Let’s celebrate how language works as well as what it expresses Linguistic elements as fantastic creatures by children’s laureate Chris Riddell. ‘There is nothing intrinsically deadening of a child’s growing linguistic competence in knowing what a phoneme is,’ writes Mike Newby. Illustration: Chris Riddell Chris Riddell’s drawings of linguistic elements – graphemes, phonemes, cohesive devices
Forty-four. That’s how many times Madonna uses the word “bitch” on her latest album, Rebel Heart. She has reclaimed and owns it – proudly, powerfully and with panache. It is, perhaps, one of the most successful examples of reclaiming a word that exists in the dubious track record of this linguistically defiant activity. Madonna has
Why English has a ‘we’ problem: when we say ‘we’, who do ‘we’ mean?, Thursday 10 December 2015 23.26 GMT – Gavin Davis In his Redfern speech, Paul Keating said we need to open our hearts, but who are ‘we’? If the speech was given in Mandarin, Tok Pisin or Warlpiri, we’d know. “We committed the murders.” That was
The Academia.edu site is a very good place for starting your research, liaising with other colleagues and also share your findings (preliminary or otherwise) with them. Every week (or thereabouts) I get an update with the top papers (i.e. the ones with most visibility) in my newsfeed. It seems lately the papers are becoming more
Eight words that reveal the sexism at the heart of the English language David Shariatmadari ‘I am a gentil womman and no wenche’: from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale, c1386. Photograph: Alamy Linguists call it collocation: the likelihood of two words occurring together. If I say “pop”, your mental rolodex will begin whirring away, coming