London Language

awareness test

 

We had great fun with this test in class last week (and in a workshop at a school yesterday). Have a go and see how observant you are! (I'll send another post about where we went with this later)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

Billy

 

 

Gender and language in the 2015 UK general election televised debates

We are most excited that Sylvia Shaw will be the speaker in our next Language and Communication research seminar at Middlesex next Tuesday, 15th March 2016. The talk is open to all. There's more info here:

http://lecturelist.org/content/view_lecture/15185

Sylvia has carried out lots of research on language, gender and politics, including an ESRC-funded project on gender, language and participation in the devolved parliaments of the UK, a contribution to this pamphlet on the 2015 election, contributions to a student book for AQA AS/A Level English Language, and a soon to be published book co-authored with Deborah Cameron on party leaders' performances in the televised 2015 election debates. She is working right now on a book called "Women, Language and Politics' for Cambridge University Press.

Hope to see you next Tuesday!

Billy Clark

 

 

'Like or else!'

We're really pleased that our speaker in next week's Talk About Language session will be Mai Zaki from the American University of Sharjah. The title of her talk is:

'Like or Else!' The Pragmatics of Arabic Religious Posts on Facebook

Mai is a former Middlesex PhD student. She completed her PhD ('Relevance theory and reference: a corpus-based approach') in 2011.

Here is her abstract:

How are Arabic religious posts formulated on Facebook? Why are they formulated in that way? And how are they relevant to the audience? In this talk I will be discussing some of the features of Arabic religious posts on Facebook within the framework of pragmatics and Relevance Theory. Linguistic features, such as the use of conditionals, imperatives and negation, are all manipulated by the speaker to increase the “likeness” of such posts on Facebook. At the intersection between religion, language and cyber-media, Arabic religious posts on Facebook reflect an interesting way of communicating religious messages through pictures and text which seek to be relevant, and sometimes ‘too relevant’, to the audience.

All welcome.

The talk will take place from 1.30 to 3pm(ish) in room V103, Vine Building, from 1.30 to 3pm on Tuesday 3rd February.

Directions and campus map are available here: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/get-in-touch/directions-london

The full programme is at: http://billydug.typepad.com/londonlanguage/talk-about-language-2014-2015.html

Contact me with any queries and to ask for further information:

Billy Clark [email protected]

Online Resources for Grammar Teaching

We're really pleased that our speaker in next week's Talk About Language session (please note the different day, time and place for this one: Friday 23rd January, 1.30-3pm, VG07, Vine Building) will be Bas Aarts from University College London.

Bas is Director of the Survey of English Usage, one of the most important and well-established research centres focusing on corpora in linguistic research. He has edited and published lots of important work on language and linguistics, and held a number of key roles, including being Vice-President for the Profession for the International Society for the Linguistics of English. The Survey of English Usage has also been involved in a number of very successful impact-focused projects, including the development of apps which help with understanding key concepts in grammar and projects which help teachers and students working on grammar at school, most recently the 'Englicious' project which provides resources for work at primary school.

The title for Bas's talk is:

Online Resources for Grammar Teaching

And here's how he describes it:

In this talk I’ll be discussing how large language databases (corpora) can be used to explore the English language, such as its present-day structure and usage and how these developed over time. I will also look at how corpora can be used to teach grammar and other linguistic concepts in schools.

All welcome.

As mentioned above, the talk will take place at 1.30-3pm in room VG07, Vine Building, from 1.30 to 3pm on Friday 23rd January. Directions and campus map are available here:

http://www.mdx.ac.uk/get-in-touch/directions-london

The full programme is at:

http://billydug.typepad.com/londonlanguage/talk-about-language-2014-2015.html

Contact me with any queries and to ask for further information:

Billy Clark [email protected]

 

 

Disnarration in Fact and Fiction

We're really pleased that our speaker in next week's Talk About Language session (Tuesday 2nd December, 1.30-3pm, room V103, Vine Building) will be Marina Lambrou from Kingston University. Marina is a Middlesex graduate (our second graduate speaker this year) and did her doctoral research here too (another former PhD student, Mai Zaki, will be talking in February).

Marina's title is:

Disnarration in fact and fiction: tellability and characterisation in an analysis of Tobias Wolff’s short story, Bullet in the Brain.

