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CASS Q&A: “Part suspended” versus “Partly suspended” on the London Underground
Last month, I received an interesting email about some terms that London commuters might be very familiar with: We at London Underground currently operate the electronic service update board which indicates the real-time status of each of our lines. Most of customers are familiar and use it daily. We currently use the phrases – good service,…
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Official launch of the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science
The official opening of the £4.1 million ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) took place on Tuesday, 23 July 2013, at the start of the seventh international Corpus Linguistics 2013 conference attended by more than 300 delegates. Delegates representing dozens of universities around the world convened with civil servants to honour the past,…
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Further explorations in ‘the Muslim world’
Doing a ten minute presentation is pretty tough – you have to be equally ruthless about what you leave out and what you include. But the benefits are potentially great – if you can present an idea well in ten minutes you are pretty sure that you will have your viewer’s attention. As anybody who…
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Web of words: A short history of the troll
Over the past fortnight, various broadsheets and media outlets (see bibliography) picked up the story of my recent article, ‘“Uh…..not to be nitpicky,,,,,but…the past tense of drag is dragged, not drug.”: An overview of trolling strategies‘ (2013), which came out in the Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. Of the thousands of comments collectively posted…
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Corporate Financial Information Environment (CFIE)
The UK financial sector is a major driver of economic activity and transparent and effective financial communication is a key determinant of its success. Audited financial statements, unaudited corporate disclosures, and information signalled through corporate financial choices are the primary ways that firms communicate with capital market participants. These mechanisms, together with information from analysts,…
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Two approaches to keywords
On July 4th, 2013, I gave a presentation on keywords at a meeting of the Keywords Project at Jesus College, Cambridge University. The Keywords Project uses Raymond Williams’ concept of keywords as being socially prominent words (e.g. art, industry, media or society) that are capable of bearing interlocking, yet sometimes contradictory contemporary meanings, and the group…
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The neglected west: first-order politeness in Britain
“Teaching and Learning (Im)politeness: An International (Im)politeness Conference“, will be held at SOAS, University of London, 8-10 July. I will be giving a talk with Jim O’Driscoll (Huddersfield) on the topic below: Almost without exception, it is scholars based in “Western” locations that have introduced the ideas with pretensions to universal application which are commonly…
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‘The McGill Pain Questionnaire: A Linguist’s View’ and ‘Language and Art of Trigeminal Neuralgia’
On 29th June, I was invited to speak at the 2013 Conference of the UK Trigeminal Neuralgia Association, as part of an ongoing collaboration with Professor Joanna Zakrzewska, Facial Pain lead consultant at Eastman Dental Hospital in London. I gave two talks: ‘The McGill Pain Questionnaire: A Linguist’s View’ and ‘Language and Art of Trigeminal…
CASS Briefings
CASS: Briefings is a series of short, quick reads on the work being done at the ESRC/CASS research centre at Lancaster University, UK.