London Language

an amazing dog

 

This is a clip about a dog with advanced skills in vocabulary and pragmatics which we talked about in class this week.

Billy

 

Jodie Foster on privacy

We've often looked at Oscar acceptance speeches when looking at the complexities of communication in various kinds of media contexts. We've looked at all the famous ones you might think of (but students often don't know about) from Sacheen Littlefeather to Halle Berry (and her Razzie acceptance speech) via Sally Field (twice) Tom Hanks etc etc.

Recently, we've been looking at Jodie Foster's Golden Globes speech for a lifetime achievement award. There's lots to say about it, including the complex audience(s) she's addressing, the complex messages, the different kinds of contextual assumptions shared to varying degrees by people in those audiences, the extent to which it was a planned performance, etc. etc.

Of course, there was also lots of discussion of this. Two examples we discussed were Sam Leith's discussion of the use of rhetoric in the speech:

Sam Leith — The genius of Jodie Foster's speech

and this Huffington Post article applying ideas from speech act theory:

Huffington Post — It's OK, Jodie, saying 'I'm gay' is optional

Billy

 

 

English Language course for A Level Students

This message is for A Level English Language teachers who might have students who would benefit from a residential course on language meaning and change.

There are still places left on a course Graeme Trousdale and I are running at Villiers Park this December. We'll be looking at how to explore language variation and change, including meaning change, and also at developments in pragmatics which have followed from the work of Grice.

You can find the flyer here:

Villiers Park English Language Flyer 2012

(Ignore the bit about the booking deadline if you do have students who might be interested in attending)

Billy

'eh! two Ts in settee'

We're excited about our first 'Talk About Language' event at Middlesex this semester.

The speaker is Holly Gilbert, from the British Library, who will be telling us about the Voices of the UK project which aims to open up the BBC Voices recordings for linguistic research. The full title of her talk is:

I says, 'eh! two Ts in settee,' and they'll say, 'Yeah there's two Es as well!'

Opening up the BBC Voices Recordings for Linguistic Research.

The talk is at 9.30am next Tuesday, 6th November, in room CG47, College Building, Hendon Campus. There are directions to the campus here:

Hendon campus location info

More info from Billy: b.clark@mdx.ac.uk

(The image above comes from the British Library's amazingly useful Sounds Familiar? website) 

 

 

 

 

tidying up David Cameron's speech

I noticed a classic 'standard English' error in David Cameron's speech at the Conservative Party conference recently. He said:

'Let me tell you about Michael Gove and I'

I decided to check the transcript and found it online here:

Independent 10 October 2012 — David Cameron conference transcript

The phrase above had been removed. You can hear it though, around 25 seconds into the video. Not sure whether that reflects a spontaneous change he made while talking or whether someone thought they should tidy it up. I found a comment on it here (from 'PorFavor' who described it as 'appalling grammar').

I don't think Cameron should be embarrassed. This is a common error made by standard English speakers. Interestingly, it seems to be a case of 'hypercorrection', where someone 'over-corrects' themselves when speaking in a variety they're not comfortable with (e.g. Spanish speakers adding /h/ before vowels to compensate for the 'absence' of /h/ in Spanish).

Of course, this raises the question of why standard English speakers 'hyper-correct' when using their own first language, leading some linguists, such as Nick Sobin, to the conclusion that 'Prestige English is not a natural language'

Billy

 

ULAB

 

Here's the ULAB logo, jftfoi

B-)

IALS and ULAB — student language and linguistics societies

Just saw this post from IALS which reminded me to tell language and linguistics students about them and ULAB (if they're in this part of the world) and encourage them to make connections

 

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'who would win. . .?' tickets to the battle of ideas

The Battle of Ideas is on at the Barbican this weekend (20th-21st October). The Lecture List has announced a competition to win two weekend passes. Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting here. . .

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'nim chimpsky' on prescriptivism

Here's a piece of data for those of you working on prescriptivism:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/allanmassie/100066815/lost-battles-in-the-grammar-wars/

There's a comment from a 'Nim Chimpsky' (not, of course, _the_ nim)

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spell it out - cryptic English

Guardian - Crossword editor's update - 1 October 2012

The Guardian's crossword editor (Hugh Stephenson) is very keen on David Crystal's new book.

Not only does English have a complex and interesting history, it seems that the accidents of history have made it an excellent language for cryptic crossword setters and solvers.

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