all over your hands/shirt/desk as you wrote.

But at the time we were told that an ink pen was better for you. I think teachers may have meant better for hand writing development, or maybe better in delaying the onset of Repetitive Strain Injury, but somehow there was always a sense that it was better for you morally and socially. I compromised with a predilection for ridiculously expensive graphic design pens.

Why this trip down memory lane? Well, because the issue of the technology of writing is explored in today's Observer, and it's interesting to see what difference developments might make to the written text of the future. Super-geeks are currently busy trying to figure out how to make a portable reading device to rival the commercial success of the iPod. The trouble they're having is that we already have a superbly efficient portable reading device. It's called a book...

Lots of e-books are already available for download onto your PC, but people haven't really gone for them in a big way because most people like the whole experience of book reading and the flexibility of the format. It requires no electricity (unless it's dark, but then I guess we have candles...) so can be done in the bath or up a mountain; many books will fit in your bag or even a large pocket; you can flick at random between the pages; you can write on them, tear bits out to write a note for the milkman on; and you can leave them on planes and trains for other people to enjoy. Bit tricky doing that if you need a grand's worth of kit.

But what people also seem to enjoy is the aesthetic value of paper and ink. Not me, I have an issue with ink and prefer the sterile cleanliness of my PC screen. But that is what the techies are working on: how to create something with the same aesthetic satisfaction. They've already invented e-ink to replicate the visual appeal of the writing, but I'm sure replicating the "feel" of paper will be a big challenge.

As the people most likely to adopt this technology, young people generally being at the forefront of these things, how would you want e-books to be?

And if anyone tells you that 'real' books are better for you, take the moral high ground with the environmental argument. Check it out.

E-read all about it

Blame it on the yogh

2006-01-11T08:58:00.000Z

So I listen to obscure songs on my iPod rather than political debate on Radio 4 - does that make me such a bad person?... Well, okay, you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm sure I can't be the only person for whom the most important question about the whole Liberal Democrat leadership contest is Why is Menzies pronounced Mingis?

Obviously not, because the BBC has been kind enough to explain the answer, and to do so with beautiful depth and clarity for any student of the English Language. It's all to do with sounds that exist in Scots (and did exist in Old English), and the way that the orthographical representation of these have changed over time. Swoons with joy...

Check it out. And if the BBC would like to answer my next questions, it's this: given the growing popularity of the word 'minger' has he ever thought of changing his name by deed poll?...

Why is Menzies pronounced Mingis?

kiss/lips

2006-01-08T22:54:00.000Z

So, the other week over lunch, I happened to mention the post I'd just written about how rubbish predictive text messaging is. I was immediately assaulted with a barrage of evidence to the contrary, and now I find I am actually the only person in the whole world who is not using it. So, I like abbreviations, okay? Those '2's and 'U's remind me of secret code messages in the puzzle books I had back in the bad old days when surfing didn't exist.

But anyway, there's a nice article in yesterday's Guardian about the phenomenon. It makes a change for a journalist to note it with a degree of objectivity, rather than the usual dreary old story about falling standards and how the kids can't spell nuffink nemore. But I particularly like two features of this article. First, the invitation to you guys out there to undertake some 'serious study' of the 'whole field of predictive text-related lexicology'. Need an A2 coursework idea - there you go... And second, you even get some starting points - a whole list of phrases and sentences to try out on your mobile to see what predictive texting comes up with.

Check it out.

Whatever happened to ... txt lngwj:)?

And for old times' sake (though I should point out I wasn't actually alive in 1873) here's an old rebus puzzle for you

Instant messaging

2006-01-07T17:11:00.000Z

Stories in the news this week have shown us both the good side and the bad side of technologically mediated communication, specifically its power to transmit our messages across distances immediately.

First up is the story about the mine disaster in the States. The transcript of radio traffic with the emergency services shows the confusion about what was happening quite clearly. Asked what is happening and whether or not the miners have been found, Voice 2 (Matt) clearly hedges his statements, saying "they're all okay, I guess", "we might be transporting them", and "I'm not exactly sure". He does the same when asked if the miners are still alive, "as far as I know". These are positive comments but not unequivocal. But in the heat of the moment, with distraught families desperate to hear the best outcome not the worst, those hedged statements get lost. What gets transmitted in a second, because of the communications technology, is the story that all 12 men are alive. Bells are rung, families celebrate, hymns of praise are sung. And three hours later the terrible truth emerges.

The other story is about the Magic FM DJ who tried to save the life of a caller who had a heart attack in the middle of a live talkshow debate. When the line went silent, the DJ knew there must be something wrong. Calling the police didn't help, so using the immediacy of live radio he was able to alert the man's neighbours who knocked down his door, while he flicked the switch to continuous music and leapt in a cab to go and help. Sadly, the man died, but that power of immediacy at least enabled people who cared to try.

Emergency Radio Transcript of Mine Rescue

Anger as mine rescue hopes are dashed

Radio talkshow DJ rushes to help as caller dies on air

Tics and pig dicks

2006-01-02T20:47:00.000Z

So, here we go again with a new term, a new year and a whole bunch of new resolutions. One of mine last year was to find a way to control my terrible swearing, which got so bad at work that I used to joke about having Professional Tourette's. Not that having Tourette's Syndrome is a laughing matter, as today's article in the Guardian makes very clear. Tourette's is a brain disorder which affects language and behaviour. On the language side of things it causes coprolalia (involuntary swearing and bad language) and echolalia (repeating words), which can make life very difficult for people with the condition.

The article is based on an interview with a girl called Jessica (and her parents) who features in a documentary starting tomorrow about five British children who went to the States on a special Tourette's camp. Hmm, sounds suspiciously like the teenagers from hell documentary so I'm not expecting much more than voyeuristic entertainment masquerading as intelligent TV, but I'll give it a go as I find language disorders deeply fascinating. If I understood the first thing about Science, which I wish I did, I'd want to know more about what these disorders have to tell us about the function of the brain. But as I don't, I'm really curious to know how other people react to people with Tourette's in social situations, especially given the frequency with which the most taboo language is used, particularly racist language.

Jessica explains that once people know she has no control over this, they are cool with it. I have no reason not to believe her, but if this is the case it raises really interesting questions about the way we perceive taboo language ie it is not nearly as 'absolute' as we tend to think it is.

Check the article, check the programme.

'If I was offered one wish, I'd ask not to have Tourette's for one week. But it won't happen, will it?'

Tourette Syndrome

Playlistism

2005-12-23T18:02:00.000Z

Oh boy, I love the holidays. When else do you get to spend a whole day tinkering with your iPod? How on earth can that take a whole day, I hear you ask... Well, when you've somehow managed to blow up your iPod and you've got to restore it to its factory settings, and then install the updated software, and then you've got to reload all 3710 songs, trust me, that can take all day...

And what's this all got to do with the state of the English language, you're muttering into your Cadbury's selection pack. Well, the makers of the T9 predictive text dictionary have also just upgraded. Did they hear me chuntering about its inadequacy a few weeks back?... They don't appear to have added any words normal human beings might actually find useful, but much to my delight they have added some words I've never even heard before. Like 'playlistism' - judging a person by the playlist of their digital music player. Ha! That's fantastic! I was only teasing someone the other week for having Jona Lewie's Stop The Cavalry on his iPod, and now I have a word for my viciously judgemental response!

So long as no-one finds out I've got the full 9 minute 52 second version of Bat Out Of Hell on mine, I think I'll be okay...

Check out the predictive text new words - it's language change in action.

At a stroke: ASBO, smlirt, podcast enter predictive text dictionary

Happy [choose your word]

2005-12-18T10:36:00.000Z

Have you ever stood and read the insides of greetings cards in a shop, or is it only me that does that?... I know, really must get a life, but Christmas provides the ideal opportunity to indulge my fascination with the forms of language used in greetings cards without the burly store detective coming to stand next to me, breathing heavily and eyeing me suspiciously. So, although most of my cards are still at work, I've just done a mini-investigation of the ones at home. I've noted all the words/phrases (and the absence of any) printed on the cards, either inside or out, and these are my findings:

No greeting 36%
Happy Christmas 18%
Merry Christmas 14%
Season's greetings 9%
Bethlehem 4.5%
Christmas wishes 4.5%
With best wishes for the New Year 4.5%
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year 4.5%
Festive greetings 4.5%

Why exactly have I done such an odd thing? Well, it was stimulated by the article I've linked below, from the New York Times. In the first half of this, William Safire explores the issue of what greetings Americans are choosing to send to their friends and families. I've been aware of this cultural difference for a while, as my Jewish Manhanttanite friend always sends me a "Happy Holidays" card round about this time of year - usually one depicting her cats and dogs bedecked in tinsel... To me, that greeting still sounds frightfully American, but with political correctness and religious sensitivity both playing a much bigger role there than here, it is understandable. What I'm interested to know is how much things might be changing here...

Safire quotes a greetings card company spokesperson as saying that this year there has been a 50-50 sales split between greetings that mention the word 'Christmas' and those using 'holidays'. My card from the States hasn't come yet, and the word 'holidays' doesn't appear anywhere in my sample. But if you take those that do use the word 'Christmas' (and I've included the one with 'Bethlehem' on it) and those that don't, you get a 46-54 split.

Is this evidence that people are sending more secular greetings? Well, it's too small a sample to say (need a language investigation project? Don't chuck those cards away, then!), and things are never as simple as that anyway. Some of my cards with nothing at all printed on them have images that are explicitly Biblical. And maybe it says something either about my friends, or about their perception of me, but I haven't had any cards either that are like those I saw in Tescos yesterday, with pink baubles and the greeting something like "sparkly shiny starry". What kind of greeting is that?!! It's not even a greeting, which has a certain grammatical structure - it's just a list of adjectives! Sparkly shiny starry what?

So, there you go. Check the linkylove article, go hang out in card shops.

Gifts of Gab

(You need to register with the NYT to read this article but it's free, it really does only take a minute, and it's kosher.)

All together now

2005-12-12T18:17:00.000Z

When Ali G first hit the radar, a lot of people weren't quite sure what to make of it. Was it funny? Was it meant to be funny? Was it offensive? There was all kinds of debate about whether it was a negative portrayal of the way black young people speak, debate that rather missed the point because it was only ever about how white wannabes think black people speak. But for comic effect, Sacha Baron Cohen successfully tapped into a feature of language change that was already evident: the crossover amongst young people between traditional regional accents and dialects and language forms influenced by the immigration history of recent times. In the big cities, and especially in London, a new dialect was being formed, one that now no longer seems comic or gauche when young white people use it, but seems an entirely normal and natural use of language if you hang out there long enough.

And while Ali G has been dying a slow death from our collective memory, researchers have been busy formally investigating this phenomenon. You might remember the post here in the summer which detailed Sue Fox's research findings from Tower Hamlets (if not, use search the site gizmo to find it). And in the Times this weekend, there's news from the project Sue Fox has subsequently been part of, that this phenomenon is not a small scale local one, restricted to parts of London, or specific communities, but part of a much larger scale process of new dialect birth. A generic multi-ethnic dialect has been created by young people, one which includes rather than excludes people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Now how cool is that? (I'd obviously say 'nang' if I were 25 years younger...). Check it out.

All raait! It's a new black-white lingo

Tackle tart

2005-12-08T20:18:00.000Z

So, apologies first up for not having posted for over a week. I've been a bit tied up teaching a residential course for English Language teachers on using very cool ICT gizmos. So, if you're one of the students who gets guinea-pigged as a result, way to go, have fun!

During the course I learned a phrase I'd not heard before.
"You know what?" one of the teachers said. "You're a right tackle tart!"
A 'tackle tart'?!! That's fantastic! It's someone who is obsessed with the beauty and perfection of their equipment, and as I was at the time caressing my custom engraved iPod, it seemed a reasonable comment...

This epithet also partly came about because we were investigating new words and meanings in assorted online dictionaries. "Bilking"? "Mef"? "Spork"? Go check 'em out. And that takes me to today's news that "podcast" is officially the word of the year with the New Oxford Dictionary, pipping "bird flu" and "ICE" to the post.

The list of top new words compiled by this authoritative source is interesting. I like to think I'm a bit of an early adopter of new words. Not the real hardcore slang stuff cos I'm far too old to get away with that, but I am a magpie for shiny new words or meanings that get used in the papers or by the people I meet. So, the fact that I'd never seen or heard 7 of the 12 items on the list quoted in the article linked below surprised me. Check it out. Any surprises for you?

Podcast voted word of the year

Gobbledegook

2005-11-30T19:35:00.000Z

Wherever you are, whatever else you're half doing while reading this, stop; just take a moment to marvel at the huge splendid capacity of your brain. Not feeling too bright today?... Well, look on the bright side, compared to the virtual brain cell of the predictive text on your mobile phone, you're incredible!

Nice entertainingly frustrated piece on this in the recent Grauniad article linked below. The writer describes the bizarre non-words the predictive text on his phone suggests whenever he tries to type anything in: like, 'undu' for 'tofu' and 'flaunaue' for 'flatmate'. It borders on the surreal. The gobbledygook made me give up predictive texting a long time ago.

On the one hand, this issue of language and technology bugs me. It bugs me because it's not the mobile phone's fault that it's so dumb. It means there is dumb programming inside, based on some weird take on how language works. Looking for a career? Well, hey, there's one for you. On the other hand, I secretly like it that I'm cleverer than my phone...

So, check it out, and post the weirdest - true - bits of predictive texting you've come across.

Technobile

Songs from la-la land

2005-11-27T10:10:00.000Z

So, okay, let me just come out and say it - I think Enya is bit nuts and all her songs with that intense Celtic swirliness make me laugh. But you've got to hand her the prize this week for best story about language. Because the Irish songstress (ooh, look, that's weird, I used one of those gendered diminutives...) is busy touting her new album, in which she uses Loxian, an invented alien language. Cooool.....

Enya has long been a bit of a linguist, singing in English, Gaelic, Latin and Japanese - er, and in Elvish on one of the Lord Of The Rings films. But this is a whole new departure, so check out the very interesting article in the Times, linked below. As my secret fantasy (apart from becoming a cookery teacher) is to be transported back to the 1940s to become a top codebreaker at Bletchley Park, I'm off to buy this album quick so I can crack the Loxian lyrics for myself and become a fluent translator should the aliens arrive with the snow today.

What's curious is the reason Enya gives for why she NEEDED this language. She says it's because the sounds of English (and presumably all the other languages she sings) are too obtrusive for the music. I wanna know more about that. Is that true? How different is the phonology of Loxian both from English and Enya's other languages? What new sounds and sound combinations are possible in Loxian?

The Times' visiting English professor doesn't cover phonology in his analysis. But his analysis is very interesting in other regards: he identifies lexical components from Anglo-Saxon, Hindi, Welsh - er, and Siberian Yupik. A rip-off?... Or a point about the connectedness of all languages?... Whatever you think, it points to the very considerable difficulty of creating a new language, and also the phenomenal achievement of Tolkien in creating his. Sounds like Enya's got a bit of a way to go on the grammar yet...

Enya sings in a tongue from a 'distant planet'

Interactive Elvish Translator
(because Xmas is coming and novelty toys are de rigeur)

Kryptonite accents

2005-11-23T20:02:00.000Z

As a default mode, I generally speak the slush-mouthed Estuary variety of English. I didn't think it had got too bad, until one of my AS students from Manchester pointed out that I say eshchury without the faintest hint of a /t/, I only ever walk down shtreets (that's with a glottal stop...), and get frushchrated when things don't go my way. Naturally, it thus came as a shock to have a new American acquaintance I had met at a party declare that I sounded "just like Lady Di". This was before the people's princess died, I hasten to add. At this point I collapsed on the floor hyperventilating at the hilarious incongruity of the comparison and almost choked to my own death trying to explain why it was funny. The acquaintance was deeply offended...

So I thoroughly enjoyed today's piece in the Guardian about the perception of (straight) American women that men with British accents are cute/hot/adorable. It doesn't matter which accent - "they all sound freaking adorable". So there you have it. It's not in any way a scientific piece, and I'm sure the "studies" referred to are entirely made up, but as an anecdotal piece about perceptions of accents this still gives us food for thought, especially as it gives a different perspective to the UK-centric perceptions more frequently mentioned in text books. It might also be an interesting starting point for an investigation into the perceived sex appeal of different some of the accents of World English.

Check it out. Which accent does it for you?

America asks: cute, or British?

The speech accent archive

Tinseltown talk

2005-11-20T16:01:00.000Z

There was a story a while ago about a Russian who arrived in Britain, and after interrogation by immigration officials, was almost immediately sent packing on the next flight home. The reason she was deported was that the officials refused to believe her story, that she had come here to learn English in Glasgow. They simply couldn't believe that anyone would want to learn this variety of English.

This issue of which variety of a language we (a) want to learn and (b) get to learn has cropped up in the papers again today. News in the New York Times today of a TV programme in China that is gaining cult status by teaching people the language they really want to learn. Not phrasebook English in which we're apparently always enquiring after each other's health, and making salient comments about the weather, but "movie English". The show runs nightly and features a word/phrase from a movie clip, explaining what it means and how it is used both in this context and more widely. Naturally, much of it is slang/vernacular forms. Great idea!

This gives us plenty of food for thought about the prestige of language varieties. The cult show is a hit because it draws on the covert prestige of contemporary American popular culture: learning this language might not help you get a job, but it sure is cool. Or at least perceived by its audience to be cool (you won't catch me using the phrase 'walking felony'!...)

Of course, it's also quite interesting if you've started wondering what to do when you've finished your AS/A2 English Language. Trip to China to teach English, anyone? Now that's cool...

And one final word about phrasebooks. Here's your mission: go into a bookshop; pick up any serious phrasebook; find the most ridiculous thing you are instructed to say, that you would never ever say in English let alone in a foreign language. Beat these (all genuine):

can you repair my dentures?
would you give me a discount?
do we need snow chains?

Movie English as a Third Language

English Learner Movie Guides

Signspotting

2005-11-16T19:26:00.000Z

I spotted this story a week or two ago, but what with one thing and another I didn't get round to posting it. Good news, then, that The Telegraph has just run a reminder for me of the new book out which has collated photographs of bizarre signs from around the world. Not only are these often very funny, they are also very interesting from a language point of view. Natch...

