London Language

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

Billy on the radio

I had a great time in PEI last year at the APLA conference. A highlight was my first radio appearance discussing academic work. Karen Mair interviewed me for Mainstreet PEI She was an excellent host and I really enjoyed the experience. Here's the sound file if you want to listen to it:

billyonmainstreet_cbc_121111.MP3

B--)

could you care less?

Language Log - Half a century of (not) caring less

We've discussed this 'great language peeve' several times in class. I hadn't realised it was (over) 50 years old, though.

Billy

tense discussion

Here's John Mullan in this week's Guardian discussing use of the present tense: 

A history of the present - John Mullan, Guardian, 25.09.10

He's responding to Philip Pullman's piece last week objecting to use of present tense in fiction:

Philip Pullman calls time on the present tense - Guardian, 18.9.10

Pullman can't really mean that he objects to narration in the present tense full stop. I'd take a more moderate view, which is that you need to think about the effects of different kinds of language and use them when they help you to do what you're trying to do. As Pullman says:

'...if every sound you emit is a scream, a scream has no expressive value'

Pullman's right that the more film-makers use hand-held shaky camerawork, the less impact particular shaky camerawork has. The problem writers have, of course, is that they can only affect what they themselves do and so they need to think about how their particular choices relate to everybody else's and what that will mean for the effects their writing has on readers.

Billy

Routledge David Crystal lectures

Here's a message from Sylvia about the Routledge David Crystal lectures:

Today we (Sylvia and a group of students from the ‘Language and Society’ module) went to see David Crystal giving three lectures at the Shaw Theatre, next to the British Library in King’s Cross.

His first lecture entitled ‘The Future of Englishes’ was an interesting and informative overview of the past, present and future of English as a global language. He is an incredibly engaging speaker, and from the outset it was easy to see why these lectures had been billed as ‘performance lectures’. Crystal managed to enliven his examples and anecdotes with entertaining impressions of the people being discussed. He would move to one side of the stage to act being one speaker, and then move back to enact the other side of the conversation. Amazingly, he did this without a podium, props, notes or audio-visual equipment. Lecturers of the world take note!

The second lecture on ‘Language Death’ contained some really fascinating examples, such as the legend of 18th Century explorer Alexander von Humboldt’s parrots who were the last surviving speakers of a language called ‘Maypure’, and the artist Rachel Berwick’s attempts to teach Maypure to parrots in 2002, using only Humboldt’s 200 year old notes. See:

http://www.parrotchronicles.com/septoct2002/maypore.htm

Crystal is obviously passionate about the topic of Language Death and this was clear when the lecture took a surprising turn. Having stated that people are affected more by art than by academics writing books, Crystal proceeded to enact a scene from a play he had written about a ‘last speaker’ of a language. He was joined on stage by his son, Ben Crystal, and another actor. Together they enacted a scene between a linguist, the last speaker, and a British Council official. In the scene the last speaker is trying to explain that he no longer wants his stories recorded as the linguist’s data. The last speaker finishes his explanation by asking ‘who will tell the stories to me?’. The cultural value and emotional price of the loss of a language was strongly conveyed. I was really impressed by the sheer talent of a performer who can successfully carry off such a risky transition from giving a serious lecture to enacting the scene from a play (and back again).

Unfortunately I had to leave before the last lecture on ‘Internet linguistics’, but I came away feeling both entertained and informed.

Sylvia

the art of avoiding plagiarism

Guardian — The art of avoiding plagiarism

This article begins:

'The best way to avoid plagiarism is to avoid reading anything written by somebody else. Unfortunately, this is not really what higher education is supposed to be about.'

This is just a short article with a few pointers. As the article implies, everyone knows plagiarism is wrong but it's not always obvious how to avoid it.

Billy

the gr8 db8r strikes again

Guardian — Gr8 db8r takes on linguistic luddites

David Crystal is still standing up for change and creativity and against prescriptivism. Here's a bit of what he has to say:

'Almost every basic principle that people hold about texting turns out to be misconceived. Misspelling isn't universal: analysis shows that only 10% of words used in texts are misspelt. Nor are most texts sent by kids: 80% are sent by businesses and adults. Likewise, there is no evidence that texting teaches people to spell badly: rather, research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely to be the most literate and the best spellers, because you have to know how to manipulate language'

I also think it's gr8 that his book was reviewed in Take a Break magazine

Billy