A few views from a great scramble up Riggindale Ridge on a glorious day today.

Delighted that our article analysing the forms and functions of Trump’s shrug gestures has been nominated for the ICA Visual Communication Studies Division’s “Outstanding Journal Article of the Year” award. The article is published in Visual Communication: journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Just a couple more days before the submission deadline for this event.

CfP: The Language of Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives from Critical Discourse Analysis. Symposium organized at University of Warwick, UK. Submission deadline: 27th Feb. linguistlist.org/issues/37/345/

CfP: The Language of Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives from Critical Discourse Analysis. Symposium organized at University of Warwick, UK. Submission deadline: 27th Feb. linguistlist.org/issues/37/345/

Beautiful light over Ullswater on NYE. From Gowbarrow Fell.

Delighted to have contributed an article on Donald Trump’s pointing gestures to the latest issue of the amazing Babel Magazine.

Come and join us in Valladolid in July for the CADAAD conference Deadline is Monday 15th Dec.

🗣️📢LAST CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 🗣️📢 The final deadline for abstracts for CADAAD 2026 (Universidad de Valladolid) is DECEMBER 15th, 2025. There are still twelve days left for you to send your poster and presentation proposals. And remember: you'll be sad if you miss CADAAD 😉

Beautiful views from the top of Silver How on a crystal clear day today.

I did a lecture yesterday on time conceptualisation in different languages pointing to different axes and orientations of the mental timeline. A student very sensibly asked whether “reversed” mental timelines exist in any sign languages around the world. Does anybody know of any papers on this?

⌛One week left to submit panel proposals! 🗓️ And then two more to submit abstracts for papers and posters!! Do not miss the deadline... It's closing soon! #CADAAD2026 🔗 www.cadaad2026.com/138021/detai...

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.