Show notes for Episode 58

Here are the show notes for Episode 58, in which Dan talks to Professor of Corpus Linguistics, Dr Vaclav Brezina of Lancaster University about:

• The new Frequency Dictionary of British English

• What certain words can tell us about a changing language

• Using corpora to track change

• Why we need more than just words to understand patterns of language change 

• Why media discourses around change might need to be treated with caution

Vaclav’s University page: 

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/vaclav-brezina 

Some coverage of the research and the publication: 

https://portal.lancaster.ac.uk/intranet/news/article/sonew-dictionary-sheds-light-on-frequency-of-words-in-british-english   

https://theconversation.com/tea-weather-and-being-on-time-analysis-of-100-million-words-reveals-what-brits-talk-about-most-222088 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/03/english-language-use-more-informal-words-linguistics/