Resources

The following links offer a range of different resources to accompany the material in the printed version of the book. You can find some of the ideas taken further or in different directions with articles from a variety of sources, along with audio files made up of podcasts, online lectures or resources from other language websites. Think about the accompanying questions as you read.

Part 2
Part 3

Part II – Drilling Down: how texts are structured

Section A: Graphological and phonological levels

Semiotics for Beginners website
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/

John Wells’s Phonetics blog
http://www.phonetic-blog.blogspot.co.uk/

Jane Setter (Reading University) explaining phonology on the Alan Titchmarsh show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCWa8xEZ52g

Jane Setter’s You Tube phonology lectures
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIAmqXF6bBE
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLN7QGIuH7g
Part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTE-34Y65mw

Guardian newspaper review of Kate Fox’s Watching the English
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/24/highereducation.news1

Emojis: different opinions on their use
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11614804/Emoji-is-Britains-fastest-growing-language-as-most-popular-symbol-revealed.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/11619149/Emoji-the-big-new-language-Id-rather-take-to-cave-art.html
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/may/27/emoji-language-dragging-us-back-to-the-dark-ages-yellow-smiley-face

The phonemic chart
http://www.phonemicchart.com/

Attitudes to different speakers of English
http://digest.bps.org.uk/2010/10/speakers-with-foreign-accent-are.html

Lexicon Valley podcast on Ebonics and Black American English
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/02/lexicon_valley_is_black_english_a_dialect_or_a_language_.html

A collection of blog posts on accents, accent change and attitudes to different regional UK accents
http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=accent

ITV Tonight’s research into the public’s attitudes to regional accents in the UK
http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/prejudice-about-accents-is-alive-and.html

Sites with audio files of UK accents:

Survey of English Dialects, British Library: http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/
‘Sounds Familiar? Accents and Dialects of the UK’. Multimedia pages at the British Library: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html
The Speech Accent Archive. English accents from around the world. George Mason University: http://accent.gmu.edu/
A Tour of the Accents of the British Isles, Andrew Jack, 7 April 2014: http://kottke.org/14/04/

Emma Jones: poetry about attitudes to British regional accents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzOUJ4YKNJo

LOL and ha ha in speech and online communication
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/10/lol-facebook-haha

Online speech and slang
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/10/ban-internet-slang-steven-poole-derp-amazeballs-lulz-wtf

A guide to online slang
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/quiz/2014/aug/07/quiz-internet-slang-bae-how-well-yolo-tbt-mean

Some opinions about online speech
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/30/this-sucks-why-you-need-to-stop-using-the-internets-worst-one-word-sentence

Does texting mean the end of ‘hello’?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3125891.stm

John McWhorter’s TED lecture on texting and language change
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk?language=en

Lexicon Valley podcast on “Creaky Voice” or Vocal Fry: http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/01/lexicon_valley_on_creaky_voice_or_vocal_fry_in_young_american_women.html

Section B: Lexical and semantic level

New words year by year
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/how-to-find-your-birthday-word--bkVWCe8UEl

A collection of posts about new words
http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/new%20words

Technology slang from 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7775013.stm

Kerry Maxwell’s fantastic archive of new words and how they were formed
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/AtoZ.html

Stan Carey on ‘man-’ as a prefix
http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/watch-your-manguage

Etymology Online - searchable database for looking up word origins
http://www.etymonline.com/

Oxford Dictionaries Blog’s archive of posts on word origins
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/category/word-origins/

Oxford Dictionaries Blog’s archive of posts on new words and word trends
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/category/word-trends-and-new-words/

The semantics and discourses of immigration the UK media
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/10/migration-debate-metaphors-swarms-floods-marauders-migrants

Lexicon Valley podcast on the language of US immigration:
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/11/illegal_vs_undocumented_the_debate_over_immigration_language_on_lexicon.html

Some examples of “Metaphors we live by”
http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html

BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth on the language of cancer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dm87k

British Council’s Learn English vocabulary and grammar resources and games
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-and-vocabulary

