Australians aren’t well known for their articulation. From Kath and Kim to Kylie Mole, we’re the first to poke fun at our poor speech habits. But are our word choices reflecting badly on our common or…
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Articles on Language
Displaying 621 - 640 of 709 articles
Interpreting the Bible is a tricky business at the best of times. Those encountering nativity plays or Hollywood epics such as Exodus: Gods and Kings will no doubt spot errors, ranging from innocent inaccuracies…
Being able to communicate effectively in a foreign language is a challenge faced by many of us. If you’re a newcomer to a country, conveying a message in a language that is not your mother tongue is often…
A proposal in Germany to make all migrants speak German in public and at home has ignited a heated debate about immigration and language. The proposals come from the German Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU…
How robust are languages learned in childhood but disused later in life? A new study by researchers at McGill University and the University of Montreal has found that the forgotten birth language of adoptees…
Selfies were so 2013. But vaping’s in: Oxford Dictionaries have announced vape as its international Word of the Year 2014. The runners up are bae, budtender, contactless, indyref, normcore and slacktivism…
A year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a postmortem of the media coverage of the so-called “Iraq war”. The conference included academics, journalists…
It has become commonplace to hear that English is now a sort of “global” language, or lingua franca. Although this might be partly true, is it right to draw the conclusion that native speakers of English…
According to Hansard, in the parliament of John Howard’s first term of government the adjective “medieval” was used eight times. In the following term, however, it cropped up 46 times. What happened? Why…
The shortage of foreign language skills in the UK is now a permanent preoccupation, with some sources placing the estimated cost of the deficit as high as £48 billion a year. Britons are now seen as a…
A little item buried on the inside pages of newspapers recently caused a small stir. Latin plant names, it was claimed, were “in danger of dying out”, following a decision by the International Botanical…
A few years back, an honours student in linguistics at Macquarie University did a small study of American presidential oratory. The student chose four speeches, in which four different American presidents…
It may take a budding Latina tween with warm dark eyes and undaunted courage to ready America’s children for our multicultural future. After dominating children’s television for a decade the heroine most…
Writer Will Self grabbed headlines earlier this week by referring to George Orwell as the “Supreme Mediocrity”. He wrote: The curious thing is that while during the post-war period we’ve had many political…
Listicle: an article made up of lists. This may be regarded as [Bare](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/bare#bare21) lazy as it obviates the need for coherent paragraphs, or as Douchebaggery…
Yelp.com reviews use fancier words to describe expensive restaurants, compare unhealthy food to crack and describe poor customer…
Transgender and gender non-conforming lives are becoming increasingly visible. Debate about the lives and legitimacy of trans people is being conducted in the most mainstream of media outlets: Time magazine…
There has been a bit of a kerfuffle down at the village hall. Has the vicar cheated in the beetle drive again? Or has Miss Perkins’s fabled home-made jam turned out to be Hartley’s? Worse still, I’m afraid…
While sometimes I teem with opinions jostling to be exercised over the page, at other times I’m drawn into meditation, where my engagement with the happenings, and the actual materiality, of fashion loosens…
As part of its revamp of the A Level curriculum, the government has launched a consultation on the way modern languages are taught at sixth form. If introduced, the changes herald a real boost to the teaching…
Top contributors
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Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University
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Professor of Linguistics, Monash University
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Course coordinator, The University of Queensland
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Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology, University of Memphis
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Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford
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Professor of Linguistics, University of York
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Associate Professor in Linguistics, Macquarie University
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Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of Canberra
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Professor of Linguistics and English, Florida International University
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Professor of African Language Studies, University of the Western Cape
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Postdoctoral research fellow (Forensic Linguistics/ Language and Law), University of the Western Cape
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Professor, Charles Darwin University
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Professor of Communication and Journalism, Texas A&M University
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Director, Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, University of Pittsburgh
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Professor of Linguistics
