Show notes for Episode 47 Here are the show notes for Episode 47, in which Dan talks to Fiona McPherson of the Oxford English Dictionary about: Word of the Year 2023 What makes a good word of the year Previous winners (and losers)  What new words can tell us about the world Some of the best articles and updates about #WOTY2023 can be found here:  ‘AI’ named most notable word of 2023 by Collins dictionary | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian AI named word of the year by Collins Dictionary - BBC News  Rizz named word of the year 2023 by Oxford University Press - BBC News  Got rizz? Tom Holland memes propel popularity of 2023 word of the year | Social trends | The Guardian  Dictionary.com’s 2023 Word Of The Year Is… The Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year 2023 The Collins Word of the Year 2023 is… Oxford Word of the Year 2023 Word of the Year 2023 | Authentic | Merriam-Webster Macquarie Dictionary Blog Cozzie livs: light-hearted term for cost-of-living crisis named Macquarie dictionary word of the year | Language | The Guardian  » Nominate the 2023 Words of the Year American Dialect Society   Japan chooses ‘tax’ as kanji of the year amid concern over cost of living    Opinion pieces about new words The Collins word of the year shortlist shows we’re more self-obsessed than ever Hallucinating AIs and What The Words Of The Year Lists Reveal About our Modern World  Rizz: I study the history of charisma – here's why the word of the year is misunderstood Thread on Twitter responding to the ‘manosphere’ links Who's got 'the rizz'? Apparently, just men I get the need for ‘rizz’, but ‘influencer’ should be banned for ever Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Show notes for Episode 46 Here are the show notes for Episode 46, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to Paul Kerswill, Emeritus Professor, Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York about what has driven his interests in linguistics, but mostly about Multicultural London English: What it is How it developed How it’s used now How it’s been reported on (and why it’s not ‘Jafaican’) The discourses and metaphors around it What it might sound like in the future Paul’s University of York page: https://www.york.ac.uk/language/people/academic-research/paul-kerswill/  Some of the presentations and papers Paul Kerswill has produced on MLE: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/who-made-mle https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/jafaican  and the full paper of this workshop is here: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/93713/1/17_Kerswill_corr.pdf  Some links to early reporting on MLE, MEYD and more: https://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/search?q=MEYD  Some of Tony Thorne’s reflections on MLE (he denies coining the term ‘MEYD’ though!): https://language-and-innovation.com/?s=MLE  We talked about Accent Bias Britain too: https://accentbiasbritain.org/  Here’s a York English Language Toolkit session on this too:  https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/accent-bias-britain  And previous episodes of Lexis in which we’ve discussed MLE: Shivonne Gates: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5leNPWkgQTMFzZ2UHRktnC?si=wh-4nKMmTpm7Q5on2x2wIQ  Matt Hunt Gardner: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7GBFEsLSNKYEpvX2yHIanO?si=_h-_-ROcRpm1llQLiLoSJw  And we talk about recent reporting on MLE in this episode’s Lang in the News: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0cdODEHoWHIWLfd0gh6xSw?si=pwjAKwHbRyea0jxUBugbiA  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys

Show notes for Episode 45 Here are the show notes for Episode 45, in which we talk to Dr Alex Baratta, Senior Lecturer in Language, Linguistics & Communication, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester about: Accents, accents… and more accents! Teacher accents and ‘professionalism’ Social connotations and stereotypes of accents - good and bad Why one accent isn’t ‘better’ than another and why exposure to accents might be the way to overcome accentism In our regular Lang in the News segment we talk about how formal greetings and sign-offs might be becoming a thing of the past and why that’s the fault of… well, pretty much everyone that Daily Mail readers don’t like. We also have a quick chat about the European-wide attempts to make language more inclusive, the first round of WOTY2023 and we big up Rob Drummond’s book, You’re All Talk. Alex Baratta’s University of Manchester page:  https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/alex.baratta  Some of the articles, books and research we mentioned:  https://theconversation.com/teachers-with-northern-accents-are-being-told-to-posh-up-heres-why-88425  http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/british_politics/2017/06/putting-an-accent-on-things-the-need-to-clarify-speech-expectations-for-british-teachers/   https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/clarifying-accent-standards-for-british-teachers  Understanding all kinds of English accent can improve empathy and learning – and even be a matter of life and death   Yours Sincerely is dead… The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/13/yours-sincerely-is-dead-so-how-should-you-sign-off-an-email  And in the Mail:  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12510471/Is-end-sincerely-Old-phrases-die-decade-language-formal-research-finds.html  Attempts to promote inclusive language in European languages What’s in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe  #WOTY2023  ‘AI’ named most notable word of 2023 by Collins dictionary | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian AI named word of the year by Collins