Lexicon Valley podcast on slang:
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2014/10/lexicon_valley_jonathon_green_on_his_dictionary_of_slang_and_the_craft_of.html

Section C: Grammatical level

UCL’s Internet Grammar of English site
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/

BBC Radio 4 Word of Mouth on how grammar is changing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wtzzk

Verbing and nouning
http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/more-about-verbing-and-nouning

MacMillan Dictionaries and “Real Grammar”
http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/real-grammar-accept-no-substitutes

UCL’s grammar and teaching site, Englicious
http://www.englicious.org/

Linguist, Michael McCarthy on the uses of convoluted and plain grammar
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2006/apr/11/highereducation.uk1

QMUL’s excellent Linguistics Research Digest, which features a range of posts about changing grammar and language use in speech and writing
http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/

Are we using ‘so’ more to start conversations?
http://blog.dictionary.com/sentence-initial-so/

Is ‘like’-use increasing? And is just “teenage talk”?
http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/like-its-teenage-talk-or-is-it.html

‘Like’ as a quotative
http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/quoting-then-and-now.html

The language of speech and discourse-pragmatic features
http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/discourse-pragmatic-markers-take-centre.html

How English speakers fill gaps
http://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2014/oct/06/um-er-conversation-english-speakers-socio-linguistics-edinburgh-university

Linguist, David Crystal on the language of texting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h79V_qUp91M
...and Crystal on the myths and realities of texting and tweeting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boj8VYzDAy8

Part III – Building Up: texts and contexts

Dimensions of texts: place and time

Online identity discussed in BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04d4jy3

BT’s All Talk project - free resources on spoken English
http://www.btplc.com/BetterFuture/ConnectedSociety/LearningAndSkillsFreeResources/AllTalk/

The rise of Singlish
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33809914

Oxford Dictionaries Blog’s archive of posts on language variety
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/category/varieties-of-english/

Texts as discourses: culture and gender

A directory of TED talks about language and culture
https://voxy.com/blog/2011/02/best-ted-talks-on-language-culture/

Lexicon Valley podcast about language, thought and perception:
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2014/07/lexicon_valley_the_language_hoax_by_linguist_john_mcwhorter_takes_on_the.html

Representation of gender and gendered pronouns
http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/boys-will-be-boys-girls-will-be-girls.html

Recent developments in Swedish gender-neutral pronouns
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/24/sweden-adds-gender-neutral-pronoun-to-dictionary

Gender Neutral Pronoun (2010):
http://genderneutralpronoun.wordpress.com/

BBC News (2014) ‘Canada: Schools axe “he” and “she” in favour of “xe”’, News From Elsewhere, 18 June:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27904621 [accessed 27 June 2014]

Brean, Joseph (2014) ‘Vancouver School Board’s genderless pronouns – xe, xem, xyr – not likely to stick, if history is any indication’, National Post, 17 June:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/06/17/

Zimmer, Ben (2009) ‘More Ms.-teries of “Ms.”’, Vocabulary, 23 October:
http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wordroutes/more-ms-teries-of-ms/

Recently, a number of campaigns have sought to highlight the way women are subjected to sexism on a daily basis. Explore the following sites.

Do the experiences reported surprise you?
What does it tell us about society?
What kinds of resources are women using to object to this treatment?

Everyday Sexism: http://everydaysexism.com/
#YesAllWomen on Twitter
SlutWalk: https://www.facebook.com/SlutWalkToronto/

It is not only women who are subject to everyday abuse of this kind.

Hess, Amanda (2014) ‘Smile, Baby! A New Study Shows How Often Women and Gay Men Are Sexually Harassed on the Street’, Slate, 3 June:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/03 [accessed 17 July 2014]

Lexicon Valley podcast on gendered suffixes and labels
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2015/02/lexicon_valley_anne_curzan_on_the_etymology_and_history_of_feminine_designations.html

Lexicon Valley podcast on “Sounding Gay” – sexuality and speech
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2014/12/lexicon_valley_speech_scientist_benjamin_munson_on_the_stereotypical_gay.html