Firstly, as many of the laughs are the product of things lost in translation between a local language and English, they give us an interesting window on translation, second language acquisition, and on how languages other than English construct the world in words. However, plenty of the signs in the book are written in English by English speakers in English speaking countries, and these are twice as funny. They also give us plenty of material for pragmatic analysis: it's all about the breakdown of the shared assumptions we expect of signs. We largely take those assumptions for granted, but these signs make us conscious of a level of language that can otherwise seem invisible.

Check out the story and the signspotting website (click on the 'view signs' tab on the homepage). Er, and if anyone was wondering what to get me for Christmas...

Getting lost in translation

Signspotting

Talking Brooklynese

2005-11-13T15:25:00.000Z

Now don't get excited, the title is not a hint that I'm about to start talking about Becks' boy and Child Language Acquisition, cos you know I only do that topic under duress. Nope, it's about the New York dialect and a talk William Labov ("the father of sociolinguistics") gave recently to coincide with the launch of his new book, The Atlas of North American English. The report on this gives us a fascinating look at historical and contemporary dialect change in the US - specifically in relation to changing phonological patterns (the sounds). Check it out - it's cool.

Talking the tawk

The Black Dog

2005-11-13T13:48:00.000Z

Last week I bought a new gizmo for my laptop. It seemed such a simple thing to do at the time. I then spent several days effing and blinding alternately at the instructions that didn't mention all the connecting cables and adaptors you need that aren't actually provided, and at the blokes in PC World and/or Maplins who only ever managed to sell me one thing I needed at a time, resulting in three 24 mile round trips to get the three things I needed. Nice...

What's this got to do with language? Well, news out this week of a dodgy pseudo-survey (ie ostensibly legitimate research but paid for by a company that just happens to provide services to solve the problems the research finds) that shows the high level of abuse that IT users hurl at helpdesk workers. 81% of helpdesk workers had experienced verbal abuse, 22% had considered jacking in their job there and then because it was so bad. It's an interesting angle on both language and technology, and language in the workplace. Now I feel really bad about the polite strop I threw at the bloke in Maplins and I'm going to have to do another 24 mile round trip to go and apologise...

The survey also offers other tantalising suggestions about language. First of all that the level of verbal abuse is both gender related, age related and status related. How surprising do you find this? How does it compare with other research findings about the use of expletives? Would you expect members of senior management to be the most likely suspects? Older people rather than younger ones? How do you account for these differences? Is there something about the workplace that makes us behave differently, or is any or all of this research flawed?

Secondly, the survey shows that 80% of IT helpdesk users might keep their temper better if they didn't first have to get through the seven circles of hell, also known as the automated voice response system. Y'know, you ring up and a robot asks you to memorise 17 options and then press the correct code, then you get through to another robo-menu, and another, and.... So why, when this kind of technology-mediated language drives us all nuts, do so many companies use it? Well, with so many opportunities for an employee to screw up and lose customers in spontaneous conversations, they'd rather leave it to a machine. The survey suggests they're wrong, and although spending some cash on staff training might hurt their pockets in the short term, it might be worth it later in happier customers and staff who stick around longer.

Check it out below (and follow the related stories links at the bottom for other interesting stuff...). The survey is linked at the foot of the article if you want to read it - might be a useful starting point for an investigation into language and helpdesks.

The crap IT circle of abuse and despair

At the first stroke...

2005-11-10T19:29:00.000Z

News today that Pat Simmons, the voice of the speaking clock from 1963 to 1985, died recently aged 85. Who? What? Did you even know there was a speaking clock? Well, there is, though I'd vaguely assumed it had gone the way of directory enquiries and was now spoken by someone in Timbuctoo on a premium rate line costing several arms and a few legs. But, hey, I've just dialed 123, the number that's been used for this purpose since 1936, and there it is, still pipping away.

The current voice is that of Brian Cobby, and I find it deeply reassuring both in its deep rich tone, and its almost anachronistic Received Pronunciation. It's not strongly marked RP but listen very carefully to his long /ai/ sounds, as in 'five' and 'precisely' and you'll know what I mean. You can either dial 123 (though it is 10p a go) or you can click here if you've got QuickTime installed on your PC:

Brian Cobby speaking clock clip

If you click below you can also hear Brian Cobby doing the Thunderbirds countdown. Hard to believe it's the same guy, really, but it's him alright, doing an American accent. Can you hear the /r/ in 'four' that Labov also used as a variable in his New York Department Store Study?...

Brian Cobby Thunderbirds countdown clip

But anyway, back to Pat Simmons, who was the voice before BC, and if you listen carefully you can hear a more marked form of RP, much more common in earlier decades of the twentieth century. What differences can you hear?

Pat Simmons speaking clock clip

This is clearly interesting from a language change point of view, but there are other curious dimensions to this. One is the way that a particular variety of English has been selected for this authoritative, institutional function. That variety, RP, used to have a very high level of prestige, but that's changed considerably as society, and our attitude to formal authority, has changed. When both minor royals and Prime Ministers are said to have been spotted using features of Estuary English on occasion, and the main news programme on the BBC is read in a Welsh accent, it comes as something of a surprise to find the speaking clock hasn't followed suit.

Except that it has on two occasions. In 2003 a Scottish schoolgirl (with a Scottish accent) got to be the voice of the clock for a week, as did Lenny Henry (West Midlands accent) also in 2003. Both occasions were charity fundraising events, the former for Childline, the latter for Comic Relief. There's a whole interesting thing going on there - about only letting traditionally less prestigious accents into the bastion of chronological authority for specially licensed 'fun' fundraising... perhaps also about the value to charity fundraisers of using speakers with regional accents because they sound more friendly, more like someone you'd want to give your hard-earned cash to, rather than some posh geezer who already has a shedload...

Tantalisingly, The Mirror article says that Pat Simmons lived for 47 years in the same flat in the East End. Now I SO want to know more about this woman. Did she always talk like her speaking clock voice, or did she have a Cockney accent too? Someone needs to find out and publish her story in this weekend's papers - now there's an Original Writing coursework idea for you...

'Speaking Clock' Pat Simmons dies

Pip-pip to our polite speaking clock Pat

The BT Speaking Clock

Schoolgirl is new Speaking Clock

More bullshit

2005-11-08T22:55:00.000Z

So, continuing my current preoccupation with the language of our workaday lives, I was both amused and interested by the article linked below. It's an extract from a new dictionary hot off the press, The Dictionary of Bullshit. Amused because I found myself guilty of two counts of bullshitting - I always call problems "challenges", and in management meetings I am regularly to be found banging on about the need for "vision". I do always mean something far more interesting than just a "plan", honest...

And interested? Well, first up there is mileage to be had in thinking about the kinds of words and phrases that are being used to bullshit. Then there is the question of how much validity this dictionary has. Has it been compiled using any meaningful technique, or is it just the author's pick'n'mix selection of favourite words? Is there scope for an investigation here into how frequently these words are actually used in the appropriate contexts? How could you find out? Then there are interesting questions about context. Was this dictionary written with any serious intent, or was it designed to be a humorous next-to-the-till Christmas stocking filler gift making wads of easy cash for its author/publisher?

It's easy to ignore the contextual factors shaping dictionaries, as we tend to see them as objective, factual, unassailable sources of truth, but with Viz's Profanisaurus on the bookshelves, a dictionary of new words seeming to come out every five minutes, and now this, we see how easily the public interest in language can be turned into juicy pound signs.

But my final question is this... What's the opposite of hot-desking? I don't mean opposite as in you've got your own desk with your name on it. I mean opposite as in you've got two "desks" (one is actually a chest of drawers) that you hot-foot between because one workstation is no longer enough. What's that called? Cos er, erm, um, that's what I do... Is that bad?...

What a load of bull!

Hot-desking

Hot desk

Viz Profanisaurus

Has the world gone mad?...

2005-11-06T21:46:00.000Z

With this week's language stories in the papers, I think there's only one answer to that question - a big fat yes.

First up is news that the world of advertising is having an increasing impact on parents-to-be. We're not talking subliminal advertising of Huggies during Eastenders, we're talking the whole concept that in order for a product to succeed it most have a Unique Selling Point. Er, even when that product is your baby... So, a new piece of pseudo-research (done by some firm flogging baby-products) tells us that increasing numbers of parents are choosing successful brand names as names for their children.

I guess this is not that much different from the old way, really. I was named "Julie" after the hugely successful musical film icon Julie Andrews (think Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp...); and biblical names are trading on the enormous power and prestige of their source. (Though I've never thought the southern European penchant for calling boys Jesus was a terribly optimistic start for a child...) I suppose what I'm bridling at is the fact that these new sources of names are so blatantly worshipping Mammon, the god/demon of materialism.

Now is "Moet" a boy's name or a girl's name?....

Why the best start in life is a silly name

The next bonkers bit of language news concerns the language of dating. The Indie focuses on a study by psychologists into the relevant success of different chat-up lines, but my favourite for all round insanity is the piece in the Telegraph about the hostage negotiator who has written a book applying the same techniques to pulling women. It's all about how guys should treat women like crazy fanatics threatening to kill everyone unless their demands are met, using the same kind of language to coax them into submission. It's enough to turn a perfectly rational woman into a gun-toting maniac, quite frankly...

It's all stranger than fiction this week...

'Excuse me beautiful, do you have space in your handbag for my Merc keys' And if you think that's excruciating, you should hear the successful chat-up lines

Hostage to love

Dealing with Mr Angry

2005-11-02T20:11:00.000Z

I've been thinking a lot the last couple of days about language in the workplace. Partly because I'm teaching it next week, but partly because I've had a couple of customer service encounters recently that have stopped me in my tracks.

The first one made me laugh. I was down in Devon in half term and stopped one lunchtime in a bakers' cafe for a pasty and a cuppa. The woman who served me was perfectly pleasant and helpful. Then in came a group of four people looking for a spot of something warm on a wet and windy day.
"Mmmmm," one woman exhaled in excited anticipation. "Soup!"
Her friend looked sceptical. "Is it home made?"
The shop assistant shrugged.
"Well, we make it here but it's out of powder and water."
At which point her complete honesty made me choke so hard on my pasty I cried.

Now on one level that was good customer service. She gave the customers the information needed to make their decision. But her use of language was so forthright that it was surprising. We expect more indirection, more concealment of reality, especially in the catering industry.

The second one made me tear clumps of my hair out. I was at work when my mobile rang. It was after hours so I answered it, vaguely thinking it might be someone interesting. You never know your luck! But it was a customer service chap from ntl: (what's with that colon?!) with whom I have phone and broadband connections. He wanted to flog me digital TV too. It was an exercise in persuasive language and I wish I too could have recorded it for training purposes. When I had politely said "thanks but I'm going to have to think about it" at least five times, he still had another 12 persuasive tricks up his sleeve. He even tried saying "look love, I need the commission", for which, once again, I admired the honesty. But on the whole it was a verbal battering ram carefully designed not to take no for an answer, and that left me wanting to make a complaint to ntl:.

So, it's nice to see that one company at least is taking a more positive approach to training its front-line staff in how to handle spontaneous spoken interaction with customers. In the Telegraph today is an article about how South West Trains is using a realistic role play setting and actors to simulate difficult conversations. What's a bit spooky, though, is learning that they are taught to identify customers as one of four types: feelers, thinkers, entertainers, and controllers. They are then trained to respond accordingly, giving expressions of sympathy to feelers, for example. I'm dying to know which type of stroppy customer I am - and what words will allegedly soothe me.

So, check out the article, and more from Wikipedia on customer care. And if you've had customer care training at work, how have you been told to use language at work?

Try a little tenderness

Customer care

Pick'n'mix sexuality

2005-10-29T10:56:00.000Z

So, the thing that caught my eye in the papers this week is the discussion of the new book out, The Future of Men. The book itself is not really my cup of darjeeling, but the language that the writers use to describe different male sexualities is most intriguing. Using the kind of inflationary prefixes we looked at before, they have either coined, or at least popularised, the term "übersexual". Gone is yesterday's metrosexual and all your David Beckhams and Orlando Blooms; in come the George Clooneys and Bonos. The übersexual is "politically aware" and "passionate about real world causes"; he has male best friends, tasteful clothes and a well-read mind. Er, and given that Bill Clinton is in the frame here, a "complicated" but unashamed heterosexuality. Hmmm....

But anyway, this is interesting from a language change point of view. We create new words when a meaning becomes apparent that can't quite be expressed any other way. The articles point us to some interesting perspectives on this. The first article makes it clear that at least one of the writers is a global advertising executive. Well, that immediately begs the question about whether this is a real trend in our culture that needs a new word, or whether this is an image creation exercise designed to shift some "new" products. The quotations in the Tribune point well to this, telling us like it is:

“Frankly, this metrosexual-retrosexual talk has more takers among the Cosmo-reading girlie brigade. The average working guy hardly has time to mull over such fads.”

But my favourite piece on the issue is the third one, in which the writer plays with this idea, using the suffix "-sexual" to create a whole load of new words describing different kinds of sexuality. Check it out cos it's very funny.

Things to do...
1) How many other types of sexuality can you create with the "-sexual" suffix?
2) How many are listed in the Oxford English Dictionary?
3) I just googled "ubersexual" and got 53,000 hits. Will this word make it into the lexicon, or will it quickly die, a tragic victim of cultural faddism? Track its course!

The links...

Metrosexual man bows to red-blooded übersexuals

Male branding

Sexual identity is not just girls and boys any more

Bumper edition

2005-10-26T23:31:00.000Z

So, first up, I owe you guys an apology for my general tardiness in posting over the last couple of weeks. I've been on a bit of a UK tour involving Sheffield, Colchester, Norwich, Bath, Exeter and London - all, catastrophically, without a wi-fi laptop to help me keep up with the ever-changing world of words. Santa, if you're listening...

But to make up for it, here's a bumper edition of very interesting things just a single click away. Forbes.com "home page for the world's business leaders" is running a special on communication, with cool language stuff about chimps and aliens, lying and extracting confessions. It's got Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Pinker and Noam Chomsky. Now if you can't find something interesting to read in all that lot, well, you're on the wrong course!

And you wanna know something freaky about language and technology? Well, I guess at some point in the Language Legend archive, I did some linky-flirting with Forbes.com. Today I get an email from a bloke called Dave alerting me to their communication special because he likes my site. Yikes! There are, like, people out there?!!
(Hi Dave...)
(Though he could, of course, be a fictional cyber-person. I know that. Right?...)

Check it out.

Communicating

You know who I am

2005-10-21T09:49:00.000Z

So, at long last, the trial of Saddam Hussein gets under way, and for anyone studying language and power, cor, what a treat! Courtroom drama, or what?! In fact, I was reading the edited transcripts this morning and the dialogue is so good it could have been scripted for theatrical effect. Which is a point worth pondering, given that Saddam Hussein stated directly yesterday that all this was simply theatrical spectacle for George Bush and co.

So, think about the power dynamics that are expected in the courtroom - go and sit in on a trial if you can (they let the public in for nothing...). What we usually see is the power very squarely resting first of all with the judge, then with the lawyers, and also with the court officials as they direct the logistics of the proceedings. The ritualised aspects of the language use - "all rise!", addressing the judge as "your Honour" - enforce this power dynamic, but it also plays out in the trial itself. The defendant only generally gets to speak when spoken to, and then to answer the questions posed by prosecution and defence counsel. And these questions are hardly open, seeking to lead the defendant in one direction or another to draw out evidence upon which their case will rest.

So, Saddam Hussein. Check out the edited highlights on the links below, and see what he's up to in challenging those power dynamics. Note that the transcript used by the Times (first link) was provided to the press by the US military, and the bits about Bush's theatre have been removed. This bit of censorship, and the way the journalist from The Times presents this, is a mini-story about language and power in its own right... But never fear, that bit's in the (second) BBC link - hurrah for the BBC! Long may such freedoms of expression reign in these isles (she said nervously, waiting for her website to be closed down under new anti-terrorism measures.)

Think about turn taking, about Grice's maxims, about the language he uses to assert his own sense of power. And tune in to the news daily to see what twists and turns this particular linguistic plot takes.

Transcript of Saddam court hearing

Key excerpts from Saddam in court

Gratuitous use of Buffy The Vampire Slayer

2005-10-18T18:34:00.000Z

The story of the tragic but long predicted demise of the printed word has been running for a few days, but, to be honest, I've been trying to ignore it. That's because "life in 5/10/25/50 years" predictions always make me laugh because they are unfailingly wrong! If the things I was told as a child had been accurate we'd all now be wearing stretchy tin foil suits and eating food made from moon-algae. But in terms of language change, it's a really interesting story.

The story comes from a government exercise to find out what people think should be taught in English in the future. Many themes and issues were discussed, but the one the papers have really picked up on is the perceived need for young people to be equipped with language skills that are relevant to modern life and the modern workplace. In these contexts, it is argued, speech is far more important than writing, and online and on-screen forms of writing are far more important than the traditional written word. Hardly any surprises there, but a major issue for teacher training if this sort of language teaching policy is to be pursued.

That's one set of issues, drawing on ideas about language and technology - its plasticity and virtuality - and about language in the workplace - the pluri-lingual nature of global enterprise, the multi-modal nature of occupational discourse. But the other interesting aspect is what this has to tell us about language change. All over the news like a rash every results day are "shock! horror!" stories about young people using text messaging language forms in exams. Well, there's a time and a place for everything, but this is perhaps part of a bigger picture, one in which young people's language use is driving language change so hard and fast that it is now shaping a national discourse about how teaching should respond.

At the risk of becoming a tinfoil suit predictor, I would say that this is a really exciting period of language change. Whether it's good or bad, I don't know, but like Spike in the final episode of Buffy, I just wanna see what happens - so bring it on!

Print is not dead - but it is fast fading away

A national conversation on the future of the subject English

A man of unclean lips

2005-10-15T20:07:00.000Z

So, the Kate Moss story is barely cold and here we are again, on the subject of public statements on the use of drugs. This time it's the Tory leadership contender, David Cameron, who has found himself in the hot seat. No photos of him snorting lines of coke in a dodgy nightclub yet; indeed, no details at all other than a reluctance to answer a throwaway question from a journalist about whether or not he had taken drugs in his youth. He said simply, "I had a normal university experience."

It's a lesson in pragmatics. Work on the assumption that this means he studied hard and ate a lot of pot noodles, and his answer is incomprehensible, breaking Grice's maxim about relevance. That would make him a bit mad, which he doesn't seem to be, so what else could he mean? Well, he seems to be drawing indulgently on the rather quaint old idea that a "normal university experience" involves university students spending their days lounging around on beanbags experimenting with mind-altering substances. If that's what he did, and if it's really as normal as he asserts, what's with the euphemistic concealment? Clinton never really got away with saying he didn't inhale; maybe Cameron is hoping it'll be okay as long as he doesn't say "marijuana"?

