I solemnly swear…
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The oath of allegiance is meaningless on several counts.
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Through characters such as Bazza McKenzie, the late comedian promoted Australian vernacular – the witty, the crude and both – to new audiences.
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A new, extensive database of language grammars from around the world indicates an alarming trend of global language loss.
Social media algorithms are programmed to swoop in and flag certain words.
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The aggressive efforts of social media platforms to police language have spawned a new lexicon meant to evade censors.
Words have meaning for people because we use them to make sense of the world.
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Large language models can’t understand language the way humans do because they can’t perceive and make sense of the world.
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Learning how online misogynists use language can help teachers and parents intervene in radicalisation.
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English is spoken by over a billion people around the world, often at the expense of local languages.
Mural with a portrait of Taras Shevchenko, Kharkiv, Ukraine, 2012.
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The language question in Ukraine goes back centuries. It is deeply rooted in the history of old empires and Ukraine’s position as the borderland between the West and the East.
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Beliefs about language are never just about language. They reflect institutional power dynamics.
Michelle Yeoh accepts the award for best performance by an actress in a leading role for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ at the Oscars on March 12, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
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Despite increasing use of non-English languages demonstrating broader acceptance of linguistic diversity in a globalized world, films sometimes suggest associations between ‘foreignness’ and villainy.
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Phrases like ‘I suppose’ and ‘I would argue’ can project a lack of confidence when speaking.
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Colloquialisms such as barbie and smoko are like accents – part of the glue that sticks Australian English speakers together.
Donald Trump supporters take over the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
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The events of Jan. 6, 2021, have been called an insurrection. The same word has often been used to describe the mostly forgotten rebellions against plantation owners by enslaved people.
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The extraordinary Chinese writing system has over 4,000 core complex characters – and they’ve been getting more complex over time.
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There’s a lot to the pronunciation of the word ‘no’ in an Australian accent.
Speech patterns.
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Many people fear the disappearance of the unique way some communities speak. But accent loss is a complicated notion and embracing both language variation and change can be an important social goal.
Descendants of the indigenous San people in the Kalahari Desert.
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The first speech sounds were uttered about 70,000 years ago and not hundreds of thousands of years ago as is sometimes claimed.
A sign encourages people to vote in Charlotte, N.C., ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.
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The use of ‘y'all’ has often been seen as vulgar, low-class and uncultured. That’s starting to change.
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Linguistic analysis shows that activists and politicians have very different messages when it comes to the environment.
Waxworks of the six actors to play James Bond at Madame Tussaud’s Hollywood.
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007 uses an English upper-class, ‘Received Pronunciation’ accent.