Views of Loughrigg Tarn on a low level walk.

Light Up Lancaster - spectacular.

New paper: delighted that this paper should be published while I happen to be at the multimodality conference in Groningen: doi.org/10.1177/0957...

Very excited to be arriving in Groningen for the International Conference on Multimodality. Such an amazing looking program. sites.google.com/rug.nl/12icom

Our study of Trump’s shrugging gestures features in the PsyPost with a nice summary from Eric Dolan: www.psypost.org/what-scienti...

Autumn colours in one of the many quads on campus.

New paper out in Visual Communication with Steve Strudwick (open access). Taking a stance through stance: The forms and functions of shrugs in the spoken discourse of Donald Trump. doi.org/10.1177/1470...

Incredible temperature inversion seen from the top of Fairfield.

Views from the Fairfield horseshoe on a lovely autumn day.

It’s been a while since I posted a pic of this fabulous boy so here he is today. Milo the cat.

The CfA for the @cadaad2026.bsky.social conference at @uva-es.bsky.social is now open! The conference theme is "Beyond Physical and Symbolic Spaces: Methods and Challenges in Critical Discourse Studies." Dates: 8-10 July For more details on the conference: www.cadaad2026.com/138021/detai...

Two reviews in two days! Language, Image, Gesture: The Cognitive Semiotics of Politics reviewed by Lili Gui and Shaohua Wang in the Journal of Language and Politics: www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

Thanks to Matthew Voice for this lovely review of Language, Image, Gesture just out in Discourse & Society. Captures perfectly what I was trying to achieve in the book. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Attention young linguists! @BabelZine.bsky.social is running their 11th-annual Young Writer’s Competition! If you’d like to get your writing published in Babel and win a free year’s subscription, consider submitting your work! Submission details below.

New linguistics meme dropped

If you're interested in sociolinguistics, mining communities, and can speak German, this will be fascinating and is a great opportunity: vacancies.ntu.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Stunning colours on Place Fell today as autumn dawns.

Save the date! We'll be hosting an A Level English Language Student Conference at Friends House, London, on 27th November! Booking opens 17th September, and keep an eye on our website for more details: buff.ly/Xka0Qu9

Which newspapers get talked about in UK parliament debates you (didn't) ask? Well, these ones. The Times is consistently top, Financial Times also quite consistently relevant. The Daily Mail decreasingly so. Data from www.clarin.si/ske/#open

🚨 CfP open! ❓Are you a young researcher in Cognitive Linguistics? ➡️Present your work at the "4th International Conference for Young Researchers in Cognitive Linguistics", hosted by @uco.es online. 📝Deadline: Sept 1, 2025 🎤Four plenary speakers 🗓️Dec 10-12, 2025 eventos.uco.es/132298/detai...

Needed to take my daughter into work for a short time today so while there our amazing @phoneticslab.bsky.social let her ultrasound her tongue! She thought it was very, very cool.

Turned off the England-Sweden match last night around 65 minutes! What a terrible mistake! 🤦‍♂️

Loving the ‘catch box’ mic at #cl2025. Hoping to see some impressive lobs to back of the hall!

Made it to sunny Aston for #cl2025

On route to #cl2025 to talk about multimodal corpora and the representation of migration on tv news. Usual difficulties with the trains but looking forward to the conference when I get there!

Huge congratulations to my amazing student Makarena Julios Costa who passed her viva today with just one correction to make. Thanks to her wonderful examiners @elenasemino.bsky.social and Sam Bennett for an engaging conversation.

Once a year we take our @lancslinguistics.bsky.social MA students for a trip to the Lakes that involves a little hiking, a little climbing, a little caving and a little ice cream. Once again we were incredibly lucky with the weather and everyone had a great day out and a day off from dissertations.

The Boss at Anfield last night was breathtaking. Three solid hours packed full of songs I’ve been played since a kid and have continued to love and play over and over again for 35 years. A set that moved between poignant and emotional and belting rock anthems.

There is no way Kier Starmer’s speech writers, in crafting a speech signalling a major shift to the right on immigration, would be insensitive to historical context inc. Powell. The term ‘strangers’ has a long and checkered past in exclusionary discourses. See www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...

We had a super day yesterday at the @lancslinguistics.bsky.social Research Colloquium with colleagues sharing a diverse range of research conducted in connection with Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster.

In Rzeszów ahead of the Culture and Cognition in Language (CCL) conference. A very pretty and laid back city.

My little boy (4yo) has been learning about science and describes each individual discipline as a “scient” and it’s very cute.

Views of Ullswater on a glorious day!

Stunning views from the Lakes. Ullswater and Grisedale Tarn from Arnison Crag and Saint Sunday Crag.

#notjustuk but from Norway, well, I would have expected better.

A walk around the circumference of Derwent water with high fells best avoided on a very windy day.

Views from the top of Holme Fell, looking across to the Langdale Pikes and down on Coniston Water.

Amazing views today around Arnside. Such a beautiful unspoiled place.

Some of the excellent presentations my MA CDA class gave today outlining their projects! Such interesting topics and approaches. 1/2

The amazing landscape around Malham today, inc. Malham Cove and Goredale Scar.

The hard copies of my book arrived today. It never stops being a wonderful thing to hold and feel a book you wrote.

Introducing the new PCE element of the REF: Poisoning and Corrupting through Education.

This poster from Labour is horrendous. It echoes (some of the many) low moments of the Tory party driving vans round cities with “Go Home” posters on them. Semiotically, the silhouette figures do a lot of work including erasing migrants’ corporeal identities.

My study of pointing gestures in the spoken performance of Trump has been picked by @psypost.bsky.social. You can read Eric Dolan's excellent piece on the research here: www.psypost.org/the-power-of...

I think my new book Language, Image, Gesture: The Cognitive Semiotics of Politics might (finally!) have been published. Currently only in digital format with print copies available from Feb. www.cambridge.org/core/books/l...

Some recurrent themes in the basic narrative presented in Trump’s inauguration speech. These are often realised metaphorically and/or involve appeal to myths and collective memories which are deep-seated in American culture and are highly emotionally charged and galvanising.

A great day out in full winter conditions before term starts. Old Man of Coniston.

Xmas eve publication: What's the Point of Donald Trump? Deictic Gestures in the Service of Right-Wing Populism. In Social Semiotics. Open access too! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This fellow needed a new home so we have a new addition. His name is Monty.

It’s been a very busy term for me having delivered 40 different lectures! I’m very pleased to have just finished the last one with some very kinds words from students at the end.