Registration open for free upcoming event: “Language matters: communication, culture and society”

CASS is excited to announce an upcoming event at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester on Thursday 12th November from 4pm-9pm.

“Language matters: communication, culture and society” is a mini-series of four informal talks showcasing the impact of language on society. The timely themes will be presented in an approachable manner that will be accessible to a general audience, stimulating to novice language researchers, and interesting to social scientists. Topics include hate speech, myths about impoliteness, and online aggression. Each talk incorporates an element of social science research beyond linguistics and we will take this opportunity to emphasise the importance of interdisciplinary work.

Afterwards, the audience will be invited to a drinks reception, during which they will have the opportunity to engage further with speakers and to network with guests.

In a single event, participants will have the opportunity to hear renowned scholars talk about their lives, their work, and what they find most interesting about the relationship between language and society. Talks are short, energetic, and pitched for a general audience.

Speakers

  • “Impoliteness: The language of offence” – Jonathan Culpeper
  • “Vile Words. What is the case for criminalizing everyday hate speech as hate crime?” – Paul Iganski
  • “The ethics of investigating online aggression: where does ‘virtual’ end and ‘reality’ begin?” – Claire Hardaker
  • “Spoken English in UK society” – Robbie Love

This free event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2015. Please register online to book your place.

For a taste of what’s in store, please see this video recap of a similar event held in London last year. For more information, please visit the ESRC website.

New CASS Briefing now available – Analysing narratives in the Corporate Financial Information Environment

cassnarrative-briefingAnalysing narratives in the Corporate Financial Information Environment. Transparent and effective communication between firms and the investment community is a key determinant of corporate success. Audited financial statements and associated narrative disclosures are among the main methods that firms use to communicate with investors and analysts. These disclosures combine with information from financial journalists and other market commentators to form the Corporate Financial Information Environment (CFIE). While a considerable body of work exists on financial narratives, research has been limited by the methods used for measuring the characteristics and quality of such disclosures. In particular, the need to hand-collect relevant data from firms’ annual reports and the subjectivity of textual scoring based on manual methods has restricted progress. Recent advances in computational and corpus linguistics provide a basis for undertaking more sophisticated analyses.


New resources are being added regularly to the new CASS: Briefings tab above, so check back soon.