Episode 58 - Vaclav Brezina and the new Frequency Dictionary of British English

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/