12/03/2012

Do Washingtonians share a particular way of speaking?  Is there such a thing as a specifically D.C.

11/28/2012

A looming crisis for newspaper editors has been averted.

11/28/2012

A looming crisis for newspaper editors has been averted. Webster’s New World Dictionary is in safe hands again.  Read more ...

11/26/2012

This Language Log posting for discusses several different hypotheses about how English grammar might have changed to allow Isis and Wasis into the pantheon of grammaticality. Read more ...

11/20/2012

The Voices of California Project, which includes faculty and graduate students from the linguistics and anthropology departments, is focused on understanding how English is developing and changing in the state and documenting it for future generations. 

11/15/2012

Montreal is a linguistic kaleidoscope, with its own regional blend of English and French words. Just as there are anglicisms, Montreal anglos use French words in regular speech. The Montreal Gazette has an online survey that they hope will help us document this mélange.

11/13/2012

Linguist and LSA member K.

11/08/2012

Somewhere between Sheffield and Chesterfield, people stop saying house and say something that sounds a lot more like 'arse. It's an isogloss, a kind of linguistic boundary line where accent and dialect changes.

11/06/2012

New census data reveal linguistic diversity of Canada’s population.

11/05/2012

A University of Waikato-led research project which draws on the "wisdom of the elders" to improve conservation and biodiversity has won support from the prestigious Marsden Fund, New Zealand's funding for ideas-driven research.

11/01/2012

Funding for federal science programs, including linguistics research within NSF and NIH, is under threat; without further congressional action, automatic budget cuts will reduce spending on science by nine percent as of January 2, 2013.  The American Physical Society is spearheading a studen

11/01/2012

The North Carolina Language and Life Project has a booth at the the North Carolina State Fair to educate fairgoers about language and culture in the state.  The YouTube video below shows footage from the 2012 Fair.

10/31/2012

The U.S. East Coast is beginning to clean up after Hurricane Sandy.  Two articles, one by Geoffrey Pullum in Lingua Franca  and one by Mark Liberman in Language Log discuss word compounding as it relates to popular names for the storm.

10/26/2012

According to this New York Times review of David Skinner's new book, the publication of Webster's Third New International Dictionary caused significant controversy within the linguistic community when it first appeared in 1961. 

10/25/2012

The National Science Foundation has issued a call for Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS).

10/25/2012

A colour-coded graphic pinpoints the location and language of tweets sent from the British capital and shows how linguistic groups are clustered in the city's various districts.  Using an open-source website language detector

10/23/2012

A recent Language Log posting notes that two linguistics departments each claim to be the oldest department of linguistics in the United States.  Help author Geoffrey Pullum settle this question.  Read more ....

10/22/2012

University of Pennsylvania linguist and LSA member William Labov has been awarded the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science "[f]or establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-stan

10/19/2012

Just as conversational styles vary widely, so do ideas about what constitutes interruptions, and whether they are good or bad.  Read a New York Times op-ed piece by Public Relations Committee member Deborah Tannen on the October 16th Presidential Debate: 

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