We're really pleased that next week's Talk About Language session will be a conversation/Q&A and informal discussion with the writer, director, accent coach and phonetician Geoff Lindsey. (Note the time and place for this one: Thursday 12th February, 3-4.30pm, Vine Building, Room V104)
Geoff's main area of linguistic expertise is in phonetics and phonology. He has also worked as an accent coach ('accent reduction' is the slightly misleading term often used for this), written and directed film (including his short film The Clap and the feature film The Flying Machine for which he also arranged Chopin's music) and written for TV (including for The Bill and Eastenders).
Geoff has recently been working with the phonologist Péter Szigetvári on a free online pronunciation dictionary which aims to provide more accurate transcriptions than those used in most dictionaries.
Geoff's blog Speech Talk is one of our favourite resources and often referred to in class. We recently discussed his posts on using General British (GB) as a term to replace Received Pronunciation (RP) and on why British/English speech is often seen as an 'accent of evil' We also recently listened to Geoff and Stephen Fry talking about intonation.
Come along for a fascinating discussion of a range of topics about how English and other languages are pronounced and why your dictionary is probably misinforming you about how English is pronounced.
All welcome.
The talk will take place from 3 to 4.30pm(ish) in room V104, Vine Building, from 1.30 to 3pm on Thursday 12th 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]