Lexis

lexispodcast
  • 5.0 (1)
  • LANGUAGE LEARNING
  • UPDATED BIMONTHLY

A podcast about language and linguistics for A Level English Language students, teachers and anyone else who's interested in language.

  1. 6D AGO

    Episode 80 - Matthew Hunt on voice pitch

    Welcome to episode 80 of Lexis in which Dan and guest interviewer Ben talk to Dr Matthew Hunt, Lecturer of Sociolinguistics, University of Southampton about voice pitch, including: What it is and how we measure it What it ‘means’, including its ‘social meaning potential’ The judgements that we make about pitch and why these matter Gendered perceptions of pitch His work on domestic violence cases and the role of pitch in perceptions of ‘victimhood’ Gender and football commentaries Advice to A Level students on exploring pitch and its role ⚠️Content warning⚠️ We discuss domestic violence and abuse in broad terms in part of this episode.  Journal of Sociolinguistics paper on the effect of pitch variation on perceptions of domestic abuse victims: https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12723 The second paper, ‘Gender Penalty? Linguistic Discrimination and Perceptions of Female Football Commentators’ is with Gender & Language and currently in press. We will update the link once it is published.  Matthew’s website: https://matthewhuntlinguistics.home.blog/  Matthew’s University of Southampton page: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/626sz2/doctor-matthew-hunt  Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana 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

    46 min

  2. FEB 6

    Episode 79 - Charlotte Entwistle on language & personality disorders

    ⚠️Content warning⚠️ We discuss mental health, self-harm and suicide as part of this episode.  Welcome to episode 79 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to Dr Charlotte Entwistle, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in Psychology, University of Liverpool. We discuss: Her path from A levels to research How language analysis can be used in psychology What language reveals about our minds and how they work The linguistic patterns associated with different personality traits Language and mental health Why we need to be cautious about making connections between language and personality The practical applications of this work The article in The Conversation that we discuss is here: https://theconversation.com/people-with-personality-disorders-often-use-language-differently-our-research-reveals-how-271109 Charlotte’s university page is here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/charlotte-entwistle

    46 min

  3. 12/13/2025

    Episode 78 - John Kelly and the 2025 Words of the Year

    Welcome to episode 78 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to John Kelly, former head of content at Dictionary.com, previous contributor to Merriam-Webster and Oxford Dictionaries, emoji lexicographer for Emojipedia, and school teacher. We discuss: How WOTY decisions were made at Dictionary.com Whether we should celebrate WOTY for getting us talking about words, or be cynical about it as a marketing exercise What makes a WOTY stick around What qualities a good WOTY should have The sketchier WOTYs that we've seen 2025’s crop of WOTY nominations - what we’ve seen so far and what might be to come WOTY as a barometer of the times ‘Fascism’ as John’s WOTY/etymology of the year and why an old word is pertinent again.  John’s blog is here: https://mashedradish.com/  ‘Fascism’ is here; https://mashedradish.com/2025/11/04/fascism-etymology-of-the-year-2025/  He is also on Bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/mashedradish.bsky.social  Some of the WOTY choices we discuss are covered in the articles and posts below:  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/rage-bait-2025-oxford-word-internet-language-defense/685143/?gift=h5ssLVeyARshEXLqfVq5YwEAlKAoVnByCEZqdOsZdV8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share https://theconversation.com/2025s-words-of-the-year-reflect-a-year-of-digital-disillusionment-270769 https://time.com/7334730/word-of-the-year-2025-cambridge-collins-dictionary-oxford-merriam/  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/learning/what-teenagers-are-saying-about-6-7-and-the-era-of-brain-rot.html  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewjxqvqzgyo   https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z9xbh4j   https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/brain-rot-what-the-oxford-word-of  https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-words-that-define-our-enshittifed  https://bsky.app/profile/hooved-mammal.bsky.social/post/3m7ntojukdc2y  Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana 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