Dictionary - BBC News  Opinion piece about new words https://archive.ph/kv2UQ  Rob Drummond’s new book: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/you-re-all-talk-why-we-are-what-we-speak-rob-drummond/7512151?aid=4868&ean=9781914484285  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Show notes for Episode 44 Here are the show notes for Episode 44, in which we talk to Dr Kingsley Ugwuanyi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Horizon Europe’s RISE UP Research Project, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS about: Nigerian English Global Englishes and who ‘owns’ a language Accent attitudes and identity Models and theories of world Englishes In a Lang in the News bumper segment we talk about recent research into young people’s accents in the south east of England and media reactions to it, including a chat with Dr Amanda Cole of University of Essex about her paper and how it’s been covered.  Kingsley Ugwuanyi’s SOAS page: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/kingsley-o-ugwuanyi  The paper (with Folajimi Oyebola) that we discussed: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Attitudes-of-Nigerian-expatriates-towards-accents-Ugwuanyi-Oyebola/ed2c0e7ac631c4a10fad45021abc8028c1305efc  The BBC article we talked about: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66569668  Kingsley’s PhD: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344951319_English_language_ownership_perceptions_of_speakers_of_Nigerian_English Amanda Cole's recent accent research  https://theconversation.com/cockney-and-queens-english-have-all-but-disappeared-among-young-people-heres-whats-replaced-them-215478 The Mail covers it… And its readers comment: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12691143/Kings-speech-cockney-silenced-rise-new-accents-popularised-Ellie-Goulding-Adele-Stormzy.html  Telegraph https://archive.ph/c56Zb https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/30/kings-english-cockney-replaced-new-accents/  BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-67289519 The Guardian Pass Notes: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/31/language-barrier-why-even-harry-has-stopped-speaking-the-kings-english   The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/05/cockneys-out-all-speaking-multicultural-now-accents  Accent intelligibility  https://theconversation.com/understanding-all-kinds-of-english-accent-can-improve-empathy-and-learning-and-even-be-a-matter-of-life-and-death-215922   Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) BlueSky: @englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Show notes for Episode 43 Here are the show notes for Episode 43, the second part of a Language & Gender double episode special, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan discuss ways to teach Language and Gender at A Level, from the 3 / 4 Ds models, to slightly tweaked and reverse Ds, through to corpus methods, treating gender as part of a wider ‘identity’ approach and much more.  Some of the resources and links that we mention in this episode Cameron et al. on tag qns: https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/CameronTags.pdf  Clare Feeney’s Twitter thread with a suggested approach: https://twitter.com/ClareFeeneyUK/status/1672172689224605697?s=20 Cameron, Deborah. and Shaw, Sylvia. (2016). Gender, Power and Political Speech: Women and Language in the 2015 UK General Election - Research Portal | Lancaster University Corpus for Schools | Corpus resources for A-level English Language and English Language Teaching  Teaching unit 17: Being Asian in London – Ethnicity, gender and social networks Background Audio clips  Alessia Tranchese’s paper on sexualised violence against women: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/publications/covering-rape-how-the-media-determine-how-we-understand-sexualise  Alessia Tranchese’s paper on the language of incels on Reddit: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/projects/online-misogyny-new-media-old-attitudes  Previous Lexis episodes that we mention in this episode.  Episode 10: Lucy Jones gender, sexuality and identity special https://open.spotify.com/episode/1m9UKNUUysD6Vawj61C2kW?si=U8fBAYFyRHSonV9NQ85qag  Episode 14: Emma Moore https://open.spotify.com/episode/1j6MyddIEivQ8x2e2cObhR?si=uLwnyY10QDy_92UEpk4EhA  Episode 15: Dana Gablasova https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nagsHhogFSfJmexecKlXt?si=U5ehaxmxQWSN57J5dAtjkQ  Episode 19: Elena Semino https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ISaApHlLITDd7l9npXKKj?si=Wlei19KwTTyTeWfbK15qvg  Suggested reading:  Deborah Cameron’s blog, Language: a feminist guide: https://debuk.wordpress.com/  Deborah Cameron’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Cameron_(linguist)  Deborah Cameron wrote this Research Update for Teachers for the EMC back in 2015: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/language-gender-a-research-update-for-teachers  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Here are the show notes for Episode 42, the first part of a Language & Gender double episode special, in which we talk to Deborah Cameron, Professor in Language and Communication at Worcester College, Oxford about: Robin Lakoff 50 years on from Language and Woman’s Place Where language & gender research has headed post-Lakoff Deborah Cameron’s forthcoming book, Language, Sexism and Misogyny  What kinds of more recent research we could be looking at for the A Level Online misogyny and Disney princesses The other Deborah (Tannen) We’ll be back soon with a follow-up episode in which we look at how we can approach the teaching of language and gender in a world that’s changed since the earliest days of research into this field.  