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The Spoken BNC2014 early access projects: Part 1
In January, we announced the recipients of the Spoken BNC2014 Early Access Data Grants. Over the next several months, they will use exclusive access to the first five million words of Spoken BNC2014 data to carry out a total of thirteen research projects. In this series of blogs, we are excited to share more information…
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Jonathan Culpeper talking ‘Sarcasm’ tonight on The One Show
Sarcasm is one of the phenomena that seems to have endless fascination for British people, partly because they are stereotypically associated with it. When did sarcasm first start? Is there something about British culture that makes it flourish? And what is sarcasm anyway? These are some of the questions that Gyles Brandeth of BBC 1’s…
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Rude Britannia – what our politeness says about our nation
Britain is still a nation of polite people and fears that texts, tweets and Facebook are making people ruder is a myth, according to research from Lancaster University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). The British are famous for their reserve, indirect way of saying things and a love of queuing. However, new research…
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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…
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.