It got even more interesting after that, as the second article points out. On Newsnight, when asked again about this, he said "We are all human and we err and stray". Still not a yes/no answer and, very curiously, his words echo the heightened language of the Bible, making it suggestive of a confession, and that in turn echoes the public apologies of a distinctly dodgy bunch of politicians caught in assorted trousers-down positions. Apology by association.

Of course, he could just be avoiding the question in a cynical bid to make himself sound a whole lot more interesting... What do you reckon?

The drugs questions that won't go away

He openeth not his mouth

Grice's conversational maxims

The holy grail?...

2005-10-11T17:54:00.000Z

So, news this week that researchers at the University of Hertforshire have discovered the holy grail. Yep, they've identified the ten magic words you should make sure you include on your UCAS form if you want to get in, and the ten magic words you should avoid like the plague. Now I'm not one to carp at an institution that is trying hard to help students with no family background of Higher Education - good on 'em, I say - but, hmmm, if everyone starts using these words, won't their currency be devalued?.....

The other thing that is interesting about this article is how this research was conducted. All we learn is that it was a joint effort of the Admissions department of the university and the Psychology department. That's it, but it's worth stopping and thinking about how we might have tackled the task if we'd been asked. There are several potential language investigations in here if you can get your hands on the data and the consent to use it. Analyse successful patterns of language in Oxbridge applications, job applications, etc - wherever the written language gets the applicant through the door for an interview. The Hertfordshire study focused on 10 key items of lexis, but are there other features that contribute to success?

Check it out. And think very carefully before using these ten words on your UCAS form - you want to stand out from the crowd, not be a Hertfordshire clone! Learn from the IDEA here - that some forms of expression represent you more positively than others. That's the trick, not the ten magic words...

Check it out.

The ten words that spell job success... and the others that mean failure

Say the magic words

Freeing your inner creative genius

2005-10-09T11:06:00.000Z

It's not often I focus on the creative writing side of the AS/A2 English Language course, but as I'm busy getting in the zone to teach it next week, here's something for all you guys wondering where to even start looking for your inner creative genius.

The Scotsman, the English Speaking Union and the National Galleries of Scotland have teamed up to run a competition for aspiring writers. This involves writing a poem or short story based on any of the art works in the National Galleries. That may not seem much use at all if you live outside Scotland, but hold on because the idea is cool.

Art works can inspire us to find all kinds of stories, or starting points of stories, characters and settings, moods and ideas - stories that can be told in all kinds of forms - short stories, monologues, poems, plays, TV shorts... I for one have got my eye on a kinda Ricky Gervais style stand-up routine based on some of the famous paintings that appeal to my sense of humour.

But that's not all the potential. Galleries themselves are places in and for which many different kinds of writing have a place - audio guides to exhibitions, education packs for schools visits, exhibition reviews, lunchtime lectures. There are also zillions of potential feature articles if you can find an unusual or interesting angle. What does a museum guard do all day, exactly?... Which gallery gift shop has the weirdest gifts? Which gallery has the best virtual reality visit?

Check the stuff out below and get writing... Never been in an art gallery? Well, now's the time to try something new! Don't stress about knowing nothing about art. Just aim to pick one piece of art - either the one thing you'd most like to take home with you, or the one you'd most like to give to your best friend/worst enemy - and see what stories it tells. One hour max then head to the shop for a postcard of your selected item and the cafe for a cup of tea. Easy!

So which picture paints 1000 words for you?

UK art galleries

Supersize me

2005-10-06T21:08:00.000Z

Following on from the last post about the bigging up of menus with fancy foreign talk, the Telegraph is reporting this as a more widespread language phenomenon. No longer content with regular, we want our language supersized too - with reference to food, jobs, and government gurus.

This is an interesting language change issue with a number of angles. Firstly, if language reflects our society and its concerns, what does this language change say about us? Why this need for a change in the way we express superlative quality or achievement? Were the previous forms of expression inadequate in some way, or is this a marker of some other kind of attitude to the world around us?

Then there's the issue of how these superlatives are being constructed. Many are formed by prefixing "mega", "ova" or "über" to existing words. I'm guilty as charged, describing myself not just as a geek but as an "übergeek". Geek would do just fine, I'm sure, but this technique has become the verbal equivalent of all those exclamation marks in emails. We clearly feel a need for more emphatic forms - but why?....

I'm also curious to know whether this phenomenon is a consequence of the enormous influence of American English on British English. The whole "supersize me" thing is an American cultural product, one that drives me nuts when I just want a normal cup of coffee and I've got to choose between "tall", "supergrande" and "absolutely impossible to drink without needing bladder reconstruction surgery afterwards". With the culture comes the language...

Check it out, and see how many other examples you can find...

English suffers hyper-inflation

Make mine a toastie

2005-10-03T19:05:00.000Z

I laughed a lot at my room mate when we started university. She'd spent a gap year in Spain (a)learning the language from scratch and (b) acquiring a basic working knowledge of its food. She spent at least ten minutes one afternoon trying to persuade me that a bit of toast wiped with a garlic clove and a few bits of chopped up tomato counted as an exquisite culinary achievement, one highly suited to an Arts undergraduate with pretensions to the finer things in life. That'll be tomatoes on toast, then, I said.

I was reminded of this reading yesterday's Oberver. It seems that one chef and restaurant critic has simply had enough of restaurants jacking up their prices, reviews and own sense of self-importance through their use of language. Specifically, using words from other languages to make the dishes sound more exciting and exotic than they really are.

I take his point, and it would make an interesting language investigation to find out how far this practice has spread. Is it just expensive restaurants or is everyone at it? But it's also worth stopping to consider the wider questions surrounding this language issue.

It's partly an issue of how you see Britain's culinary culture. If you hold the common belief that Britain doesn't have a cuisine of its own, then this constant borrowing of words is a sort of linguistic sense of inadequacy to match its culinary one. If, however, you think Britain's culinary strength lies in its ability to take the best of the world's cuisine and make it its own, then this is a linguistic confidence to match the eclectic nature of the nation's taste. Either way, how you view the food will reflect how you view the language.

I'm torn... On the one hand, I'm a big fan of calling a spade a spade and I agree with the chef guy. On the other, a toastie is NOT a panini! A toastie is made in a Breville from two slices of Mother's Pride with some economy cheddar and a badly sliced onion (ie gorgeous); a panini is an entirely different kettle of fish and therefore sadly inferior. And with so many of the culinary words in English coming from other languages in the first place, it seems a bit picky to spend time worrying about the newest batch.

Check it out.

Garçon! There's a silly French word in my soup

UK food needs English menus

Language about food

Etymology of food

Fucha-ing

2005-09-28T14:08:00.000Z

So, the hot-off-the-press book that is catching the attention of the media's reviewers this week is The Meaning of Tingo. This details words from languages all over the world which express a concept it would take several, if not many, words to say in English. The articles linked below give lots of examples, including the entirely fascinating fact that there are 27 words in Albanian for different types of facial hair.

This book is interesting from a number of points of view. Firstly, it gives us a perspective on the relationship between the rampant spread of global English and other languages of the world. It's dead easy to think of the benefits of global English (particularly if you are a native speaker of any of its varieties...) but these curious words show very clearly how language encodes cultural values and outlooks. When we lose a language we lose a window on the world.

It's also interesting in terms of language change. Shedloads of words from other languages have found a home in the English lexicon. My particular favourite is karoshi, from the Japanese, which means to die while working at one's desk. There's a word for that?!! The words are likely to undergo anglicisation of spelling and pronunciation, and if they stick around long enough they often start mutating more via the processes of lexical change - prefixes and suffixes added, conversion into other word classes, etc.

It would be worth taking one of the languages mentioned in the book, exploring what words have already entered English from this source (use the online Oxford English Dictionary if you have access to it), and then trying to predict which of the Tingo words might be most likely to enter English at a future stage. Or are the words the writer has collected too weird for that? Is there any pattern to the types of words that do and don't get adopted?... Or how about this? If you want to check out how language forms spread, take one of the words that you think it would actually be useful to have in English, and start spreading it. It's like one of those balloon races - see how far your word will fly in a set period of time. Hmmm.... Crazy but interesting...

Okay, check out the links below, plus the author's blog is linked in the blogosphere section on the right hand side here.

Weird and wonderful vocabulary from around the world

Tingo, nakkele and other wonders

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

2005-09-23T09:09:00.000Z

I don't generally take a lot of notice of super-models because if I do I have a weird rush of otherwise completely unknown maternal instinct, during which all I want to do is bake them cakes and rice pudding. But it seems one can't avoid the scrawny half-starved Kate Moss this week, so before I pop my pinny on, it's worth thinking about her apology.

Apologies are interesting speech acts. There's Kate Moss saying sorry like there's no tomorrow, every cancelled contract worth at least £200,000. But is sorry enough? Does she mean it? Is it just a cynical media ploy to save her career? Well, we probably all have opinions on these questions, depending on our attitudes to supermodels, the media and cocaine. But it's also very rewarding to take a closer language look at the whole sorry business.

What we're dealing with here is speech acts - how we use language to perform acts such as making vows and promises, naming ships and babies, and giving apologies. Apologies are an expressive speech act, one in which the speaker expresses a particular attitude. In Kate's case, an air of penitence. However, what's really interesting about speech acts is that in order for them to work out there in the real world, there are certain rules they have to play by. These are called felicity conditions.

So what are the rules for apology? Well, one of them is that you are supposed to mean it, that there is a real truth at the heart of it. You can see what a thorny issue this is in practice if you watch Supernanny. She unfailingly gets the kids to apologise, but do they mean it? Like hell they do!! But they quickly learn that the sooner you say it, the sooner you get off the naughty step/corner/cushion. I think we know what TV Kate Moss has been watching!

And that brings us to the other part of the bargain. An apology has to be accepted by its recipient(s). Just saying it isn't always enough. But, as we can again see from Supernanny, sometimes as recipients we choose to accept varying degrees of truth for the sake of social harmony. It's not an open and closed case.

So, back to Kate Moss and her career. Whether or not she now bombs out of the modelling world will depend on decisions about whether the face that launched a thousand mascaras is now an economic liability. And that decision may at least partly be based on whether or not her corporate sugar-Daddies think her apology will be accepted by us punters. Because let's face it, most of them won't give a flying monkeys what she snorts.

Check out the links. Do we accept her apology?

Kate's cocaine apology

Model apology

The breaking of Kate

Joy-riding a Porsche

2005-09-18T09:19:00.000Z

There are so many language stories running in the papers this week that I'm hard pushed to choose. But because it never fails to get my goat, let's go with the never-ending story of how appalling the youth of today is. News from the report by the Edexcel Chief Examiner for GCSE English that young people don't know how to write properly. Far too many shoudas, ain'ts, m8s, and uncapitalised first person pronouns. It's the age old epic battle between written and spoken forms of the language, between precriptive accounts of what is 'proper' and descriptive accounts of what is 'real' language use. But what I particularly like is the quotation from the chief examiner's report:

"Many concerns were expressed by examiners about elementary errors, often appearing in the work of apparently able candidates"

Hmmm, so, a few tell-tale signs there, then, about which side of the fence the examiner's sitting on. After all, one man's "elementary errors" are another man's evidence of dynamic language change amongst young people reflecting the far freer and more diverse contexts in which their language use takes place as a result of global communications technologies. Okay, okay, so they shoulda (oops, that's me stripped of my O level English...) done the honourable thing in there (their goes my A Level) GCSE exam, but if i (now they've binned my degree certificate) don't capitalise my first person pronoun does that make me any less intelligent?! Am I suddenly only "apparently" intelligent?! Well, "apparently" so if you were to believe this report...

This is all part of the public discourse about language that equates the ability to use a certain set of language forms with intelligence, godliness, cleanliness and assorted other moral virtues. Which reminds me of Norman Tebbit, a former Conservative MP, who once rather famously said,

"If you allow standards to slip to the stage where good English is no better than bad English, where people turn up filthy to school...all these things tend to cause people to have no standards at all, and once you lose standards then there's no imperative to stay out of crime."

Well, excuse me while I go joy-ride a Porsche, but formal prose is just one variety with one set of language conventions. Yes, we should all learn to use that, and I have no objection to GCSE testing it, but it really ain't the be-all and end-all of sophisticated and intelligent communication.
GCSE English pupils shoulda done better, say examiners

And in other news, check out the research into Scots (hmm, I thought we'd decided that was a language now, not a dialect...) that also throws a light on Child Language Acquisition and how vernacular languages are transmitted.

And because I can't resist a George Bush language story, check out the leak about the leak and what graphological analysis has to say about it all.

Who are you calling English?

2005-09-13T21:16:00.000Z

A year or so ago, I handed the wee Welsh nearly-new teacher at our college a copy of the unit guide for the bit of the course she was teaching.
"Let me know what you think needs changing", I said.
A few days later she thrust the guide back at me.
"I'm norr'avin' that!" she harumphed.
"What?"
"You use the expression, 'stressing for England'. Some of us do come from other parts of the United Kingdom, y'know!"
And off she went with her mug of tea in hand, chuckling gleefully at my dismay at having been found out as a secret St George's flag tea-towel owner and therefore neo-Nazi skinhead football hooligan.

And I remembered that because rumbling away in the media of the other proud noble nations of the UK is the story of the Scottish councillor who has been fined £750 for a racially aggravated crime. Specifically, calling a Welsh man "boyo" in an argument. This story surfaced towards the end of August, but today's editorial comment in the Scottish paper The Herald is calling for a change in the law that allows this. The editorial line is that slurs based on matters of national identity is crossing the line between protecting people from racism and eroding free speech.

That's a serious philosophical and legal argument to be having over a matter of language use, yet you wouldn't know it from the London/England papers, most of which don't cover this story at all.

Check out the links. Where do you think the legal line should be drawn?

Vocabulary of racism

'If boyo is racist so is Jock'

And thanks to nic (see comments section below) for suggesting this link:

Police investigate anti-British e-mail

Death sentences

2005-09-11T11:27:00.000Z

No, not the kind of thing involving choosing your last meal and getting strapped into an electric chair, but sentences so bad they threaten the language with unnatural violence. My favourite has long been one from the dizzy heights of local newspaper journalism, the Eastbourne Herald. A description of a boy's cycling accident ended with the sentence, "He was rushed to casualty where doctors treated him but luckily he managed to avoid serious injury". I know doctors working 80 hours a week can make some dodgy judgements, but beating up small boys seems a bit extreme...

But nothing is so bad as the "death sentence" in the world of business, it seems. First up is news in the Financial Times that most people - especially young ones and women - would rather read the dietary information on the back of a cereal box than anything their bank sends them. Well, hello??! You needed a survey to find that out?! At least with a riboflavin in my Rice Crispies I know where I stand: no idea what on earth it looks like, but it's good for me, right? I didn't even bother opening the envelope that came yesterday from my new pension provider... No point cos it won't be written in any English I understand. Think of me when I'm living on dog food as a pensioner because of that envelope...

Don't believe me? Well, each year the Plain English Campaign awards a Golden Bull for appallingly unclear English in the public domain, and the Royal Bank of Scotland won it last year for a letter explaining that they had "retrocessed, reponed and restored executors and assignees, in and to their own right and place in the undernoted policy of assurance by our office...” Right, I see...

This is an issue of how language is used in a specific commercial sector - financial services. But the problem of language in the workplace is not restricted to this. In the second link, the writer notes many other examples of phrases used in management speak to try to make business processes and products sound more dynamic than they are. It reminded me of KwikFit's slogan "Our aim is customer delight". I always replace "customer" with "Angel" and only that makes the frustration of their extraordinarily slow fit of my tyres or exhaust bearable. Customer delight? That's actually a very scary prospect...

And finally, a piece in the Telegraph which touches on some of the communications issues that arise when British and American colleagues or companies work together. This covers a few examples of misunderstandings caused by words or phrases which have different meanings, but mainly focuses on business practices. But if you think about these, you will see how important they are in shaping the language. Look at the list at the bottom of the article and think about how each one would affect the use of politeness markers, the opening and closing sequences, the structure of the discourse.

Financial customers give financial know-how the heave-ho

Speak plainly

Two nations divided by a common language

Plain English Campaign

Katrina And The Waves

2005-09-07T08:10:00.000Z

Oh, I know, that is such a bad title for a post about the New Orleans disaster, but as it's questions of linguistic taste that are in the news this week, it's kind of appropriate. Kinda...

But anyway, The Guardian is reporting news of the arguments in the American news media about what to call the people of New Orleans who have been displaced by the hurricane. Those which favour using language to give a dramatic sense of events are describing them as "refugees", but there's a bit of a fist fight going on about whether or not this is (a) accurate and (b) racist.

The accuracy argument focuses on whether the word "refugee" only applies to people who have sought refuge across an international border, or whether it applies to people within a country. It depends which dictionary you use, so try looking it up in a load - is there any consensus? Is there an argument that the use of the word is changing to accommodate the latter meaning?

The racism argument is interesting. It focuses on the fact that most of the people caught up in the New Orleans catastrophe are black. But, because of the way the western media represents refugee situations - poor victims in third world countries who are somehow inferior and therefore incapable of controlling their lives/economies/weather (do not misread this as my opinion...) - these people do not want to be labelled in the same way. On the BBC ten o'clock news last night, one woman argued that they should be called "survivors" or "heroes". For many observers, the collocation of the word "American" and "refugee" just doesn't make sense. A word that initially seems entirely neutral has clearly undergone pejoration at the hands of the westerm media.

Check it out. The Guardian's report focuses on the US news media. Check out the British papers and see what they're doing about this in their reports.

Use of the Word 'Refugee' Stirs Debate

And if you want to know why this hurricane is called Katrina, type "hurricane" into the search the site box (here on the right hand side somewhere) and read my previous post and link.

The well spring of one's being

2005-09-05T19:48:00.000Z

The high drama of England making headway in the Ashes and the start of the footie season has got the papers awash with loving defences of the functional importance of the f-word to sport. Now I know I was only chatting about the f-word the other day and here I am, with just a brief interlude for a bit of blasphemy, going on about it again. Don't blame me, I'm just telling you what's going on out there...