Deborah Cameron’s blog, Language: a feminist guide: https://debuk.wordpress.com/  Deborah Cameron’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Cameron_(linguist)  Robin Lakoff’s 1973 article for Language in Society can be found here: https://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist156/Lakoff_1973.pdf  Somer articles about Deborah Cameron’s Myth of Mars and venus from around the time it was published: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/01/gender.books  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/03/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety1  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/oct/02/gender.familyandrelationships  https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/language-common  Deborah wrote this Research Update for Teachers for the EMC back in 2015: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/language-gender-a-research-update-for-teachers  Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer, ‘The Princess Problem’: https://www.kareneisenhauer.org/projects-and-publications/  A Q&A with Karen Eisenhauer about her work: https://english.news.chass.ncsu.edu/2017/04/20/language-gender-and-disney-princesses/  The Washington Post on the Disney Princess research: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/25/researchers-have-discovered-a-major-problem-with-the-little-mermaid-and-other-disney-movies/  Alessia Tranchese’s paper on sexualised violence against women: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/publications/covering-rape-how-the-media-determine-how-we-understand-sexualise  Alessia Tranchese’s paper on the language of incels on Reddit: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/projects/online-misogyny-new-media-old-attitudes  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Show notes for Episode 41 Here are the show notes for Episode 41, in which Dan talks to Dr Johanna Gerwin, a sociolinguist at QMUL and DFG (German Research Foundation) post-doctoral researcher for the London Talks project about London English, including:  The London Talks and Real Talk East projects What ‘enregisterment’ means and how language styles and varieties become enregistered ‘Metalinguistic’ discourses about London English - MLE, Cockney and Estuary The power of discourses around language Slang swag Johanna’s QMUL staff page: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/research-staff/profiles/johanna-gerwin.html  Johanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jo_gerw  The London Talks project website: https://londontalksresearch.co.uk/  Real Talk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealTalkEast  In our regular Lang in the News segment, Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk about ‘cis’ and how it’s been termed a slur by Elon Musk. We discuss where ‘cis’ comes from and all the related issues about language policing in a changing world.    Elon Musk claims ‘cis’ is a slur… Elon Musk sparks outrage with threat to ban ‘cisgender’ as a ‘slur’ on Twitter | The Independent  Elon Musk claims use of 'cis' and 'cisgender' on Twitter is 'harassment', threatens to suspend users  Researcher who coined term 'cisgender' hits back at Elon Musk  Cisgender refers to people whose gender identity aligns with the one assigned at birth. The researcher who coined the term, Dana Defosse, first used the word in a 1994 post on an early internet forum, which Oxford English Dictionary cited when it added the term to the dictionary in 2015 No, Elon Musk, cis is not a slur | The Independent  OED update December 2015: New words notes December 2015 | Oxford English Dictionary  “Another sign of our increasingly complex understanding of personal identity in the twenty-first century is the inclusion of a cluster of words beginning with the prefix cis–: cis, cisgender, cisgendered, and cissexual. Derived from the Latin preposition cis, meaning ‘on this side of’, until relatively recently this prefix was chiefly visible in English in the adjectives cisalpine and cismontane (‘on this side of the Alps/mountains’), and in the names of certain chemicals displaying a particular type of molecular symmetry. Since 1994 however, when the word cisgendered was used by an American academic appealing for help with a study of transgender issues, cis– has taken on a new lease of life in a group of words which provide a direct equivalent to identity terms such as transgender and transsexual when referring to people who are not trans, i.e., those whose sense of their own personal identity corresponds to their birth sex.” What does 'cisgender' mean? | Merriam-Webster  Etymology of ‘cis’: The Word “Cisgender” Has Scientific Roots | Office for Science and Society - McGill University And Jill is no longer part of the Lexis team - thanks to her for being involved and for all her contribution and insights! Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Show notes for Episode 40 Here are the show notes for Episode 40, a bumper edition in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to four linguists from the University of York about their York English Language Toolkit website and teacher CPD sessions. We talk to: Sam Hellmuth about the Toolkit and some of her favourite sessions in the past 10 years.  Tamar Keren-Portnoy about her child language research George Bailey about the Our Dialect app  Claire Childs about her work on perceptions of non-standard grammar The York English Language Toolkit website can be found here: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies  This year’s sessions can be found here: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops  York English Language Toolkit on Twitter: https://twitter.com/YorkToolkit  Sam Hellmuth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/samhellmuth  Claire Childs on Twitter: https://twitter.com/childs_claire  George Bailey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/grbails  University of York Department of Language and Linguistic Science: https://twitter.com/UoYLangLing  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Jill Lavender Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs  Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys

Show notes for Episode 39 Here are the show notes for Episode 39, in which Lisa and Dan talk to Dan Collen, an online hate researcher from Canada about his work on the Weaponized Laughter: Memes and Hate in the Canadian Digital Landscape report he has helped produce. We talk about: Memes: what they are and how they work What is classified as hate speech and the ‘hallmarks of hate’  The discourses at work in hate speech Online communities and their role in shaping and influencing wider culture Dog whistles and plausible deniability Hope for the future? 🚩As might be obvious when looking at hate speech, this episode comes with a content warning for themes of racism and discrimination.🚩  And for a Lang in the News special, we talk to Heddwen Newton about her newsletter English in Progress, some recent news stories that have caught her eye and how to stay on top of news stories about language.  Dan Collen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpinelessL  The Weaponized Laughter Memes report:  https://cdn.sanity.io/files/rdq6owff/production/6b78f8630669069025ea145da2221ef2c1fac032.pdf  Hatepedia site: Hatepedia    “Hatepedia is an online database and resource centre built with original research to provide educators, parents, lawmakers, and researchers with tools to identify and counter the proliferation of online hate.” Heddwen’s Language in Progress newsletter: https://englishinprogress.substack.com/  Heddwen’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Heddwen  Susie Dent’s ‘banished words list’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65634829  And the Tweet that started it: https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1658380887698931712?s=20  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Mastodon:  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Jill Lavender Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs  Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 

Here are the show notes for Episode 38, in which Lisa and Dan talk to Dr Anna Islentyeva of Innsbruck University, Austria about the representation of masculinity in advertising, including:  The “Real Men Score” paper she has recently published with her team Stereotypes around gender representation Methodologies and approaches to data Multimodal approaches to visual texts Anna’s university page: https://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/staff/islentyeva/islentyeva.html  Anna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hei_anni  The “Real Men Score” paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HZsad35JBMD0kM4FqpXpWn8xWnIzAiL-/view?usp=share_link  Anna Islentyeva, Elisabeth Zimmermann, Nadia Schützinger & Andrea Platzer (2023) ‘Real Men Score’: Masculinity in Contemporary Advertising Discourse, Critical Discourse Studies, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2023.2173625 The study that Anna mentioned into perfume advertising was by Helen Ringrow and this is her book The Language of Cosmetics: The Language of Cosmetics Advertising | SpringerLink And in our regular Lang in the News segment, Jacky and Dan talk about linguistic accommodation, the power of accents and why politicians love to talk down to us.  Northern lessons for southern Tories https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1649520363926110210?t=pCM6q2gelPqBiOFGy4bQcA&s=19 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/21/how-do-you-sex-a-limpet-susie/  Rishi Sunak’s downwards convergence Here’s the clip: https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1640280827086143488  Is it “hilariously inauthentic”(Alex Andreou)?  Is it “sheer desperation by an out of touch rich boy trying to show he is in tune with the public” (Dave Lawrence in replies to tweet above https://twitter.com/dave43law/status/1640326877842685954?s=20 )? Or is it just another example of politicians (of all parties) trying to sound more human and a perfectly natural way of doing language?  Jane Setter article about people keeping/losing accents:  https://theconversation.com/why-some-people-lose-their-accents-but-others-dont-linguistic-expert-201986  George Osborne: 'Mockney' George Osborne backs working Briddish with dodgy accent  George 'Mockney' Osborne: Chancellor in Estuary accent shocker George Osborne, gawd bless yer | Victoria Coren | The Guardian Academics 'dropping regional accents' to fit in at elite universities (linked story to accommodation)    Ed Miliband with Russell Brand: Accent on common ground as Miliband takes on Russell Brand's estuary twang  The cultural significance of Ed Miliband's mockney accent | The Spectator Has Ed Miliband changed his accent to get elected?    Tony Blair: London Journal; Britons Prick Up Their Ears: Blair's a Li'l Peculiar  I don’t have a posh accent – am I bothered? | Suzanne Moore | The Guardian  Accents in Higher Education: Academics 'dropping regional accents' to fit in at elite universities British academics try to hide regional accents, study finds     Alex Barratta’s work on accents and teaching  Research exposes prejudice over teachers with northern accents  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Mastodon:  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Jill Lavender Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs  Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys