London Language

Début — new journal for undergraduate students

I just read about Début

It's a new journal for undergraduates working on languages, linguistics or area studies. You can submit while studying or up to 6 months after graduating.

Billy

'chaps' going 'badly right'

I heard two interesting uses of language yesterday on Radio 4 (I'm afraid I didn't do very well at noting the sources, though)

First, there was a discussion on the Today programme of Labour winning the Glenrothes by-election and one of the journalists said that something had 'gone badly right' for Gordon Brown.

Then Shami Chakrabarti was on Desert Island Discs and explaining why she hadn't really got into student politics when she was at LSE. She said there were a lot of 'mainly chaps, actually, but a lot of guys' who were very keenly political at the time. It's interesting because it's good evidence that 'guys' is a unisex word for her but the use of 'chaps' to represent just the male students is also interesting.

Billy