But as it just so happens that the history of swearing is going to be my Mastermind specialist subject, I'm delighted by news in the Telegraph that the BBC is just finishing a programme on this. Shame they didn't ask me to present it but we'll let that pass for now... The two articles linked below both explore the power and the passion of sport, and, between them, argue that the use of the f-word is not offensive but an entirely appropriate response to the communication situation. What's really interesting is that these articles are in the Times and the Telegraph, often the twin bastions of prescriptive attitudes to language and the general "declining standards, wasn't like that in my day, by jingo" hue and cry. Changing attitudes to language or just a sports journalist's leeway?

Anyway, next time I'm banned from the tennis club for hurling my racket over the fence in a torrent of (self-directed) "emotional" invective, I'll try explaining all this to the committee...

Cameras sworn in to expose a rash of expletives

You only **** when you're winning (unless you are Ponting, then you **** when you are losing)

The rubber chicken?!...

2005-09-03T08:01:00.000Z

Dunno why all these things to do with Jesus are suddenly crying out to be read, but following on from yesterday's post, check out the link below. Another example of an original piece of writing, this time with a mission to entertain. This is also a pretty smart piece of writing. It may initially look as though it's edging into blasphemy, but if you think about it, it actually has important stuff to say about how right wing American politicians use Christianity as an unassailable argument for their way of doing business in the world.

This is a parody of a political speech. Check out the way it uses rhetorical language, compare it with one of Bush's speeches (written by someone who can actually string a sentence together), and weep at the Bushisms website. And be kind to Americans - most of them didn't actually vote for him, after all...

The Parable of Jesus and the Rubber Chicken

American Rhetoric
(for rhetorical techniques and a shedload of speeches)

Parody

Bushisms

Jesus's body piercing

2005-09-02T20:06:00.000Z

News today of an advertising poster campaign designed to encourage more people into church other than for weddings and funerals. It's by the same advertising agency that attempted to give Skoda an image makeover, so taking on the Church of England, and for free, one thing's for sure - they like a challenge at that firm. Worth hiring them just for their attitude.

So, why is this an English Language story? Well... First up, the approach that Fallon, the advertising agency, has taken is interesting, and the posters are worth analysing as short texts. Graphologically they are striking, while the message makes use of interesting lexical, pragmatic and semantic choices. Check 'em out. These are masterpieces of understated simplicity, clearing away the clutter of religion to give a message that is about the heart of community life. For all their simplicity, these posters are actually very clever. You'll find one reproduced visually in The Telegraph article below, while The Times quotes the slogans of a few more. If anyone finds a link to the full set somewhere out in cyberspace, gimme a shout so I can add it here.

But what's also interesting is how sharply the language used on these posters contrasts with the language used in more recent campaigns. These adapted all sorts of non-standard and/or "modern" language forms in a bid to present an image that would get punters under the age of 87 through the church door. These forms included:

Popular slogans, adapted to the church message "The Church is for life. Not just for Christians"
Slang expressions, such as describing the Virgin Mary as having a "bad hair day"
Text messaging language forms
References to drugs and, my favourite of all, body piercing - "Jesus had his done 2000 years ago"

It's as painful as a teacher with a mid-life crisis trying to use yoof slang.

So, if you have to create an original text for your coursework, you could do worse than put yourself in the shoes of a Fallon "creative", charged with creating an ad campaign to improve the public image of another PR disaster-zone. You'd need to do a whole series to get near the word count, but hey, that's what Fallon just did...

And if you have the Oxford English Dictionary online at your school/college, can you look up 'churchy' and let me know if they've got that word yet?...

Attempt to make church less 'churchy'

Skoda ad agency gives the Church a push

Catch the one about Jesus's body piercing

Getting into Advertising

Swearing in the classroom

2005-08-30T17:22:00.000Z

Well, I don't know about your classroom, but there's always lots of swearing in mine. Indeed, my old desk-buddies frequently fell about laughing as students and I engaged in serious academic discussion of the role of different morphological derivations of the f-word in their coursework data.

But this week the issue is getting the Daily Mail a bit hot under the collar. It's an outrage! What are teachers coming to? Standards are falling! The end of the world is nigh! Why? Because one school, clearly vexed to breaking point with a couple of "challenging" classes, has made a new rule. The f-word is to be allowed in the classroom, but only five times per lesson amongst the whole class.

Well, thank goodness I don't teach there, because I suspect that faced with such vexations, I'd be the first person to be expelled for using the f-word more than 5 times an hour. And that was all I thought when I read this article. I'd decided it was such a classic Daily Mail rant-fest that I wouldn't even bother posting it here. But the story has suddenly become much more interesting because the Scotsman has picked up on the story north of the border, where the Scottish Parent Teacher Council is saying that swearing in the classroom is okay. In an interesting take on the subject, they claim classroom behaviour is made worse by over-reactions to what has become a feature of everyday language.

So, now we have a real fight on our hands and material here of interest for language change (is the f-word now a non-taboo feature of everyday language?), language and occupation (should teachers control their own and others' langauge use in this way?), and language debates (check out the opposing points of view). Read it and then come back and vote in the poll on this.

You can use the f-word in class (but only five times)

Let pupils swear in school, argues parents' group

How to spend £97,500

2005-08-28T19:39:00.000Z

No, don't blow it all on CDs like I probably would; spend it on a Maths text book! That's what the British Library has just quite rightly done. Seems a lot, I know, to pay for a load of sums, but then this is not just any old Maths text book - it's the earliest English one known, published in 1536, and published in English.

That it has survived 469 years is amazing. That would be a major achievement for any book, but the writer of the article explains that practical books have not often survived, simply because they were used so much that they eventually just fell to bits. Why? Because books were very time consuming and labour intensive to print, and therefore they were expensive and had to be used and re-used many times over.

The British Library spokeswoman also draws our attention to the significance of the book being in English, when Latin was still very important in the world of education, and to the importance of this kind of book at a time when English commerce was really taking off. That wouldn't have got very far if no-one could add up...

At the end of the article there is an extract from the book - top language change stuff. Try comparing it with a modern basic Maths text book.

Ye olde Maths textbooke found after 470 years

Kill me if you can

2005-08-25T21:53:00.000Z

No, I don't mean that literally... It's the title of this week's watercooler programme - y'know, the one where everyone's going, "did you see xxx on TV last night?!" So, did you see it?! Channel 4 on Tuesday night, and incredible viewing. Check out the channel 4 blurb below if you didn't...

Kill me if you can

So, why is this interesting to the student of the English language? Well, firstly, it's another example in the growing list of legal cases solved through forensic linguistics. The police finally twigged, having ploughed their way through reams and reams of transcripts, that all of the people in this surreal chatroom were actually just fictional projections of the same person, because they all used the unique language form "mybye". It was this one tiny detail that revealed all. All the other features of the fictional characters' language use were sufficiently convincing for the police to have believed they were looking for real people, going as far as arresting a real shop assistant they thought fitted the bill.

It's also really interesting to think about this case in relation to language and technology. Although many of the chatroom conversations had been deleted, the police still had 58,000 lines of text left to work on. Given that the lads were often in the chatroom all night, and that this scenario took place over many months, a gargantuan amount of language was obviously produced. It is hard to imagine that being possible in any other way than with instant messaging software. Had they been on the phone, their parents would have been bankrupted; had they been talking face to face, their parents would have told them to quit yakking and get to bed! And the product of so much language being generated was that it constructed a whole world of words that became more real than the living breathing one beyond the PC screen.

It's very easy to read about this case, and to pass the lads off as a bit odd, a bit vulnerable, etc. But the most interesting comment quoted in the article comes from the lad 'John' who was stabbed. In therapy he described how the conversations he had in this virtual world had given him a stronger sense of emotional intimacy than he'd ever had before. In internet chat there is a gratifying immediacy, the heady freedom to say things you might not ordinarily say, and a sense that language and identity are far less fixed. Which of us hasn't felt that to some extent?... It's all just a question of how far we are prepared to go with that freedom.

(Did I just confess to being an online psycho?...)

U want me 2 kill him?

The forces of nang

2005-08-23T19:06:00.000Z

Nope, that's not the title of a new episode of Star Wars, but part of the contemporary East London dialect that is strongly influenced by Bangladeshi language forms. Forget how they talk in EastEnders, that's a thing of the past - or at least a matter of migration into Essex. This is dialect change in action, and we know what we know about it because Dr Sue Fox spent nine months exploring the language use of young people at a Tower Hamlets youth club. Now that's what I call a language investigation!

The research itself is fascinating, showing as it does that this is not a dialect used solely by young people with a Bangladeshi background, but also by young white people in the area. It also identifies really interesting gender differences in this dialect use.

But what's also interesting is the way that this news has been reported, red and black tops alike, focusing on Cockney in an almost elegaic way, mourning its death as if glottal stops and dropped aitches were the last word in linguistic beauty. Just a bit of backward-looking nostalgic fondness for cheeky chappies and Pearly Queens? A game for journalists during the news doldrums, to see who can score the highest rhyming slang count? Or racist bullshit?

Forgive my language here, but the Telegraph really has plumbed new depths. Look at this: "The cockney sparrow accent is being chased out of its spiritual home in the East End of London by young people who copy the voices of Bangladeshi immigrants, research has claimed." The language use of white older working class people is represented as a small cheery songbird, one that is the victim of slavish young followers of a dangerous predatory interloper. Using the highly emotive phrase "spiritual home" make it sound as though this is all part of some jihadi mission. And I'll ask her when I see her, but I am absolutely certain that Sue Fox's research did not claim either of those things.

Bangney new voice of the East End

East End Cockney accent fading

Cockney takes on a new sound

The nicest four letter word I've been called

2005-08-20T10:17:00.000Z

Oh to be in Australia now that Spring is here. Or rather, now that its parliament is in session because, lawks a-mercy, the papers are having a field day over the attempted banning of the word 'mate'. Not a blanket ban, but one issued in a memo to security staff, instructing them not to greet MPs and their visitors with this or any other colloquialism because of the risk of causing offence. Result? Immediate offence caused to the entire nation. Never mind all that European bloody high mindedness, like the French with their "liberty, equality, fraternity", the Aussies have founded their state on the principle of "mateship". And if the current Prime Minister had had his way, that would actually have been written into the constitution.

Check out the print and broadcast features linked below for the full story. Some interesting things to note:

the connections made between this small word and patriotism
the claims made for this word as a gender-neutral form of address
the political connotations of egalitarianism and the importance of this to Australians
the very strong sense of the importance of vernacular langauge forms
the debate about what constitutes politeness in language
the issue about the level of intimacy conveyed by the word
and if you were thinking of becoming a "bone-head bloke politician" there's at least one top tip in there for you!

The ban got overturned a day later but I'm still intrigued... Is this just an Aussie thing or are we all using 'mate' more now?... How do you use it?... Check it out. The third link is a transcript from a radio show - either read or listen.

The spirit of mateship takes a blow at parliament

Australian ban on mate wins few friends

'Mate' banned from parliamentary parlance

Australian slang

Australian word map

AS/A2 results day

2005-08-18T14:42:00.000Z

To everyone who got their results today, here's hoping you got the grades you wished for.

To everyone in my A2 class, you guys are the best! I'm chuffed as monkeys with your results. Stay in touch, eh?

What's new?

2005-08-17T23:25:00.000Z

Like I said, I've been tinkering around with the insides of this website, and you'll notice a few new things if you've been here before. Here's the list so far - check it out.

1) New colour scheme (okay, okay, it doesn't add anything to your knowledge of the English Language but I had fun choosing...)

2) Top new gizmo: a search the site function. Type in a key word - eg gender, power, language change - and the magic gizmo will find all previous posts that relate to it. Very handy for reference purposes when you're working on a topic in class or for coursework. Nah, it's okay, no need to thank me...

3) I tidied up the links section, making some new headings to keep them in some kind of order.

4) I put some more information about this site in my profile section, which is now enormous. This is a temporary measure until I find a bit of code for a FAQ section that is (a) free and (b) without advertising. No joy so far. If anyone out there wants to write me some, do feel free - email addy is in the profile.

Next jobs are updating links and reading. Suggestions for this and any other features you think would be cool, just let me know...

London calling

2005-08-17T22:32:00.000Z

Having spent part of the week tinkering around with the insides of this website, I'm feeling all kind of technical. And this week's language radar scan brought a new survey to my attention, one that focuses on language and technology. Oh, the serendipity of the universe...

Anyway, this survey is reported with great glee in The Register, first link below, making the most of the fact that one of the findings is that Londoners appear to behave differently in their use of email at work to people in other regions. The writer reports these findings in Mockney, a Jamie Oliver "pukka geezer" pseudo language variety only used by people whose idea of the East End is Michael Caine circa 1967. But that aside, the findings make curious reading, with differences also noted according to gender and age. Some of these are yawningly obvious - younger employeess are apparently more likely to send emails they later regret than older people. But some are quite intriguing - 5% of males but only 1% of females admit to emailing their company's intellectual property to other people. It's the sort of survey that makes me go "hmm, I want to know more".

So, check out the second link, which will take you to the press release of the company that commissioned the survey. Ah, well, wouldn't you know it - commissioned by a company specialising in corporate IT security. Good marketing idea, that - do a survey that shows how "dangerous" employees' habits are, and then flog software to spy on us and policies to sack us for it. But putting that teensy weensy bit of research bias aside, the press release gives some useful information about the size of the sample and that it was conducted online. Useful in pointing up how methodologically flawed much of the "research" quoted in daily life is. Here, facts are being asserted about corporate email use when about a third of the survey respondents were not email users in current employment.

But the fact that it is flawed and biased make this MORE interesting, because now I want to know how much truth there is in the claims that are being made. Though it would be a challenge to get hold of, I'd like to see actual language use in this context rather just people's perceptions of how they use it. I'm curious to know whether the "sneaky, foul-mouthed and malicious" Londoners are only using more "foul language" than Northerners in their emails, or whether it's a more general language consequence of living in the capital. Or maybe they're just more honest about it in surveys?... So, could some of you guys get on to that and let me know the answers?....

And as a Londoner (though neither Cockney nor Mockney, sneaky or malicious) Clearswift needn't think they're getting a Christmas card from me now...

Cockney suits abuse f**king email

Email users behaving badly…especially in the capital

Hae a keek roon

2005-08-14T20:01:00.000Z

Well, I can officially report that there is one place left on this earth where if you do your very best to speak in the local tongue, the natives still answer in it, instead of yawning loudly and doing so in fluent English. This, despite your complete inability to roll an 'r' and a head-to-toe blush every time you attempt the braggadocio intonation the language requires. Puglia in Italy... Ah, the olive groves, the wine, the t-shirts with really bizarre English slogans that would make an entirely intriguing coursework study...

But enough of that and back to reality... There have been a few languid language stories running while I've been away, but what really caught my eye is a small item in my inbox. Having years ago faced up to the fact that having a daily newspaper is merely paying to get my recycling delivered, I subscribe to the Wrap, the Guardian's email news service. It comes with a bonus extra, a weekly guide to some of the most interesting writing to be found online in other publications.

And there, on my return, one of the journalists had recommended the link below, the Scots language version of the Scottish parliament's website. Absolutely fascinating to see what has long been regarded as a dialect of English being treated, by a powerful institution of government, as a separate language on an equal footing with Urdu and Italian. Deciding what is a language and what is a dialect is a highly contentious issue (check out the second link for an explanation of this), but where Scots is concerned many A Level text books still suggest, by its inclusion, that it is a dialect of English. Check out the explanation of Scots in the third link, and decide - should it be included for A Level English Language study or not?....

The Scottish Parliament - in Scots

Wikipedia on dialect and language

Wikipedia on Scots

Essential maintenance

2005-08-03T21:32:00.000Z

To the 800+ readers, lurkers and bloggers who are now checking in here each month... or alternatively, to my 1 reader who is clicking in here 800 times a month... have a fantastic summer. I'm now off to the beach for a few weeks with a big pile of books and an iPod. Back later this month for site upgrade (or just a bit of tweaking, depending on how technical I'm feeling) and all the latest news from the world of words. Take it easy out there.

Double clicking the mouse

2005-07-31T22:35:00.000Z

One of my favourite A2 coursework projects this year was an investigation into the use of sexual slang amongst young people at our own (free) state sixth form college and our local (very expensive) private school. The student's hypothesis was that there would be a lot of difference, with the private school students having a highly distinctive slang of their own.

The findings showed that there were indeed many differences, but these were more curious than expected. There was one word used by the private school students that was never used by the sixth form college students, "cheesing" used for flirting, but the rest of the items were mutually comprehensible. However, state students generally used a much wider range of slang than the privately educated students and it tended to be more humorous. The privately educated students tended to use more clinically factual terminology, and there were some distinctly 'elevated' slang items drawn from French and Shakespeare. But the slang term that had me choking on my cuppa at the sheer genius of the data was this one: in response to the prompt, What word or phrase would you use to describe the manual stimulation of the clitoris? one of the sixth form college respondents wrote "double clicking the mouse". I still weep with uncontrollable laughter every time I look at my computer...

However, I don't suppose that one has made it into the new book of sexual slang, Dirty Words: The Story of Sex Talk by Mark Morton. It's in the nature of slang that it changes as fast as you can pin it down, and besides, that double clicking may just have been one student's moment of linguistic brilliance with no wider currency. I'd love to know... Anyway, check out these two reviews of the book.

The first, in the Guardian, is a little sniffy about Morton's prose style but at least opens with some delicious examples (though 'delicious' may be a very bad choice of word there once you've read what felching is...) and gives a link to a website that might be useful and/or banned by your school/college web-police.

The second, in the Times, is written from a rather different point of view, that of Belle du Jour the bestselling blogger who claimed to be a high class prostitute. Not much use as a book review, but a quirky and interesting take on it nonetheless - erm, especially the idea that a talent for wordplay makes you irresistible. Did you need another reason to study English Language?!!....

L is for lalochezia

I love it when you talk dirty

Ah-oo, werewolves of London

2005-07-28T23:26:00.000Z

School's out for summer and I've got my ten year old niece staying for a few days. Last time she came we watched School of Rock, and now we're working our way through a special iPod playlist as we drive here and there in the karaoke car. I'm teaching her the lyrics of really daft songs, especially ones with lots of "oos" and "woos". We're Gladys Knight's Pips doing the train noises on Midnight Train to Georgia. We're doing lupine howls to Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London. And we were doing do-do-do-doos with Lou Reed on Walk on the Wild Side until I remembered what the bits in between the chorus actually say...