    53 min

  4. 11/25/2025

    Episode 77 - Lynne Murphy and the 'Americanisation' of young people's English

    Welcome to episode 77 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to Lynne Murphy, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex about a flurry of recent news stories about children’s adoption of American vocabulary (and even accents). We discuss: What these stories are about and whether we can even tell if this 'Americanisation' is happening The main themes in them and their precursors in previous panics about ‘Americanisation’  The discourses within and behind these stories What motivates them and how to approach them critically  How British English is also making its way into American English Lynne is author of ‘The Prodigal Tongue: the Love–Hate Relationship between British and American English’ , and the Separated by a Common Language blog.  You can also find her on Bluesky and other social media platforms under the name Lynneguist. Bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/lynneguist.bsky.social  The stories we discuss are here: The Times and Sunday Times feature itself: http://archive.today/9UM7W  ‘Trash-talking children are sounding like Americans, say teachers Garbage, candy and apartment are Americanisms that are growing more popular among younger pupils’ Kristina Murkett’s op-ed for The Telegraph,  ‘The Americanisation of British English reveals this dark thing about our society Many parents are happy to allow their children consume videos made by companies that have no obligation to care for them’ http://archive.today/cZ4kF  The Telegraph article links to this absolute stinker of a piece by Simon Heffer from 2024 too, ‘Americanisms are poisoning our language’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/americanism-english-language-simon-heffer/    A more sensible take from Charlotte Crips in The Independent, ‘Mom, can we take the elevator?’ Why I’m fine with my daughter speaking Americanese’ https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/americanism-english-children-b2857680.html  But some quite mixed responses to that piece from their readers: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/americanisms-english-language-british-b2859043.html  We mention Ben Yagoda’s book, Gobsmacked https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/gobsmacked-the-british-invasion-of-american-english-ben-yagoda/7669284?ean=9780691262291&next=t  and the Guardian featured an extract from it here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/sep/26/other-british-invasion-how-uk-language-conquered-the-us  A new one (possibly the worst of the lot) was published in The Spectator between recording the episode and publishing it. You can read the archived version here: https://archive.ph/2025.11.24-063603/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-to-save-the-kings-english/  And we’ve been here before, obviously… Matthew Engel:  ‘Say no to the get-go! Americanisms swamping English, so wake up and smell the coffee’ (here, along with some teacher resources and student responses that Jacky and I put together years ago and the actual article: https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/english/AQA-ALEVEL-ENG-HUB-SPR19-PAPER2-BOOKLET.PDF )  Mark Liberman’s response to Engel on Language Log in 2011: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3290  Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana 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

    29 min

  5. 11/20/2025

    Episode 76 - Dani Yin & Cheryl Wakslak on gender and exclamation marks in digital communication

    Welcome to episode 76 of Lexis which features Raj & Dan (and guest interviewer & friend of the pod, Amanda Cole) talking about gender and exclamation marks in digital communication with Yidan (Dani) Yin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Organization at the Smeal College of Business, Penn State University and Dr Cheryl Wakslak, Associate Professor of Management and Organization at USC Marshall. Their JESP (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) paper (with Gil Appel): Nice to meet you.(!) Gendered norms in punctuation usage can be found here and is a fascinating read:  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/397148363_Nice_to_meet_you_Gendered_norms_in_punctuation_usage  We pick up on some of the media coverage of their paper and also reference Deborah Cameron’s blog about the paper and its coverage.  Financial Times coverage: https://archive.ph/cCOiL  The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/28/exclamation-marks-why-do-women-use-them-three-times-as-much-as-men  London Evening Standard: https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/exclamation-marks-female-gender-norms-punctuation-b1255212.html  Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2025/09/dont-overthink-your-use-of-exclamation-points  Deborah Cameron’s blog: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2025/11/06/enough-already-punctuation-silly-women-and-soundbite-science/  We also mention Gretchen McCulloch’s thoughts on the full-stop: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49182824  Dani Yin: https://sites.google.com/view/yidan-yin  Cheryl Wakslak: https://www.marshall.usc.edu/personnel/cheryl-jan-wakslak  And then in our Lang in the News segment, Lisa, Jacky and Dan discuss more media tales of the woes of inclusive language and discuss some of these stories:  ‘Man the phones’ is offensive, insurers told Trade body accused of ‘pandering to woke dogma’ after issuing language guide advising against use of everyday terms http://archive.today/dLoSb  Health trust breached equality commitments over gender neutral language https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wvrl084g7o  Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana 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

