Word of Mouth

It's an experience we've all had - desperately trying to recall a word. You might know the letter it begins with, the letter it ends with, but it just won't pop into your head. So how will Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright cope as we try and induce this most frustrating state: Tip of the Tongue?They are put under the spotlight by psychologist Dr Meredith Shafto, and try to find ways round it with the help of somebody who can memorise a 1000-digit number in an hour - memory Grandmaster Ed Cooke.Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

We take it for granted that we can maintain our friendships and family relationships now in so many ways: phone, voicemail, email, text, instant message, Facebook, Skype.. but do we have any idea of the effects of these very different modes of communication? Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright look at research into their emotional impact. Leslie Seltzer is Research Associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has tested the differing effects of a hug, a phone call and a text between mothers and daughters. Dr Mirca Madianou is Reader in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research is into mothers from the Philippines who've come to work in the UK and then try to look after their children back home by Skype. What works best for families living on different sides of the world? Producer Beth O'Dea.

Michael Rosen & Laura Wright hear about Mouthpiece, a project in which composer Jennifer Bell has been given access to interview people from the Speaker to the barista about their working lives in the Houses of Parliament. She's then created songs from their words to show the human side of life there, and to reflect on the ways in which Parliament voices the country. There is a tradition of using verbatim speech in music, and Michael compares Jennifer's work to the Radio Ballads of Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker, in particular Singing The Fishing. Producer Beth O'Dea More information about Jennifer Bell's work can be found on her website, www.jenniferbellcompany.com.

Michael Rosen and linguist Dr Laura Wright discuss how well we judge taking it in turns when we're in conversation. Professor Stephen Levinson has new research on the science behind this, and joins them in the studio for a carefully-calibrated discussion.. He believes that the back-and-forth pattern we instinctively fall into may have evolved before language itself. Levinson's research has found that it takes about 200 milliseconds for us to reply to each other, but it takes about 600 milliseconds to prepare what we're going to say - so we're preparing as we listen. Levinson notes that this is a pattern found across all human languages, and some animal species, and that infants begin taking turns in interactions at about six months of age, before they can even speak. But what's going on when someone seems to get it wrong, to interrupt or talk over the other person? Producer Beth O'Dea.

Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright guide us through the top 20 words in English. Not the best or most popular (that would include tentacular, ping-pong and sesquipedalian (look it up - it's a cracker). Plus a lot of swearing. No this is the 20 most commonly used. It's actually quite a boring list - full of 'And', 'I', 'of' etc - but look a little closer and it tells you all about the structure of language. The little words you really can't do without that glue all the other ones together.This kind of list comes from a branch of lingustics called Corpus Linguistics. It looks at the frequency and distribution of words in large bodies of text or speech. You can apply it to anything - political debates, lonely hearts columns or pop songs. Which is exactly what our guest Prof Jonathan Culpeper has done. That's high end linguistics and Pharrell Williams. Only on Word of Mouth.APPENDIX 1 - THE LIST!* the * be * to * of * and * a * in * that * have * I * it * for * not * on * with * he * as * you * do * at.

Forget Laurence Olivier and Peggy Ashcroft, Al Pacino and Judi Dench. To take us back to Shakespeare's own time Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright hear Shakespeare as he himself would have spoken. The original, unvarnished version from linguist David Crystal and actor Ben Crystal. They look at the fashion for Original Pronunciation and ask what it can tell us about how we speak now.Michael and Laura perform some of Shakespeare's best known work in the original accent and attempt to bring new meaning and wit to language coated by centuries of veneer.Producer: Mair Bosworth.

What is slang, where does it come from, and which subjects attract the most slang words? Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright thrash it out with lexicographer of slang and swearing Jonathon Green. Producer Beth O'Dea Jonathon Green is the author of Slang: A Very Short Introduction.

How come humans learn to speak and use language in extraordinarily sophisticated ways, without any conscious effort, while other animals do not? Recent research suggests that the answer lies, in part, in our genes. And three generations of a British family held the key to discovering which gene.Neuroscientist Dr Frederique Liegeois joins Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright to discuss the genetic basis of language.Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery.

Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright talk to River Cottage natural forager and writer John Wright about the surprising and wonderful Latin names used to describe animals and plants, and how they came to be. What is an Aha ha? John Wright is the author of The Naming of the Shrew: A Curious History of Latin Names. Producer Beth O'Dea.

Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright take us through the A-Z of the alphabet, with the help of Professor Nils Langer. How do we come to have the letters we do? Producer Beth O'Dea.