So imagine my delight to find discussion of exactly this in today's Guardian. The article gives a shedload of examples from a wide range of musical styles and genres, and gets all quite language focused in places. First there are the words used to describe 'nonsense' in music, the sounds made when wordless singing is occurring - scat, doowop and an interesting suggestion of a new term 'rockolalia' (check that suffix out...). Then the writer explores the huge range of meanings that can be conveyed by the single simple 'word' - la.

But oh no, what's this?! At the end of the article the writer describes the use of these lyrical noises as "childlike" and "capable of bridging gaps and warming hearts". You don't think we're into some weird territory here where even the hardest thrash guitar bands are just desperately trying to hark back in their language use to baby babbling?!...

See what you all started?!... Now I can't stop thinking about child language acquisition...

La-la land

Stages of language acquisition in children
(Check out 'canonical babbling' and compare with sounds made in song lyrics!)

Because they are Cornish

2005-07-25T11:21:00.000Z

It's July, I'm at work and it's raining outside but in an undaunted wave of summer holiday optimism, let's all think instead about Cornwall - the surfing, the clotted cream ice cream, the wind in your hair as you stride along the coastpath - ah, bliss... But hold on, what's this? Maybe because that's where all the Guardian journalists have decamped for the summer, but Cornwall is all over the paper in ways that are very interesting for language students.

First up is news that the ongoing plans to revive the Cornish language have hit a bit of a stumbling block. What Cornish language? Well, check out the first link for more, but in a nutshell it's one of Britain's ancient Celtic languages, as spoken by Britons before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. What's this got to do with English? Ah well, lots... Quite apart from the whole consideration of how minority languages interact with massive majority ones like English, there is fascinating material in the second piece of linkylovin' about the processes of standardisation in Cornish. These make for interesting comparison with the standardisation of English.

The issue, y'see, is that the architects of the Cornish revival cannot agree about how the language should be spelled. There are different options and each school of thought on the subject wants its version to be adopted as the standard. We're seeing the process of codification in living breathing action here, a process the English language went through in a less planned manner in the 18th century, but one that inspired equally heated debate.

Cornish language

Spelling row could see Cornish go west

Next up is an article about the 'war' being waged on the Cornish beaches. Well, North Cornwall to be precise, between 'locals' and 'rahs' - an interesting clipping of the first part of the slang term 'Hoorah Henries', a.k.a. 'snob-yobs'. This story has being doing the media rounds the last few summers, but what's interesting about this piece is that the journalist touches on some language issues. First she notes the downward convergence in the speech of the rahs and the effects this has on everyone else, from deeply insulting to strikingly insensitive. Then she reports the locals' account of the mockery they face for their West Country accents. When I read this, Labov's classic Martha's Vineyard study came immediately to mind, so if you're down in Cornwall, go check it out, will ya? This could make a fine A2 coursework project!

Wild, wild west

Labov's Martha's Vineyard study

The Singing Neanderthals?!

2005-07-22T21:04:00.000Z

I've been feeling bad since my recent terrible admission that I don't do Child Language Acquisition. Under interrogation, I keep confessing to finding it deeply uninteresting, but that's such a lame thing to say I thought I'd better make a bit more effort. And hurrah! This week there's a review in The Telegraph of a new book which explores the relationship between music and language development. But oh no, not all that usual stuff about babies listening to Mozart in the womb and being born with their first novel already written - the usual deathly dull bilge that pops up periodically in the popular media. This is WAY cool!

Y'see, this book explores language development from a far more interesting perspective. Not just one baby's fairly inevitable journey through the well-documented stages of dribbling and babbling, but the journey of our ancestors from musically-minded Neanderthal to language-capable bipedal hominid. The connection with current Child Language Acquisition processes? Well, that connection comes from the way Infant Directed Speech in many very different languages, including English, shares a distinctive use of musical features such as rhythm and tempo. The writer's argument is that this musicality is part of our inherited brain circuitry. Now that's interesting...

Another interesting aspect of the article is its suggestion that language acquisition erodes perfect pitch in humans. The consequence drawn from this is that pre-linguistic humans may have been musically brilliant, in a way that most of us today can only dream of. How much credence you give this argument is up to you, but surely, at last, I have an explanation for why I'm only a rock guitar legend in the made up world inside my head. Too adept with words for my own good... Tragically...

But if I ever recover from the cruelty of language, my band will definitely be called 'The Singing Neanderthals'.

Baby's first tunes

Don't mention the "T" word

2005-07-20T21:36:00.000Z

Hmm, interesting reports this week that the BBC has issued a decree to its many reporters, insisting that phrases such as "misguided criminals" or "bombers" are used to describe the four men responsible for the recent London bombs. These instead of "terrorists", as a way of writing more factually and less emotively about the events.

It's a tricky language issue, this one. Makes no difference to the four men concerned, of course... And though I usually much prefer to call a spade a spade, I can see that a small semantic shift here might help to avoid fanning the flames of BNP-style hatred in the aftermath of the bombs. And if one of the men had been my son, it might help my terrrible grief not only that he died, and was willing to die, and was happy to take as many innocent people with him as possible, if somehow I could call it something other than terrorism. Euphemism can play a powerful social role in helping us cope with terrible taboos.

The question the first article explores is whether this is really about objectivity or sensitivity, or whether it is about avoiding stark moral reality and using language that is so empty of any meaning that clear well informed thought becomes almost impossible. If you're with the new pope on the modern curse of moral relativism, you might incline towards the view that this is empty political correctness. If you think political correctness has some value in making our social relationships more dignified, then you probably won't. Though it's a complex issue and either/or judgements are of little use.

Not that you'd know that from the American papers reporting this story!! Okay, so, to the best of my knowledge these papers are little more than chip wrappers, but it's nonethless interesting to see what the land of the free really thinks about our state media institution.

The Kinston Free Press manages to keep its contempt to an offhand sneer about the "oh-so-proper" BBC. But check out the Desert Dispatch and keep reminding me never to visit Barstow, California. Though I admire their use of the word 'expunged', you cannot be anything but gobsmacked by the fantastical leap from what the BBC actually decreed to the journalist's assertion that the BBC will also be calling rapists "unplanned lovers" - er, when nothing of the kind has been suggested. But worst of all is the description of the BBC as "terror-coddling". Now there's a new word to track, guys... "Terror-coddling"??!! Try and think about what that might actually mean and then watch as bits of your brain melt.

Oh the land of the free.... Thank the heavens above I don't have to live there.

Stop castrating the language

The ever-changing English language

Curse of the language corrupters

Business bullshit

2005-07-17T07:19:00.000Z

I have one small bone to pick with the writer of this week's top link, an article about the empty rhetoric of corporate-speak. I'll save that bone for a moment, as this is a useful piece, clearly identifying some good examples of business mumbo-jumbo - the blend "creovation" certainly had me vomiting in my Frosties at its mind-bending meaninglessness. My own personal favourites, from a college I couldn't possibly name, are the words "rebasing" and "reshaping", the former applied to college finances, the latter to college staffing. What do they mean? Well you might ask. "Rebasing" one's finances means slashing budgets until the staff managing them bleed; "reshaping" means sacking people. But in the context of this article, at least the words mean something!!

The other reason I like this article is because, despite its righteous anger at business bullshit, it takes an intelligent approach to the wider subject, explaining the useful purpose "empty language" has in some contexts. We can perfectly well recognise this phatic function and not call the Queen a heartless cow because she doesn't actually mean it when she asks us how we are. But when language is supposed to mean something, we're into dangerous territory.

So, what can we do about it? Well, the Campaign for Plain English is a good start so check them out. Orwell's essay that is referred to in the article is still a very fine read. And if you fancy a little light entertainment, check out the Business Buzzwords Bingo - a bit Yankee in places, but as most of our business mumbo-jumbo arrives on the redeye that makes it a pretty useful exercise in spotting what's coming next. Try playing it next time the Big Cheese at work holds a "feel the love" staff meeting; run some searches of a blacktop newspaper; read your staff handbook or company memos...

And the question I'm dying to know the answer to if anyone knows anyone who knows anyone - does corporate communication at Ronseal do what it says on the tin too?...

An empty language for empty headed executives

Plain English Campaign

Orwell - Politics and the English Language

Business Buzzwords Bingo

(And the bone-picking?... Read the bit about the bullshit and the candy floss and tell me you didn't immediately compare eating the two things - yeugh!......)

The rest is silence

2005-07-14T20:41:00.000Z

It's too soon yet to be thinking about the relationship between language and the appalling events in London last week, but today's Guardian carries both the truly remarkable speech made by Marie Fatayi-Williams in the intense grief for the loss of her son, and a moving analysis of its power. I post them here for when such a time comes.

Straight from the heart

1066 and all that

2005-07-12T15:39:00.000Z

So, news this week of my favourite subject in the study of our language: Old English. No, I don't mean laughing-yer-arse-off old-fashioned English as spoken by your parents and teachers; I mean the English spoken by the Anglo-Saxon peoples in a period usually defined as ending round about 1066 and the Battle of Hastings. If you browse through text books on the topic it's very easy to end up thinking that the minute the Normans pulled the arrow out of Harold's eye, that was it for the English language, pretty much game over for a couple of centuries - particularly where written English is concerned. The usual curmudgeonly idea is that although the peasants carried on speaking English in their everyday lives, literature in English ended.

But hey, think about it logically - why would that happen?!... Unless the Normans had killed all the writers and burned all the manuscripts, why would a well developed cultural practice just stop overnight? Well, one reason might be a writer's desire to access the power and prestige of published work, and Latin and French language and literary forms were very much the key to success. But as a new project at the University of Leeds has set out to explore, trilingualism was an option and there is in fact a rich and varied vein of written texts in Old English during the period from 1066-1200, the one generally regarded as a kind of literary dark age. These may not have the high prestige value of the ruling class's literary tastes, drawing instead on older Anglo-Saxon textual traditions, but they exist nonetheless.

Now come on, how much fun would it be to work on that project, rediscovering texts so long forgotten that we don't even know they exist?! Call me weird if you will, but it's like Time Team for the English Language and I want to know what's down there! Check it out.

Unchronicled Anglo Saxon

The uncivil servant

2005-07-06T21:47:00.000Z

So, three cheers for Louise Casey!! Who's that?... None other than the woman currently all over the news as the "foul-mouthed uncivil servant", the ASBO tsar who is apparently not averse to getting "hammered", and thinks all the fuss about hoodies is a waste of time. Well, hurrah. Someone in a position to influence political decision-making who is talking some sense!

But what's the connection to the study of language?... Well, this story is interesting on several counts. Firstly, there is the issue of how we know about it. Louise Casey was invited to give the after-dinner speech at an event for senior police officers. Now, after-dinner speeches and serious political speeches are not the same thing at all. There is a long tradition of political incorrectness, ribaldry and dodgy jokes in the after-dinner genre, and I would find it hard to imagine for so much as a second that senior police officers' dinners are any exception. Amongst a close-knit group, with the wine flowing nicely, many things may get said that wouldn't be said in other contexts. Them's the rules, and on those terms one might see Louise Casey's language choices as simply playing to the gallery - a bit of no-nonsense straight talk that police officers might be expected to appreciate, establishing her street cred with non-standard language forms, and getting them on board with a shared joke about the ineffectiveness of politicians. All in all, from what I can gather without reading the transcript of the speech, a pretty skilful use of language in a specific context.

But, the problem for Louise Casey is that this speech was secretly recorded by a guest at the dinner who clearly had no moral scruple about flogging it to the press, and some kind of personal or political axe to grind. Why else would you secretly tape the speech?... And quoted out of context in a media keen to milk the moral panic about sweatshirts with hoods, all the delicate pragmatic interplay between speaker and audience, and any understanding of language variation, is completely lost.

The other issue this raises is the fascinating but bordering on psychotic way that powerful institutions like the Civil Service want to control the way that its employees use language. Casey is now under official investigation because her language use may be regarded as bringing the Civil Service into disrepute with government ministers. Well, um, let's see now, a 38 year old woman has landed one of the highest profile jobs there is, without rising up through the ranks of the Civil Service or taking its entrance exams. And why was that? Because she has an impressive reputation for telling it like it is, and then cutting through layers of bullshit and bureaucracy to get things done in society. Sounds to me like the Civil Service punka-wallahs have got a mouthful of sour grapes...

This is perhaps also interesting from a language and gender point of view. Casey's speech is reported as a "foul-mouthed rant". Well, on the evidence quoted, that amounts to "bloody", "pissed" and one use of the vernacular verb, to "deck" someone. They think that's foul-mouthed?!! Well, my mum might still clip me round the ear for such "unladylike" language, but no-one else in the 21st century would. Would a bloke using these words be reported as "foul-mouthed"?... Dunno... What do you think?

And that is all quite aside from the equally fascinating way in which the word "binge" has become inextricably collocated with "drinking" and has had its meaning precisely defined as being "5 or more drinks in a row". Language change in action...

'Uncivil servant' embarrassed by remarks

Asbo adviser mocks drink campaign

Plate tectonics

2005-07-04T18:25:00.000Z

So, for your delight and delectation this week, a nice little review in Sunday's Observer of a new book out on language change. Nice, because the reviewer (Deborah Cameron, high ranking B list celebrity linguist) gives a very lucid summary of some contemporary ideas about language change that the book covers. To summarise the summariser:

1) Language change is a universal phenomenon

2) It's patterned, not random, but doesn't conform to any strategic design principles and can work in opposing ways simultaneously

3) Simpler language systems, such as pidgins, evolve into more complex ones, but the fact that many ancient languages are more grammatically complex than now often gives rise to the opposite view, that languages have a natural tendency towards degeneration

4) This tendency can be seen in the 'economy' or 'least effort' principle of language change, in which the simplest possible form is adopted

5) But if that were the only principle at work, we would all be speaking in nothing other than monosyllabic grunts by now

6) Instead, degenerative forces constantly compete with creative ones, such as the 'expressiveness' principle of language change, in which the desire to make the language convey the constant shape-shift of human experience results in new language forms

7) Equally creative is the 'analogy' principle, in which the raggedy ends of language change get tidied up

I love this view of language change as one in which the natural forces of creation and destruction compete over the territory. It's exciting, like plate tectonics in Geography, with bits of language getting sucked under and melted down, and new bits spurting up through the crust and hardening into a useful little mountain range or two. Think about that...

Forked tongues

The Wow Factor

2005-06-30T20:13:00.000Z

Into the last few weeks of term now, and I bet you're all sitting there worrying about how you're ever going to fill the long summer holidays with meaningful activity once English Language revision no longer fills your every waking moment. Well, fear not! Because here's your chance to earn 2.8 million quid. Think I'm joking? Well, that's what one writer of children's books has recently been paid to turn "Wolf Brother" into a six book series. And isn't J.K. Rowling now richer than the Queen?

The reason this has made the news is because a competition has been launched to find the next children's bestseller writer. Think this is only for older people? Well, you're wrong, because the entry details clearly state that writers should be aged 16 and over. So, that means you guys, right? The competition is called "The Wow Factor"; you get the application forms from Waterstones, the bookshop.

Linkyloved below is a good piece in The Times, which includes discussion with 3 top children's fiction writers. Whether you fancy having a crack at the prize money or not, they usefully explore some key issues in writing for children: about the drafting process, the pitfalls of using youth sociolect, the value of getting feedback from the intended audience, and the importance of really solid research. But best of all is a golden nugget of advice from the 2.8 million quid writer that every aspiring writer would do well to bear in mind (and especially when submitting pieces for exams/coursework!!):

"if you think your first draft is marvellous, you are probably not as talented as you need to be"

Think about it... And if you win the Wow Factor prize, I want a mention in the foreword for telling you about it! (and a share of the cash....)

Think you can write a children's bestseller?

You cannot be serious?!

2005-06-27T20:12:00.000Z

In the spirit of sporting generosity and Scottish bonhomie, I'd like to offer Andy Murray my tennis coach, given that he's a bit short of one at the moment. I think my deliciously tattooed tennis pirate would do well with the young superstar as he's gained plenty of experience in the "emotional expression" school of tennis, what with me hurling my racket at him and all... And it's "emotional expression" that's been high on the Wimbledon news agenda in the last week.

First there's Tiger Tim. (Top tip to Andy: keep listening to the Black Eyed Peas and scowling then no-one will touch you with a dumb alliterative nickname that spells "Loser" with a big L.) It's not the balls or the grass that have done for Henman; more that he's just not with it linguistically. The genteel Oxfordshire squire's son doesn't say the F word with any conviction whatsoever, and in the modern game that has to be a major handicap. (And Tim, your whining in earlier tournaments that it's not fair because other players can swear undetected in their native tongue only makes it worse!) Nonetheless, you have to give him some credit for trying, and though his Wimbledon hopes may once again be dashed, he can at least console himself that his linguistic crimes against the All England Lawn Tennis Club are being investigated.

Henman serves up a volley of abuse

Tim faces fine for outburst

Also on the language and tennis radar this week is discussion in the Guardian of the standard of tennis commentary. This caught my attention because on a long drive during a big match the other day, I had to tune in to Radio 5 Live. And what a revelation! I had no idea that I would enjoy it so much! Without the pictures, the commentators have to work much harder, using words to describe vividly and immediately what is happening. You might think that the pressure this places the commentator under would make their work less detailed or less coherent, but you'd think wrongly. They have to draw more frequently on precise tennis jargon - "Federer plays a sliced backhand... Ferrero a heavy topspin forehand right onto the base line" - but as Radio 5 Live is for sports fans, that's a help not a hindrance.

But it also made me realise how much drivel many of the TV tennis commentators talk. Not McEnroe - he's as much a legend in the commentary box as he was in his time on court. But many of the others talk rubbish, especially when commenting on women's matches. You wanna investigate language and gender to see if sexist language use is dead? Try tennis commentary! And an entertaining piece in today's Guardian picks up on the worst offender of them all, the former British player, Andrew Castle. The writer picks out several linguistic issues, but the one that has me pointing a broom at my telly while making firing squad sounds is his use of the most crashing cliches to describe moments of sublime athletic performance. Read it and start thinking about applying to Brighton University for their Sports Journalism degree: one of you guys can DEFINITELY do better!

Never mind the Sex Pistols, here's Sue Barker

Radio Five Live

BA Sport Journalism at Brighton University

And for seconds...

2005-06-23T19:24:00.000Z

I couldn't resist this little item: an article that had me spluttering my tea all over the computer screen in a huge guffaw, and wondering if it was April Fools Day already. Y'see, potato farmers have been on the rampage, protesting outside Parliament - er, and outside the offices of the Oxford English Dictionary! I know, I know, this is already getting surreal... And why are the spud-munchers so unhappy with the twin bastions of civilisation? Well, they vehemently object to the word "couch-potato" because it conveys negative connotations of the healthy and nutritious root vegetable. Laughed at the ridiculousness of the campaign? I nearly died!!