    1h 1m

  6. 10/27/2025

    Episode 75 - Teachers' Accents special

    Welcome back to Lexis. This is episode 75 and it’s a bumper edition. We pick up on a recent survey of teachers by Teacher Tapp about teachers’ accents and run with it… We talk to teacher, Arun Sharma about his experiences, we interview Alex Baratta, Amanda Cole and Rob Drummond and we discuss the survey results in more detail and cover some other stories about accents in the news.  Teacher Tapp’s blog about this: https://teachertapp.com/articles/how-teachers-feel-about-their-accents/  Teacher Tapp: https://teachertapp.com/  The stories we discuss in Lang in the News: http://archive.today/2025.09.23-223722/https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/sex-relationships/article/it-only-took-a-term-at-oxford-for-my-grimsby-accent-to-go-posh-z52g9pqfh  https://archive.ph/2025.10.05-173953/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/why-actors-are-ditching-queens-english-for-their-old-regional-accents-rtr29rcdt  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv638r2dglo?app-referrer=deep-link Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana 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

    1h 22m

  7. 06/12/2025

    Episode 74 - Laura Smith-Khan and the language of law

    Welcome to Episode 74 of Lexis. Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Laura Smith-Khan, Senior Lecturer - School of Law, University of New England, Australia about… How she got into the linguistics of law Where and how law and language overlap Clarity, accuracy and the power dynamics in legal language Migration, borders, refugees and the law Assessing ‘credibility’ and some of the processes of refugee law Critically assessing media discourses around migration Laura Smith-Khan’s university profile: https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/law/Dr-Laura-Smith-Khan_Profile Laura is part of the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Research Network - more here: Law and Language – Sharing research, news and events related to law and language as well as the Language on the Move research group - blog and podcast https://www.languageonthemove.com/author/laura/  Some of the studies and research mentioned in the show: Legal literacy in a linguistically diverse society – Language on the Move  Learning to speak like a lawyer – Language on the Move Trust and suspicion at the airport – Language on the Move Refugee credibility assessment and the vanishing interpreter – Language on the Move   The post we discussed about judges, clarity and distance: How Judges Think About Language – Language on the Move   The Bluey episode mentioned is Bluey Season 3, Episode 49 | The Sign and the episode’s impact on people looking up road rules received attention from the QLD government and the media, eg What are the rules around children sitting in the front seat of a car? And is it safe? - ABC News   Reading Challenges with lists of recommended books (2025 has yearly links back to 2018): Language on the Move Reading Challenge 2025 – Language on the Move   Category – Language on the Move (posts organized by topic) Authors – Language on the Move (full list of contributors, each with a short bio and link to posts)   Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana 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

    44 min

  8. 06/07/2025

    Episode 73 - York English Language Toolkit preview 2025

    Welcome to Episode 73 of Lexis. Dan talks to Sam Hellmuth, Catherine Laing, Lauren Harrington and Salina Cuddy about the forthcoming York English Language Toolkit event for A Level English Language teachers.  You can sign up here:  https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops  Previous workshops and case studies are here:  https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies  Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana 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

    27 min
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About

A podcast about language and linguistics for A Level English Language students, teachers and anyone else who's interested in language.

Information

  • Creator
    lexispodcast
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    80
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © lexispodcast
  • Show Website
    Lexis

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