London Language

ebonics

I haven't come across the term 'ebonics' for a while, but here's an article suggesting that the term 'still stirs  strong feelings'

Billy

the royal name change

Interesting discussion here of how the British royal family changed their name to sound less German.

This leads on to discussion of others who did the same and wider issues about racism and prejudice.

There's also a link to a news story where members of the public were asked the Queen's surname and it seemed quite a few couldn't remember. I think Brenda Williams is not a bad name for a Queen.

B-)

language detectives

I just got back from a really fun week teaching a residential course on linguistics to A level students. The course was called 'The Language Detective' and themed around the idea that linguists are investigators, looking for clues, etc. This is me and Graeme with the magnifying glasses the students gave us at the end of the week. I'll be uploading presentations soon and writing a report. One of the best things about the course was that no-one ever had to rush off anywhere so there was time to carry on talking through interesting and tricky topics. B-)

syntactic ambiguity

'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language'
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Just saw this nice bit of syntactic ambiguity from Wittgenstein on quotes of the day

B-)