The best bit of all is the response given to the media by John Simpson, chief editor of the OED: "I think the potato has taken a bit of a mashing after the Atkins diet". Someone give that man the OBE now! That is priceless verbal wit!

Read it and rise up with me, sofa-lovers, to object to the equally negative connotations being accrued to the word "couch"!

Farmers demand a ban on the word 'couch-potato'

And join in the debate about alternative terms here:

What should we call couch potatoes now?

Where do you draw the line?

2005-06-23T19:04:00.000Z

It's sunny, there's wall to wall Wimbledon on the telly, and those things have conspired to put me in such a good mood that you can have two posts today. Also, I can't decide between them!

First, the serious stuff: news in The Guardian that a foul mouthed abusive ranter has got away with it in court for a second time. His two year tirade to his MP against the government's policies on asylum seekers and immigrants brought him to the attention of the Crown. He was charged in his local magistrate's court with offences against the Telecoms Act, basically for using expletives and what any sane rational person would call explicitly racist language. However, the magistrates let him off on the grounds that although his language was "offensive" it was not "grossly offensive". Oh, so that's okay then...

The reason it's in the news today is because the case went to the appeal court. Now, a couple of high court judges have deemed that the magistrates made a legally correct decision. How so? Because out of the 3 people in the MP's office who had to deal with the calls, none of them were members of an ethnic community, and while one found the calls "upsetting", the other two did not. As the man's language hadn't actually caused any offence to these parties, it couldn't be deemed grossly offensive.

D'ya know what? It's stuff like this that made me decide to become a teacher and not a lawyer. If I'd been the prosecuting counsel, I'd have stabbed a few judges by now and would be spending time at Her Majesty's pleasure myself.

But there's something else that's interesting here, apart from where we choose, as a society, to draw the lines on language acceptability. What's also really intrigued me is exactly what the Telecoms Act is and how its instrumental power can be used by the courts to control our language use. I tried reading a bit of this Act but nearly died of brain ache, so if anyone with a legal turn of mind wants to give us the edited highlights, do post here - you can write loads more if you click comments at the bottom of the post than if you talk on the message board. Very interesting if you've been working on Language and Technology, or Language and Power...

Nationalist's phone rants 'not grossly offensive'

Telecoms regulation

Yeah-but-no-but

2005-06-18T17:31:00.000Z

Being an English teacher can get you into the odd fight here and there. You wouldn't think it, would you? But I can distinctly recall several educated grown-ups asking me what I thought of Lynne Truss's rampant, best-selling book on "good English", Eats, Shoots and Leaves. And when I told them I hated it, they beat me up, yelling "you call yourself an English teacher and you don't care about the corruption and defilement of the language?!"
"No, not really", I whimpered through the storm of blows, "language change is exciting".

So, three loud reverberating cheers this week for Kate Burridge, professor of Lingusitics at Monash University, and her new book which celebrates language change. Wahey, I got a professor on my side! (Or maybe I'm on hers...) Only she's way cooler, because I only got duffed over in the staffroom whereas she's had death threats from the apostrophe support group for suggesting we should bin that annoying little curly thing. Now those people really do need to get out more...

So, check the article out, and in the spirit of linguistic liberation, what "weed words" would you add to the list, and what "rules" would you bin?

Lover of English slang takes on Truss and tradition

And here's a more detailed take on the same story:

On your marks

Talking posh

2005-06-15T19:46:00.000Z

A couple of years ago, I spent a week at Merton College, Oxford University. Part of the whole deal was dining with the dons, a ritual which included the imbibing of dry sherry, much to my delight. But on the first day I had the distinctly uncomfortable experience of being engaged in earnest conversation by a speaker of very strongly marked Received Pronunciation, and, er, having no idea what he was talking about!!

There were two problems in this situation. The first was that he kept using the word "zims", the meaning of which was central to what he was telling me about. The second was that the power dynamic was such that I felt too embarrassed to ask him for clarification. I perceived the power as being all in his court: he was my host so I had politeness obligations as his guest; he was an Oxford don and I was a teacher in a modest sixth form college; he spoke in RP, I speak in Estuary even when I'm doing my best posh voice. It just seemed too rude to say "oi, mate, talk in English, will ya?!"

So, I did the only sensible thing: I smiled, nodded, and frantically used all the other clues in his speech to decode the meaning of the word "zims" - er, "exams". And then spent the rest of the week wishing I had a hidden mike so I could tape this curious language variety.

But why do I mention this now, I hear you ask? Well, it's the beginning of the posh season, innit? Ascot, Wimbledon (not that posh now I've got tickets...), Henley, Cowes. And to mark this, and the relocation of Royal Ascot oop North to York, the Times is running a humorous little piece today, in which a journalist purports to be writing in the sociolect of the upper class.

This is interesting because we spend a lot of time exploring other varieties of English, and there is no reason not to explore this one too. Indeed, by so doing we get away from the implict notion that this variety is somehow unremarkable and that non-standard varieties are "deviant". It's also interesting because it is a fictional representation of a language variety, a language variety that is changing, at least phonologically, and it would make an interesting investigation to find out how characteristic this really is of upper class speech patterns.

So, check out the links to read more, and if you live anywhere near any Wimbledon, Henley, or Cowes, get out this summer with a tape recorder!

But darling, how frightful it is to even consider leaving Berkshire

Routes of English Special - talking posh

Like a rash

2005-06-10T18:15:00.000Z

So, maybe it's something to do with the Friday feeling at our nation's finest dailies, but news of the latest edition of the Collins English Dictionary is all over them like a rash. The esteemed publication has apparently added 1500 new words. This dictionary publishing phenomenon "hey, look what new words we've added" is very interesting. To what extent are the new words selected indicative of long-lasting lexical change? To what extent might they just be lexical flashes in the pan, mere linguistic whims, included more for their media-sexy appeal that might help the publishers flog a few more copies? As passionate as I am about dictionaries, even I have to concede that it must be one hell of a job having to shift them off the booksellers' shelves.

So, top of anyone's media-sexy list has to be anything to do with Hinglish, the product in this context of the roaring success of the Sanjeev Bhaskar-Meera Syal genius factory. From this source, we find "aunty-ji" and "chuddies" added.

Hmm, let's see... Next in the media-sexy line-up is anything to do with the beautiful game, and what do we find but Sir Alex Ferguson's rather quaint expression, "squeaky-bum-time". Now come on, Collins, are you really trying to tell me that this phrase has any kind of real currency?!!

The other major category identified in the papers is the "chav" phenomenon. This "new" word has been the subject of many a column inch, but what is interesting here is the way the word is allegedly spreading. We started with "chav", but also included are "chavtastic", "chavette" and "chavish". Think about what processes of lexical change are going on here...

Check it out. And if anyone can find the full list of 1500 words somewhere out there in cyberspace, do gimme a shout and I'll do the linkylove here.

Hinglish makes its debut in English dictionary

Chavs find place in dictionary

Collins English dictionary adds more Japanese words

From little acorns?

2005-06-07T20:14:00.000Z

So, welcome back after half term, and for those of you busy tooling up for the A2 exams, here's wishing you all the very best luck in the world! And if you're in my class, DO SOME WORK!

I see that while I've been away, the debate about synthetic phonics has been rumbling on. If you've got Child Language Acquisition on your exam paper this month, type this phrase into the search engine on any of the national dailies and it'll reel out a shedload of debate about it. But I'm not putting it here cos you know that stuff just doesn't rock my boat...

No, catching my eye this week is an article in the Boston (USA) area newspaper, the Sentinel and Enterprise, about George Bush's latest favourite word, "suiciders", what you and I might more laboriously call "suicide bombers". Hmmm... so how do you view this lexical item? Is it a language change needed for linguistic efficiency, halving the number of words needed to convey the idea? Is it evidence of language decay, a debasement of a previous, superior form? Is it a creative generation of a new word to jolt us out of our complacency about this terrorist phenomenon? Is it wrong?

How you prefer to answer this question will depend upon which ideas about language change you subscribe to, but you should at least be aware of alternative ways of looking at it. Have a read of the article and identify which attitudes and ideas about language change are implicit in it.

The other interesting angle the article touches upon is whether or not this word is likely to become more widely used than just the current American president. Will the power and prestige of this role mean that Bush's lexical creation is adopted by people who admire and respect him? What impact will the global media have in making the word familiar through their reporting of his every public word? What other factors might cause it to spread?

However, according to the article, the associate editor of one of the main dictionaries in the USA isn't at all over-optimistic about the likelihood of the word spreading. Well, here's a test. Open Google. Type in "suicider" and see how many hits you get. Who's right?... And why?... Is Bush leading language change or following it? What's happening here?...

Check the link and leave your thoughts...

Not a good day for language use

Elementary, my dear Watson

2005-05-27T14:01:00.000Z

So, I reckon I've missed my vocation in life, but when I saw the Careers teacher aged 15 they didn't tell me I could be a forensic linguist. Which obviously means that one of you guys has to do it in my place...

If you trawl back through the archives here (I know, I know, I must put a search function on or an index or something - summer holidays project, methinks) you'll find pieces about the linguistic tracking down of the Belle Du Jour blogger, the Unabomber, and various attempts to determine whether or not the Osama bin Laden tapes are authentic. And now here comes another major case, the quashing of Paul Blackburn's life sentence for attempted murder of a 9 year old boy. Bit late as he served 25 years in prison before new linguistic evidence came to light to mount another appeal...

Browse through the Guardian article below (and those in other papers) and you'll pick up the general story that it's linguistic evidence at the heart of the case, but, frustratingly, none of them provide any further detail. So, you'll need to check out the second bit of linkylovin' for that. This is a fascinating, very chatty account, written by a researcher who worked on Paul Blackburn's case for a TV documentary about alleged miscarriages of justice. I'd still like to see all the evidence, but the researcher explains a few details. Notably, that although the police said the defendant wrote his confession while they sat around polishing their nails, there is no way the word "ejaculated" would be used by a lad with a teenage working class sociolect, let alone be spelled correctly. Equally unlikely that he would describe being "in a frenzy".

That's as close as I've been able to get to the actual linguistic evidence, though I'd dearly love to see it all. If any of you guys who are studying law can think of a way of eyeballing it, do let me know, eh?...

Appeal victory after 25 years' jail

Trial and Error

Blame it on your mother...

2005-05-26T13:45:00.000Z

So, here goes, deep breath, I'm going to post on the subject of child language acquisition. I was kinda hoping no-one would notice that I never write about this, but last week I was rumbled. In my defence, I just don't do pets and babies, and having scarred one set of students for life with my teaching of the subject, I've avoided the subject ever since. And besides, it goes like this doesn't it? Baby gets born, copes with the trauma remarkably well, and then ingeniously learns to speak a language or three. A little bit, then a bit more, and before you know it, s/he's doing an A Level in it. Okay, so you get to laugh at children, but it's not very exciting really, is it?...

So, having uttered those dreadful heresies, here's this week's news, from that fine bastion of balanced unbiased journalism, The Daily Mail, of research that claims to show that language development will be maximised where there is a close intuitive connection between mother and child. But as I know so little about the subject, you guys are all going to have to help me out here by posting your comments on these findings. After all, they say the best way of learning something is to teach it - and if you can teach me this, you'll surely be on for an A grade!

Mother does know best!

Wow!...

2005-05-24T13:04:00.000Z

So, this week's post offers a slightly different look at language. Different in that it involves biological rather than language science - or rather, that it connects the two in fascinating ways. Know that experience of making a sarcastic comment, and the other person not realising and taking you literally? (Or the other way round, as is more often the case for me....) Well, in considering the social dynamics of that language situation, we are firmly into the business of examining the pragmatic encoding of attitudes between the participants in the exchange. We expect the other person to be able to decode the signs, and if they don't, we might take them to be autistic, or we might think they are wilfully picking a fight. Either way, we know there is something not quite right.

Well, some scientists have now investigated what goes on in the brain when decoding of the pragmatic signals associated with sarcasm and irony should be taking place. And it turns out it's all to do with the state of your prefrontal lobe. Damage that and your right ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and your ability to detect sarcasm is drastically reduced. Interesting for those of you interested in speech therapy or medicine as a future career; also interesting in helping us to see that our language production isn't just a consequence of social contextual factors, but also of complex biological processes too. The complexity of what we do every time we open our mouths never fails to amaze me.

Check it out.

Highest functions of brain produce lowest form of wit

The human brain

The mother of all smokescreens

2005-05-20T14:36:00.000Z

So, whatever you think about the political stance of the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, George Galloway, as a student of the English language you've just gotta admire his style - er, especially if you're about to take an exam in language and power! Called to stand before the US Senate, arguably one of the most powerful institutions in the world, he was accused of the kind of fraternising with Saddam Hussein that could land him in prison. Scary stuff. And how did the honourable gentleman react to that? Did he offer his interlocutors any kind of verbal respect, any kind of linguistic convergence, to try and appease them? Did he hell!!

His speech is an exercise in powerful language use. Never once weasling with his words, he directly accuses the Senator conducting the enquiry of being "cavalier with any idea of justice", his government of human rights abuses, and their decision to go to war with Iraq based on a "pack of lies". In two places his use of American expressions - "a thin dime" and "the mother of all..." - might make you think he is trying to accommodate the speech style of his hosts, but when you read these in context, his utter contempt for them is so plain that these apparent accommodations are a form of ridicule.

Galloway's style is a really interesting mixture of high rhetorical device (go through and count them - they're all there!!), formal lexis "you have traduced my name", and vernacular idiom "cock-a-hoop", "heart and soul", "my life's blood". Your interpretation of those linguistic facts is likely to be coloured by your political judgement, but for me, the use of such vernacular grittiness in that context is a wholly admirable sticking up of two fingers to authority. Check it out and post us your thoughts...

Galloway v the US Senate: the transcript

More on rhetorical devices

More American translations...

2005-05-16T19:24:00.000Z

So, following hard on the heels of the news that British Airways has produced a handy little guide for US travellers to the local dialect of these British shores, is news that the producers of the stage production of Billy Elliot have felt it necessary to follow suit. They've supplied our Yankee theatregoing tourist cousins with a glossary in the programme of some of the Geordie dialect used in the play. Handy if you're frantically working on accents and dialects of the British Isles for your forthcoming exam, but do make sure you think about this as a literary representation of Geordie dialect, not as authentic spoken data. Note that the producer's mam didn't think the actors were very Geordie at all!

Mebbies lost in translation: how wor Billy is ganun awa wi' morder

For a clear description of the traditional features of Geordie, check this out:

Language Varieties (Geordie)

And for a very useful analysis of how Geordie is changing (because dialects, like all forms of language, are not static but subject to constant change), try this:

How Geordie is changing

Horsing around?...

2005-05-13T08:36:00.000Z

So, apologies for only one post last week. I'm currently enduring the trauma of having to wait 20 whole days for my broadband connection to be switched to my new house - the stuff of nightmares for a supergeek, let me tell you...

But here I am, and what's caught my eye this week is a quirky little piece about the way that the language of horses pervades common speech. I don't mean neighing and whinneying; I mean how the English language draws idiomatically on terms used in the world of horse-rearing and horse-riding.

Now the use of idioms is always interesting. My current A2 class did a piece of research last year which appeared to show that idiom use is age related: the older you get, the more you use. Whether this is due to a lifelong language acquisition process, or whether it is the product of language change, is something we never did manage to resolve, so all suggestions are gratefully received.

Check out the link. Slightly hyperbolic title, nuh?.... Explore other idiomatic patterns?...

Whether you are long in the tooth or full of beans, the language of horses dictates our lives

Wikipedia on idioms

Gor blimey, guv

2005-05-06T07:55:00.000Z

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Americans are coming! And despite the fact that their variety of English is creeping its way around the globe on the back of commercial hype and cultural imperialism, they still want to talk like us, here in the Old Country. Yep, this week, British Airways has launched an online dictionary for American travellers to the UK, to help them understand the strange regional variety known as British English.

The linkyloved Indy article presents a good analysis of the quirks of this dictionary: its odd lack of any distinction between terms that local speakers would find distinctly class marked; its exclusions of some double meanings of words that could create confusion; and the way that visitors are encouraged to use phrases and expressions - like "Get your mitts off my pint" - that would get them a smack in the face in most parts of the country.

It's fairly obvious that British Airways only intend this as a humorous little marketing device. However, given my experience of almost dying of laughter in New York when a terribly earnest American woman declared, awe-struck, "Gee, you sound just like Princess Diana" when I am instead (usually) a marked user of vernacular Estuary, I'm mildly alarmed that it won't actually be received in this context. I see American tourists with phrase books in Oxford Street...

This is interesting for a number of reasons. Interesting in considering the nature and function of dictionaries, and of the contexts in which they are read or used. Interesting in what it has to tell us about the relationship between different global varieties of English. Interesting in considering the fundamental slipperiness of any attempt to define vernacular speech. And that's just for starters.

Check it out. Then email British Airways with a better edition!

Get your mitts off our lingo (as they say in New York)

Speaking in tongues?

2005-05-03T16:10:00.000Z

So, what with last week's post and this one, it'd be perfectly reasonable to conclude that I've gone football crazy. I haven't, but with the season drawing to a close, the papers seem to be making the most of it, and related language stories are plentiful. So ubiquitous is the story that I shan't even bother to post you the link about Wayne Rooney no longer being welcome at a school he was due to appear at because of his much publicised use of vernacular language.

No, the curiosity I've chosen for our perusal this week is a piece from the East Anglian Daily Times. AFC Sudbury are due to play for the FA Vase (hope they get some nice spring flowers to put in that...) and one of their supporters has helpfully penned a motivational monologue for the team. What's interesting is that he has done so in Suffolk dialect. How linguistically accurate this is, I can't tell, having had only a fleeting relationship with that county, but it would be useful to explore this as a literary representation of one of the accents and dialects of the British Isles.

Can anyone find any links to linguistic information about the Suffolk dialect? Or is anybody out there a speaker who could enlighten us about this representation?

Check it out...

Thoird toime lucky for AFC Sudbury

Delivering on a Wednesday night in Rochdale

2005-04-27T15:15:00.000Z

Well, actually I'm still just about in Eastbourne ahead of my move to the Fens tomorrow, but were I writing a football blog it'd be just about compulsory for me to use the name of a Northern industrial town to talk about the discipline of performing well every time. Why football this week? Two reasons.

The first is that I went to my first professional football match last week, free ticket courtesy of the company which sponsors Brentford. They lost, the match was a bit rubbish, but I learned a lot about the language of the terraces. Or, more accurately, how often the 11 year old boy behind me could use the f-word in one 90 minute period. What was also rather curious was the way that racist language was used. The depths of West London is really not somewhere you want to spend a lot of time unless you have to, trust me... Yes, there was offensively racist language, but the words "black cunt" were not actually directed at black players. Indeed, there was much pride and admiration expressed of black players on both sides, and this phrase was reserved specifically for the white male referee who made some distinctly unpopular decisions. Go figure the linguistic logic there...

The second reason is that the linkyloved article below explores the contents of a new book out, which identifies the - sometimes efficient, sometimes rather cliched - language of the beautiful game. The analysis is much more than a list of words and phrases, exploring other interesting language issues such as the representation of international players and particular collocations of words that have become established. Check it out.

And finally, if you are working on language change at the moment, try checking out football reporting from earlier parts of the 20th century. Click on the Online Newspaper archive link; click to enter as directed; then type "football" into the search box on the right hand side; click "go" and you will get 241 examples form 1918 onwards. Browse away and see what you discover about changes in language and style.

"Football lexicon" lays bare beautiful game speak

British Library Online Newspaper Archive

Disturbing the dead

2005-04-24T12:20:00.000Z

So, this week a few of the papers picked up on the shocking story of grave-robbing in the English countryside. That get your attention? Ah, well, perhaps I'll admit that was a cheap linguistic trick (the election is rubbing off on me), and the story is actually about a small DNA sample being taken, with permission, from the 400 year old grave of a relative of one Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.

Who? Why? Well, though Captain BG has, until now, been almost completely forgotten, he was a legend in his own 16th century lunchtime. In those heady days of Elizabethan exploration and/or plundering of the New World, he set off to establish a permanent settlement on the Eastern seaboard of America. He first landed in the area he named Cape Cod, but it took a second expedition for his plan to be realised as Jamestown, near the James river in Virginia (guess which king was on the English throne at the time...). Though as this was a bit on the hot and swampy side, he got a fever and died there. Game over; history marches relentlessly on without him.

But now American archaeolgists want to determine whether this body they've just found is his. Why all the fuss? Well, they regard him as one of the key figures in the European settlement of America, and they want to restore his name and status. It is claimed (rather grandly) that without Captain BG and Jamestown, the Spanish expeditionary forces might have held sway in the territorial claim-staking of the times, and America would never have become an English speaking nation.

So far, a curious side-story about English if, like me, you like a bit of swashbuckling and derring-do, but erm, let's just stop and think about this one because there are, in fact, far more language issues to this story than meet the eye. This is because the other thing rumbling on in the American press is a whole shedload of stuff to do with certain states using legal processes to try and make English the official language because they feel so keenly the pressure it is under from other languages, particularly Spanish. Two organisations, English First and US English, are campaigning vigorously to make America a monolingual nation, and if you thought Michael Howard's immigration rhetoric was scary last week, you wanna read these guys. Well, erm, actually, you probably don't...

So, I can't help thinking that whilst Captain Bartholomew Gosnold is undoubtedly an interesting character from history, all this DNA testing may have rather more to do with English speaking Americans needing to find an English speaking hero to compete with Cristoforo Colombo. And on those grounds, perhaps the dead might be better left undisturbed in their graves.

The man who went to search for America

English First and US English (these people scare me...)

Read factual stuff about American English

"Why is this lying bastard lying to me?"

2005-04-21T12:41:00.000Z

So, now that one pope has been buried and another smoked out of the Vatican, and Chas and Milla are busy settling down to married life, we can turn our full attention to this election thing. And oh, what a linguistic smorgasbord of stuff has been laid out for our delectation this week.

First up, is the nature of political interviewing itself. Jon Snow, of Channel 4 News, is arguing that the BBC political heavyweights, especially Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman but also Radio 4's James Naughtie and John Humphreys, have gone too far, turning political interviewing into some kind of gladiatorial mauling with little purpose other than the spectacle of the fight. He wants rigour but with a bit more courtesy than Paxman's trademark sneering, interruptions and repetition of the question as many as 20 times in order to get past the politicians' spin and gloss. This raises interesting questions about how different journalists perceive the relationship between language and power.

Here's the stuff about Jon Snow's point of view:

Snow wants Paxman to show respect

And here's the BBC's response:

Why we love the "Paxman problem"

And if you want to get your teeth into some meaty academic research into political interviewing, check this out:

Poisoning the well of democratic debate

And that brings us onto the second hot story, about Paxman's interview of Tony Blair on last night's Newsnight. The Financial Times calls it a "mauling", but Simon Hoggart in The Guardian seems to think that Tony Blair was well up for it and the Spanish Inquisition itself would have had a hard job cracking him. Hoggart gives us a neat summary of the techniques each man used to assert his power, some of which were non-verbal, and some linguistic. Check these out, then take a look at the full interview text to see what else you can spot.

Tony sees off the Inquisitor-General

Full text: Blair's Newsnight interview

And in case you're bored of Tony Blair, here's some political balance with an interesting analysis of how Michael Howard is using language to talk about immigration issues. His campaign soundbite that "it's not racist to talk about immigration" is logically truthful. But this article shows that if you analyse the semantic values of the words politicians are using to do that talking, and the collocations of words that they are establishing, then it is clear to see that for all the "honest truth" rhetoric, a racist discourse is being employed. Fascinating analysis here that you could investigate further in copies of politicians' speeches.

In Other Words

Enjoy the spectacle, and, if you're old enough, VOTE! (People died so you could...)

Improve your essay writing?!

2005-04-16T13:46:00.000Z

You gotta love this week's story choice. In it, 3 students create a piece of software which randomly generates scientific sounding discourse. They use it to create an academic research paper that sounds good but is, in fact, a load of gibberish. Oh, the naughty student pranksters!? Nope, it gets much better, cos they go ahead and submit it to the organisers of a conference in order to test their hypothesis that such conferences often accept complete rubbish. I especially like this sentence: "we dogfooded our method on our own desktop machines, paying particular attention to USB key throughput". And hey, guess what? They were right!

Think about what this tells us about jargon, and have a go at random text generation yourself.

How gibberish put scientists to shame

What on earth is a l33t haxor?!..

2005-04-13T21:00:00.000Z

It's tough being an English Language teacher... On the one hand, my finely tuned New Word Radar means I wander round with all kinds of strange and delightful words in my head. Even now, the Oxford English Dictionary team are checking "linkylove" after I pointed out their terrible omission of this splendid word. But as a teacher, I also have to be very careful not to fall into the Very Sad Old Git behaviour of trying to talk like a yoof.

But oh, politicians, what do they know of this delicate linguistic line?! Well, for at least one wannabe MP, obviously absolutely nothing, because in his desperation to seduce you guys into the polling booth for the first time, the Labour candidate for West Bromwich East has SO SO SO crossed the line. Check out the link to the "teens" page of Tom Watson's website and cry... Then please, someone email him and offer to write something decent. The man needs help...

Teens and politics - Tom Watson's webpage

And if someone could tell me what a l33t haxor is?.......

I do, I do, I do, I do, I do

2005-04-09T09:13:00.000Z

So, today's the day that Charles and Camilla finally get to do the time-honoured thing. You know, step onto the dance floor at the reception for the first dance, a nice pile of sentimental slush for them to slide around and smooch to. I know: yeuch.... But what will they choose? Well, statistically speaking, according to a new survey, there's a strong chance it'll be Bryan Adams' Everything I do (I do it for you). Check this survey out because I'm sure there's a fine investigation to be had into what qualities of language (cos let's face it, the appeal can't lie in the quality of the music) make a popular wedding smoocher.

Wedding songs that taste forgot

But that's only part of today's Chas and Milla commemorative blog. Because the other issue that's got some column inches is this whole business of the pair of them renouncing their "mainfold sins and wickedness". Now, I'm afraid at this point I'm sitting here smugly saying, "I told you so". Hmm, let's see... Yep, there it is in the Language Legend archive, blogpost Jan 2nd 2005, explanation of why the language of the bible is a hot topic.

The heat it's generating is all to do with attitudes to different varieties of language, and to do with how much language change is considered acceptable when publishing or preaching the Bible. And here's the future monarchic head of the Anglican church saying "don't gimme that modern junk". Y'see, as a divorcee, to get his second marriage blessed, he has to say a prayer of penitence. Like, "Oops, sorry, I made a bit of a mess of the first one, please let me off, and can we just forget the whole adultery thing cos after all, I am hot-blooded male and Milla's a foxy chick, and what else could we do, oh lord?" Nope, not good enough: Chas and Milla are going all the way with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which will see them asking God for forgiveness in the linguistic equivalent of a good whipping.

Check out the discussion in The Times here:

Charles and Camilla to admit 'sins and wickedness' in service

And have a flick for yourself through the 1662 Book of Common Prayer here:

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer

But, I hear you muttering into your Frosties, what's the Big? Well... All this is taking place in a context of debate about appropriate forms of language for religious expression. Except that now the debate is a bit more heated because a couple of new editions of the Bible have been published. First up is Today's New International Version, which sets out to make the holy text more accessible to the modern reader, and to avoid some of the tricky issues of language change. So, it's out with "aliens" and in with "foreigners"; bye-bye "Naboth has been stoned and is dead", hello "Naboth has been stoned to death". So, that clears up that bit of confusion about dope-toking extra-terrestrials, anyway...

New inclusive bible translation launched in UK

But that doesn't go nearly far enough for some people, and so watch out, here comes As Good As New: a radical retelling of the scriptures. This one gets the thumbs up from Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sees the translation's power as lying in the rugged contemporary language it employs. Here's an example, first the usual Authorised Version, then the new version:

Matthew 23:25
Authorised version: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”
New version: “Take a running jump, Holy Joes, humbugs!

How 'bout that for changes in language and style over time?!

Check out this link for more:

Radical new translation makes bible accessible to unchurched

So, as you watch Chas and Milla today, remember that not only is the man a royal studmuffin (check out Language Legend blogpost February 10th if you're now choking on your Frosties in disbelief), he's also a man of heated political conviction who directly opposes the Archbishop of Canterbury - who is going to bless his marriage!!! Now what was all that business before with kings, archbishops and getting rid of turbulent priests?...

Vive la republique?......

Mounds of verbiage

2005-04-06T21:57:00.000Z

I am taking it for granted that you guys are all watching the election proceedings carefully, comparing the linguistic styles of the nation's leading politicians, and exploring how they are busy asserting their power, authority and general right to be elected. So as you're already on that case, I'm not going to dwell on it here.

Instead, my eye was caught by Fay Weldon's piece in the Sunday Times, lambasting the modern tendency, particularly in public slogans, to present the reader with the eternal promise and elusive fulfilment of the dangling participle. Even if you need to swot up a bit on what that grammatical term means (it's all in the article linked below), I'll bet you all ten quid you're already familiar with it from your school/college mission statements. How does it go? "Providing magnificent general education", or "Trying really hard". That 'ing' is your dangling participle, and Fay Weldon is fed up with them.

She's also none too pleased with other "mounds of verbiage" in other forms of public and official discourse. This is exactly the kind of linguistic issue the Plain English Campaign aims to tackle, so check them out too. And in one brief moment of election fantasy, wouldn't it be great if they got to vet all politician's speeches?....

Check out the links, then how 'bout posting your school/college's dangling participle on the comments board?...

Language: not another euphemism

Introduction to the Plain English Campaign

The harmless drudge?

2005-04-02T22:48:00.000Z

I'm sure over the next few weeks we're going to see so many column-miles devoted to Dr Johnson and his dictionary that we shall start thinking he was anything but harmless, but one more piece for you to look at before we get to that stage. This is a useful addition to our little collection because it gives 25 definitions from the dictionary, and you can see for yourself how Johnson's world view shaped them. Think about what is revealed about the social and intellectual context in which he was working....

An A-Z of English (without the X)

Stand up the real Language Legend

2005-03-31T09:38:00.000Z

Nah, nothing to do with me. Actually, the real Language Legend can't stand up because he's been dead several centuries but you wouldn't know that from this week's papers which are busy paying tribute to Dr Samuel Johnson. Who? Why?

Dr Samuel Johnson is the founding father of English lexicography (dictionary writing). Nine years in the making - er, only six years past the deadline (beat that!) - his dictionary was finally published on April 15th 1755. It's the 250th anniversary of this momentous occasion that has got the scribblers and the coin-stampers so hard at work now.

Johnson's dictionary was not the first, but it was equally the product of 18th century discourse about language. Like many, he started with the optimistic desire to 'fix' the language, so that a definitive 'proper' English could be shared and understood by members of the literate middle class, and anyone else aspiring to such dizzy social heights. He soon realised the impossibility of this position due to the ever-changing nature of language, and is famously quoted as saying "to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride".

Two things marked Johnson's dictionary out, making him a hot celebrity in town at the time, and a man and a work still celebrated today. Firstly, although other dictionaries had been produced, nothing on this scale had ever been seen before. It weighed 20lb - or about 40 kilos - and included 42,773 entries. It was also the first to use historical principles, citing real examples of the words from texts published in the past, and using these as the evidence from which to derive meanings. When, in the 19th century, the Oxford English Dictionary took on the mammoth task of producing the most comprehensive English dictionary ever, it was Johnson's lexicographical method and ambition that they adopted. It is still the underlying principle of the OED today. And he did it pretty much all by himself...

The links below will fill you in on more of the details.

These A-Zs are fairly lightweight commemorative markers, but of some interest nonetheless.

BBC: The A-Z of Samuel Johnson

Indy: The A-Z of Dr Johnson's Dictionary

You can read Johnson's preface here to see what he thought of it, and practise your language change analysis.

Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary, 1755

This Times review of a new biography of Johnson is very useful, particularly as it draws attention to the important fact that dictionaries are not neutral, but are as much based on the attitudes and assumptions of their writers as any other text. Think about this...

Times Review: Dr Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings

And finally, look out for the new Johnson's dictionary 50p pieces - they've got Johnson's entries for 'fifty' and 'pence' on them!

Agents of Domination

2005-03-29T11:17:00.000Z

Oh dear, I seem to have become Q to a class full of James Bonds. (Hmmm, that's a good image, surely?...) There was me thinking I was just being a helpful English teacher, going around telling my students that if they want to travel the world and meet interesting people, they could do far worse than go to Japan to teach English as a Foreign Language. But I find this morning that what I have really been doing is recruiting Agents of Domination, trained in English grammar to go out and kill renegade cultures.

Well, I can see the point, and it's this: that in teaching EFL, native speakers tend to impose their own cultural values through the language they teach. And in this, a lecturer from Lincoln University argues, there may be "a social, cultural and pragmatic mismatch in the ethnographic rules of language use". Because English is the most powerful language on earth, this exerts a pressure on second language learners to adopt the ideology underpinning those ethnographic rules. English lessons become cultural propaganda.

It's an important issue for native speakers of English. With power comes responsibility. My classes have long argued that their 1970s Coca-Cola ad vision of all the world singing in perfect (English) harmony is a beautiful ambition, but do we really want a world with only one way of looking at it?

Check it out (and when you go to Japan to teach English, don't make your class sing Beatles' songs).

English belongs to the whole world

E-Julie and the Eejits?...

2005-03-25T19:48:00.000Z

Now, please don't let on to the students I've just cruelly abandoned, but, contrary to what I've told them, I'm not really taking up a new post somewhere in the Fens. No, I'm actually about to embark on my long-planned career as an international rock guitarist. Can't play a single chord? Can't sing? Well, I see that as no reason whatsoever not to give it a go, though maybe I'll make one tiny concession and go buy a guitar tomorrow...

Okay, so maybe that's just my secret fantasy, but it was all sparked off by today's article in the Guardian about the best band names ever. The muso-journalist explains his method of filtering hundreds of demo CDs a week according to their linguistic value, though he has to confess to having got it badly wrong on occasion, ditching Oasis cos the name's lame (fair dos, I say).

"Hmmm, that's a nice little kicked-back language legend article for the holidays", I was thinking; and, maybe I'll say, "hey, this'd make a pretty funky language investigation". And just as I was thinking that, I clicked on the "related articles" link and lo and behold someone's not only done it but very conveniently published it in the Guardian. Cool analysis. Check 'em both out.

Branding the band

A guide to weird and wonderful band names

Gone with the raggle-taggle gypsies-oh

2005-03-21T22:19:00.000Z

So, fond as I am of traditional English folk music (in small doses, and not in the company of beardy blokes), I'm quite happy with the word "gypsies". For me, and in this context, it invokes fabulously romantic scenarios, in which women run away on wild nights with ravishing strangers, their shoes and their oppression quite cast off and their hair streaming freely down their backs. Then there's the "gyptians" variation of the word used by Philip Pullman in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and again it has positive connotations, as these characters are portrayed as courageous salts of the earth, in touch with the spiritual world, and living freely and fairly in close communities.

But out there in the real world, it's by no means an easy word, and if you pay any attention whatsoever to the rampant electioneering all over the news, it's not hard to see why. The Conservative party has launched an election pledge to "crack down" on travellers and/or Travellers, gypsies and/or or gyptians, the Roma and/or the Romany. Each word, used to refer to more or less the same group of people, has different connotations, and although "travellers", capitalised or not, is the politically correct term used by local councils, education authorities and some newspapers, not everyone it refers to likes it, and there are whole minefields of deliberate or inadvertent offence in the use of the alternatives. And with the all the political and media election campaigns busy tooling up, both the word and its referents are hot potatoes. Check it out.

1) Click here Blurred history of Gypsy terms for the BBC's handy guide to the different words.
2) Surf the websites of the major newspapers (links are in the links section if you scroll down below here) for articles on this news item and see which words each of the papers uses most frequently.
3) Do a search in the British National Corpus (link also in the links section) to see how each of the words is used in this massive database of speech and writing.

What do you call that?

2005-03-19T13:38:00.000Z

If ever reasons were needed for not having children, number 7 on my list would definitely be the whole thorny issue of what to tell girls to call their genitals. And one of the writers in the Grauniad this week grapples nicely with this dilemma. Often, articles like this are just so much journalistic fluff, but the writer has done her homework, and invites us to look at the issue from a number of interesting perspectives.

First up, there is the whole business of how children acquire language, and how much influence parents have over its development. In one nice example, the parents have consistently insisted on 'vagina', but the little girl will use no word other than 'peanut'. Might be cute now, but imagine the problems with bar snacks later in life... The writer deals intelligently with the complexity of the issue. Whilst one word, or set of words, might be okay for adults, there are real issues about using the same words with children. So, we also get food for thought about the relationship between language, age and education.

Then we get to think about language and gender, and the ways in which English continues to encode negative semantic space where femininity is concerned. This is not a popular contemporary view - we're all equal now, aren't we? - but if we still haven't got a word that can be used by both men and women, without blushing at the pornographic connotations, or wincing at the cutesy tweeness, then feminism still has work to be done, surely? One suggestion made is 'yoni', a word with an 'eastern' etymology, meaning source, and with connotations of worship and the sacred origins of the world. But that is all way too New Age for my liking...

Check it out for yourself:

The vagina dialogues

Food for thought

2005-03-14T20:37:00.000Z

So maybe The Times is a bit short of news today, but I'm delighted to see that the bastion of the social announcement is keeping up with important people's birthdays. Well, okay, they never remember mine, but today, they report, is Mrs Beeton's birthday.

Who is Mrs Beeton? Well, in 1836, a mere slip of a lass at 25 years old, she had just published a weighty tome on the proper subject for women, household management. It included all kinds of advice for dealing with chilblains and servants, as well as hundreds of recipes. You might not believe me, but she was knocking out chicken curry 169 years ago.

Why is this relevant to the study of English Language? Well, first up, Mrs Beeton's book is available online and makes for a fascinating exploration of how language, in a general sense, has changed over time. You could look, specifically, at how gendered issues and ideas, attitudes and values, are encoded in the way Mrs Beeton dishes out the advice. What's also interesting is how the language of cookery has changed over time.

Want to see this in action? The first link below will take you to today's article in The Times. Well sort of - you'll have to type Mrs Beeton into search box and follow the links cos The Times are being stingy with their linkylove this week. 'Fraid I can't give you the devilled chicken liver recipe from Mrs Beeton because that's in the later-updated 1900 edition and the only online one is the original from 1836. But the second link will take you to a section of that dealing with duck, and the third link will take you to the BBC's duck recipes page for some modern recipes for comparison.

Happy Birthday Mrs Beeton

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management

BBC - modern recipes

Effin the ref

2005-03-08T17:17:00.000Z

So, whilst I maintain my position that the discussion this weekend about the word "Paki" is far more interesting than this business about footballers' swearing, the British media either doesn't agree or had somewhere other to be on a Saturday night than on their sofas in front of the telly. Their loss...

So, a quick update on some of the media miles devoted to footballers' language. First link below is to an interesting piece in The Times, written by an ex-footballer, in which he argues quite cogently that this is an issue of what society wants technology to do, not what footballers should be held accountable for. This is all good stuff if, like my AS class, you're exploring the relationship between language and technology.

In the public spirited Sun, however, a campaign is under way to scrub out footballers' mouths with a bar of carbolic soap - and you too can take part. So get ringing the Sun's swearbox hotline to shop a player for swearing! And check out the Sun's soccer swearbox... Matches will be monitored, with a lip reader paid to judge any borderline cases, and then The good old Sun, those valiant upholders of the nation's moral scruples, will turn up at the ground ready to charge players and managers a fiver for every offending word. It's a curious world...

And as a slight aside, you just gotta love The Sun website, eh?! You find the article you want to read; you get the first two paragraphs; and then you get the message "For full story and pictures buy the Sun newspaper". I'm just surprised the phrase "you tight-wad" isn't on the end of that imperative!

Check 'em out...

Watershed approaches for the badly behaved

Stop effin the ref

More effing and blinding

2005-03-07T17:06:00.000Z

Hmm, so maybe I'm wrong. More media-miles so far on the broadcasting of foul-mouthed footballers, and one article in particular has caught my eye today. As well as reporting the basic story, the Indy journalist has gone the extra mile and given us a neat little analysis of all the swearing that could be seen/heard in Sunday's Everton Vs Blackburn match. Never mind the official score, Blackburn won 4-3 in swearing incidents. Check out the link.

TV urged to tackle foul-mouthed footballers

And in the red corner...

2005-03-06T15:01:00.000Z

So, this weekend, two related rows about language are simmering away. The first will be pretty much ignored, I reckon, but my money's on the second for turning into a right media punch-up. So, who's arguing about what?

First up is John Dunford, the leader of the Secondary Heads Association. He's made a speech saying that footballers swearing their faces off at referees should only be shown on TV after the 9pm watershed, so that young people stop thinking it's okay to tell figures of authority - er, like teachers - to "fuck off" whenever they feel a bit wound up by circumstances. As a teacher, I'm sympathetic to this. But what's interesting here is the response of the Football Association and the BBC/ITV. In a nutshell, they just laughed.

In a major report published in 2000 by the Independent Television Commission, the word "fuck" was ranked 3rd in terms of semantic severity. Have our attitudes to taboo language changed so much in 5 years that the BBC and ITV can just laugh John Dunford off? This is an interesting question, but this debate also gives us insights into the way that technology and language are inextricably linked. It may be that footballers are more foul-mouthed than in former days, but somehow I doubt it. To my mind, it has more to do with the fact that we are able to see and hear it more frequently, partly because of the technological wizardry that can put a camera and a microphone right up David Beckham's shorts when it wants to, and partly because our 24/7, zillion channel culture enables us to watch it pretty much on demand. From that perspective, there isn't really much of a fight to be had.

Foul! Time to send football's bad boys off TV

But, ooh, here's a real fight brewing. If you didn't watch last night's "British, Paki and Proud" programme on BBC2, then you missed a very interesting discussion about the word "Paki", ranked 10th in semantic severity in the ITC survey. Some of the young people in the programme who are of Pakistani origin were proud to be called "Pakis". Long regarded as an extremely offensive word, they are taking the well-trodden political path of "reclaiming" offensive words as positive expressions of identity. One groovy guy wearing the glasses I'm now definitely getting to replace my Harry Potters is printing "Pak1" t-shirts in this spirit. "Yeah, way to go", I'm cheering from my sofa as I watch members of a previously marginalised community talking with confidence and conviction about their place within multicultural Britain.

But I grew up in Hounslow and went to school with a lot of "Pakis" and oh, look, I can't actually say that word without putting it into inverted commas to show you I'm using it self-consciously, to assure you I'm not racist. Where and when I grew up, it wasn't just an offensive word, it was a rallying call to batter someone within an inch of their life. So, actually, I can't say it without feeling a whole web of emotions tied in with anger and shame that people who share my cultural heritage think this is okay.

And I'm not alone in thinking this. In today's Observer, one of the guys in the programme is furious that the BBC broadcast the programme with the title "British Paki and Proud", because he finds the word so offensive that he would not have agreed to appear in it had he known that title was going to be used. His views chime with my anxieties, but what is interesting is that he is, at a guess, as (youthfully) middle aged as me... And the people who are reclaiming the word are very definitely young people - teenagers. So, what we may be seeing here is snapshot of language change right at the moment when it is changing. So get tracking it and let's see what happens.

BBC attacked for 'Paki' title for show

Sunshine on a snowy day

2005-03-02T17:20:00.000Z

The last time it snowed so hard we had a snow day off college was about 7 years ago, being down here on the balmy, toboggan-free slopes of the South Downs. So to all the students in my classes who struggled in against the elements today in case I killed you for not turning up, and then promptly got sent home again, why, thank you - it was fun, wasn't it?!...

But there is some sunshine today. In Birmingham. Well, "sunshine language" to be precise, and news that a new course is starting this evening in Jamaican patois. A course leading to a qualification. For a start that's cool in itself, as it acknowledges that Jamaican patois is a language variation in its own right, with a place in our cultural heritage, and an importance to society. This contrasts with some commonly held prescriptive views that varieties like Jamaican patois are somehow substandard, "debased" forms of English. What is ultra cool is that students who pass this course can progress on to a diploma course in Public Service Interpreting. So not only cool, then, but genuinely useful in a multicultural society too.

Check it out (especially if you're in Birmingham...).

The language of sunshine

Terrace talk

2005-02-27T14:09:00.000Z

So, it's not scientific, it won't pass an A Level, but there was a quirky anecdotal article in yesterday's Indy about the way fans use language on the terraces at football matches. Now here's an excellent idea for a language investigation coursework project! Not only is the topic interesting in terms of language variety, but Adrian Chiles, the writer of the article, has used a cool method for collecting data - he has clearly posted a message to an online fanzine and people have posted additional examples from their experience. Easy, or what?!

Check it out and let me know what you think - I'm off to play in the snow.

The things fans say at matches: are we witty or half-witted?

The end is nigh?...

2005-02-26T12:31:00.000Z

Talk about global English and everyone starts saying the same thing: it's taking over the world. Some people will be happy with that; some won't. We could, if we chose, spend several happy hours looking at examples, and considering the relevant relationships - contested or otherwise -between language, social prestige, economic power, migration, and political and cultural colonialism.

But hold up, what's this? Maybe the rise of English isn't inexorable after all! Maybe English has reached its global glittering peak, and the only way is down. Well, so speculates Nicholas Ostler in his book, Empires of the Word: a language history of the world.

In the review of the book linked below, a number of key factors are cited to support the potential demise of English. Firstly, the traditionally dominant countries in which English is used have aging populations. Think about it - who wants to talk like a bunch of old people?! So, the language loses its social prestige and goes into a zimmer-framed decline. People start choosing the language of the regions with the vibrant energy of a youthful population. China and the Far East is where it's at, folks. Ah yes, you say, but what about business and the internet as bastions of English communication, supported by all the economic power of the USA (and Britain, its 51st state). Well, yes, at the moment, but again, where are the fastest growing economies? What is true now may not be true tomorrow, and Ostler notes that businessmen are notoriously fickle - they go where the money is. I'd start learning Chinese now, if I were you.

What makes Ostler's speculations compelling is that he places them in the context of the history of the world and its languages. He considers the factors that have led languages and empires to rise and fall; he's looking at the big picture here, not giving us some knee-jerk reaction. Check out the review - this is a useful alternative perspective in the global English debate.

Watch your tongue

So help you God...

2005-02-23T19:28:00.000Z

Well, goodness me, but there's hot stuff for you on the Language Legend today. 1903 pages of transcription of the Grand Jury proceedings that led to charges being brought against Michael Jackson for molestation and conspiracy have been published on the internet. With extraordinary levels of secrecy surrounding the trial, the authenticity of the documents has not formally been confirmed, but the website on which they are published believes they are genuine. As this is a website which frequently breaks important legal stories, I'm giving them at least the benefit of the doubt for now.

Naturally, I'm only interested in the transcripts from a purely linguistic point of view! First up, transcripts of legal proceedings are always fascinating for the insights they provide into the way that language encodes power. Look at how skilfully the interrogators manipulate language to get certain types of answer from the witnesses. Look at how they use language to establish their authority and to control the proceedings. But what is also interesting in this case is that many of the witnesses are children. Look at how language is used to try and make them feel comfortable. Look at how language is used to discuss difficult subjects, such as sex. Look at how clarification of a child's understanding of the meanings of words is sought to make sure there is no room for doubt. And look at how the children answer the questions. Loads there, eh?

Secondly, the participants in these proceedings are American. At 1903 pages, this is a rich resource for exploring differences between American English and British English, and in the way that language is used in the legal proceedings of the two countries. Are there differences in legal expressions and 'set pieces'? Are there differences in sentence construction, or lexis? What do you see here?

And thirdly, these transcripts throw up all sorts of interesting points about the relationship between language, technology and publishing. The internet makes it possible for these documents to be read worldwide within minutes of their publication. This is a situation that has never before been known. In the past, ordinary interested people have either had to go into court and listen to the proceedings, or, more usually, relied on reports in newspapers. Now, the actual transcripts can be presented to a reading public, from which they can come to their own conclusions. We don't get occasional quotations, or edited highlights - here we have all of the language, unedited and in the raw. That puts us, as readers, in a very powerful position.

It is a fundamental principle of civilised society that everybody deserves to have a fair trial, and is innocent until proven guilty. So, do let Wacko have his say in court before you judge him. I'll tell you this, though - I sure am glad I'm not doing jury service on this one...

Michael Jackson transcripts get published

The transcript

William the Conqueror spins in his grave!

2005-02-19T09:43:00.000Z

William the Conqueror, leader in 1066 of what came to be known as the Norman Conquest, is himself variously known - as "William the Bastard" in some historical accounts, and as "Norman the Conqueror" by my 2004 A2 class who were, by their own admission, rather historically challenged! But having been responsible for introducing not only the delights of French cuisine but also its lexicon, beef instead of a slab of cow, I have no doubt The Bastard is spinning helplessly in his grave this week.

Et pourquoi? I hear you ask. Well, in order to show her 100% commitment to the London Olympics bid, what did the Queen's household do to impress the IOC judges but have the menu cards printed in English, instead of the French of every other state banquet in the history of the English monarchy. Okay, okay, I can hear you muttering "big deal" from here, but actually this is very interesting from a language point of view.

Et pourquoi? tu demands encore. Well, first up is the whole business about the relationship between the English monarchy and the French language. After the Norman Conquest, when William and his dukes took over the whole kit and caboodle, French was the language of power in this country for generations to come. Monarchs spent half their time in France and didn't bother too much with the language of the peasants. Well, okay, so maybe if you were a duke out in the middle of nowhere, you picked up a few words to get by, and then maybe you got a bit tired of being all on your lonesome so you shacked up with a nice local girl who taught you a few more, and then your kids went out playing and brought back all these trendy English words because French was just toff's-talk, and oh well, as long as they minded their manners that was okay... And then there was that pesky business of the Hundred Years War with France, and well, you'd forgotten what the old country was like anyway, and it didn't matter too much, and it definitely did make more sense to have the laws in English...

So, by the early Middle Ages we're at a situation where the monarch is once more an English speaker and the institutions of power are operating in English. But in the kind of mild-mannered compromise the English are noted for, the English lexicon has imported 20,000+ words from French, and French continues quite happily for centuries and centuries as the language of international diplomacy, of sophisticated romantic luuuurrrrve, and of fine dining. Traditionally at least, French is about class, prestige and elegance, whilst English is the robust country bumpkin of a cousin.

But hold on a second, where are we at now? It was also reported in the news this week that the number of candidates taking French exams in English schools is in decline, and you only need take one tiny peek at the world to see the apparently inexorable rise of English as a/the global language. So what is really interesting about the Queen's banqueting arrangements is that, until this week, she has ALWAYS had her banquet menus printed in French. Whilst English rules the waves out there in the real world, Her Brittanic Majesty sits at home insisting on her frites and her pain chocolat. Maybe this makes the Queen one of my linguistic freedom fighters, battling nobly against linguistic imperialism! Just how bizarre a concept is that?!....

However, I really can't help feeling that this decision may backfire. The IOC committee is a group of well-travelled, sophisticated, multi-lingual delegates. Want to present London as the kind of sophisticated multicultural place most likely to give athletes from all over the world a warm welcome? I know, let's force them all to speak English AND make a political point of doing so!! Hmmm....

What do you think?.......

Queen drops French for menus at IOC banquet

The influence of French on English in the Early Modern Period

In the mood for lurve?

2005-02-14T15:59:00.000Z

My only concession to marking 14th February is to give thanks to St Valentine when the overhyped commercial rip-off undertaken in his name has fallen in half term, and I don't consequently have to face the horror of teaching period 1 on this day. When I do, my attempts to ignore it are swept aside as half the class get out their padded singing loveheart cards, and the other half slash their wrists. Valiantly attempting to calm this hotbed of emotion, I get a barrage of questions about my own love life. Like, how many times do I have to tell you guys, teachers don't have lives!

This time, however, I'm having fun on Valentine's day! Not only am I not teaching today, but also the Guardian has come up trumps, with two items that are really interesting on the language of love. Or language and technology. Or both...

First up is a link to an article about how "singles" are using MSN to get to know propsective lovers. It raises an interesting issue about the way this technology encourages or allows us to use language differently in a flirting situation. Some very interesting figures, too, about the number of people who are doing this - er, and they are not, contrary to popular belief in my classroom, all young people.

Next is an absolutely fantastic set of data if you want to look at how real people use text messaging. The Guardian provided a service by which readers could text in a Valentine's message for their loved one, and it appears on their website. Very cool! These are real live people and real live messages, so if you want to see a great big pile of authentic data, check it out.

Forget champagne, online chat is the way to woo

Finally this sock has found its missing pair

Township talk

2005-02-13T11:31:00.000Z

So, to celebrate the fact that I may finally have figured out how to link to articles in The Times without all that fiddling about with the search box on the home page, here's a groovy little number from that respected bastion of once-broadsheet journalism. It's an interesting piece about Scamto, the street slang of black young people in South Africa's cities. It's been around a while but was fuelled in the 1990s by the language used by the townships' hip hop stars.

The reason it's now in the news is that a dictionary has just been produced, and its writer seems pleased to be able to help advertising executives and government agencies with this important tool to facilitate inter-generational, inter-racial communication. However, if you read the post the other week about the street slang of black young people in London (look for 'The youth of today' in the January archive), you will immediately be laughing at the foolishness of such a move, because this completely misses the point of the function of slang. Still, I love the use of "g-string" for a car in the BMW3 series, so if I start asking you if you fancy a ride in my g-string, please don't take it the wrong way!

Word on the street is...Scamto

Charles and Camilla

2005-02-10T22:24:00.000Z

So, for everyone out there who thinks that only young people talk sex into their mobiles late at night, here's a reminder, on this, the day it was announced, at long last, that Prince Charles will finally make a decent woman of his lay-dee, a reminder of what a stud, what a steamy late night schmoozer, our future king is. Click on the link to read the full transcript of the 1989 "Camillagate" scandal. And what exactly, I hear you ask, has this to do with your serious pursuit of A Level English Language? Ah well, just look at it...

Language and power - is this the way you expect members of the aristocracy to speak? Is it really that different, phonology aside, from the language of any star-crossed lovers?

Language and technology - consider the implications of modern telecommunications on language... The question was often asked in the press at the time - and was again in relation to Beckham and his texts - don't these people realise how easy it is for their calls to be hacked into and recorded? Wouldn't they be a little more linguistically circumspect if they thought about this for even half a second? Can't wait to see HRH on MSN...

Read it and weep....

The Camillagate Transcript