And here's her abstract:

Why are stories where something almost happened, where, for example, near misses, deaths, or events that could or might have happened, seen as reportable as much as those events that actually occurred? This dimension of storytelling, called disnarration (Prince (1988, 2003) is defined as ‘The elements in a narrative that explicitly consider and refer to what does not take place i.e.. ‘X didn’t happen’; ‘Y could have happened but didn’t’ (Prince, 2003: 22). Here, the focus would still be on the unfolding events or complicating action even if the resolution is not what would be expected (Labov and Waletzky, 1967). If we understand that telling and exchanging personal narratives are a means for individuals to represent and shape their lives through their experiences, then the alternative, hypothetical scenario of what might have been, communicates what could have been serious and even life changing. For individuals who tell these types of experiences, they are also able to construct and reconstruct their identity using a number of linguistic devices, such as ‘self–aggrandizement’, which is ‘designed to place the narrator in the most favorable possible light’ (Labov and Waletzky,1967. In media stories, disnarration would still fulfil the criteria of newsworthiness (Bell, 1991; Galtung and Ruge, 1965, 1973) because the emphasis is on tellability and the possible consequences e.g. ‘Near miss reported between passenger jet, airplane’ (Star-Telegram, 28.5.2014). What of fictional accounts of disnarration where the emphasis is not on what happens but on what does not, specifically, what the protagonist, Anders does not remember at a critical moment. This paper explores these questions with an analysis of Tobias Wolff’s short story, Bullet in the Brain, to understand the device of disnarration in fiction and its effects on plot and characterisation. It also looks at identifying the linguistic devices that signal disnarration.

All welcome.

The talk will take place at 1.30-3pm in room V103, Vine Building. Directions and campus map are available here:

http://www.mdx.ac.uk/get-in-touch/directions-london

The full programme is at:

http://billydug.typepad.com/londonlanguage/talk-about-language-2014-2015.html

Contact me with any queries and to ask for further information:

Billy Clark [email protected]

 

 

It's all happening. . .

We had a fantastic workshop on Saturday. I'll post more feedback on that later.

After that, Francis Nolan visited us on Monday to talk about Estonian Swedish and then about Parseltongue. Júlia Baldursdóttir, who has been working on Estonian Swedish with him, was also there. Both talks were fascinating and we've been discussing them since. The problem of working out what's going on with Estonian Swedish laterals was something we discussed in class later on Monday. We ran through various ways of gathering evidence about the phonology of a particular variety. For Estonian Swedish, there are methodological issues which follow from a range of things, including that all of the speakers are over 80. For London English, we thought the variety in the varieties is the biggest issue.

Our next speaker is Stephen Pihlaja on  'Frenemies and fans: The emergence of different YouTube communities'

We'll tell you more about that soon. Before that, today and tomorrow is the North London Literary Festival with lots of amazing speakers and events. This evening, I'll be on a panel with colleagues from Middlesex Media Department talking about how meaning is created and about London. The programme for today is here:

http://northlondonlitfest.com/programme-wednesday-2nd-of-april/

And here's tomorrow's programme, which covers a wide range of topics from flash fiction in the opening event to a talk by David Nicholls to end the day:

http://northlondonlitfest.com/programme-thursday-3rd-of-april/

Billy

 

 

 

 

 

Relevance Literariness and Style

We're very excited about our one-day workshop coming up this Saturday on the application of relevance theory in understanding aspects of literariness and stylistic analysis.

The workshop is free and open to all but bookings need to be made in advance via this link:

http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/relevance-literariness-and-style-tickets-10508315655

There's more information at the workshop web page:

http://billydug.typepad.com/londonlanguage/relevance-literariness-and-style.html

The line-up couldn't be stronger, featuring seven of the most important researchers in this area today (and me), all of whom are great people to know and work with, as well as excellent communicators.

The speakers also include two of the first three people who introduced me to relevance theory: Robyn Carston and my PhD supervisor Deirdre Wilson (the third is Ruth Kempson - wish she was coming too!)

Deirdre and Robyn (and Ruth) are  excellent teachers and taught me lots about teaching and academic life in general as well as about relevance theory. There are lots of people I'm looking forward to seeing among the other attendees too.

Book fast if you'd like to come as there are not many places left.

Billy

strange behaviour

I showed this to students in class a few weeks ago:

http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=212

I wished I had also filmed their reactions.

B--)

Pinker on pragmatics

Here's a recent RSA Animate video based on a lecture by Steven Pinker lecture on 'Language as a window into human nature' Pragmatists are using this in classes around the world as we speak. We've had some interesting discussions based on this in several classes at Middlesex recently.

I think this way of presenting the lectures is excellent, although at least one friend of mine is so fascinated by the drawing that he finds it hard to focus on the content of the talk.

Reactions from non-linguist friends has provided more evidence for my long-hel hypothesis that everyone is fascinated by questions about language and meaning.

Billy