I well understand that different cultures have different ways of conveying and processing information, but there are limits, right? Humans have human brains. So, when I see a Japanese presentation with slides covered in 45 text boxes with text in fonts as small as 8 point, I can say: THIS IS BAD.

Today is #nationallinguisticsday! To celebrate, here is a great talk from from our late colleague Professor Michael Hoey at IATEFL 2014, on lexical priming. One example of how our dept. applies linguistics to English language research. Enjoy! @sotauol.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlp5...

Under the current University funding model international students are one of the few aspects of HE that actually makes money (most home tuition and research is loss making- yes it's more complicated than that). It's simply false to pretend international students take places from home students. 1/2

@aishiterutokyo.bsky.social I assume this means Japanese subscribers won't be able to watch all the Japanese players out in Belgium now?

www.podbean.com/ew/pb-dvscn-... Delighted to share this podcast that I recorded with Prof. Susan Hunston, expert in #corpuslinguistics, English grammar, and former senior grammarian. We talked about the paper “Coming to Terms with Success” (1/3)

This is an interesting article from the 'other' perspective regarding pro football/uni. If he was in Japan, it would be natural to go to uni and start his pro career at 22. At Oxford, he might be graduating at 21. Not too late to continue after? www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Ian showing his age, again.

What a quite archaic thing to write in 2025. One of those daughters may never get married. And even if they do, they might keep their maiden name. AND even if the current owners had sons, they might not want to work in the family business anyway!

Akita Prefecture has Japan's most aged population, lowest birthrate and fastest declining population. Rigid gender roles are prompting young women to leave rural areas like this for opportunities elsewhere.

In our latest blog piece, Gareth Mulvey argues that it is British elites who most stubbornly refuse to integrate. www.gla.ac.uk/schools/soci...

A worthy petition as the University of Nottingham plans to cut Modern Languages courses. c.org/GLtQhR49jV

Words & Actions podcast alert: @linguadigitalis.bsky.social, Matt Drury and I have recorded the first episode in a six-part series "The language of...". First up: language of emotion. To follow: the language of food, waste, nature, music and water. wordsandactionspodcast.wordpress.com

Members of the Ground Self-Defense Force were dispatched to Akita Prefecture to assist with bear control as the number of attacks and subsequent fatalities continue to rise in Japan. 👉 ebx.sh/BN9fcL

Long but inspirational speech. Many, many metaphors featured. 😅 A few light metaphors caught. youtu.be/R6ocK3AZ24U

New Date Announced: We’re delighted to announce that Teun A. van Dijk (Centre of Discourse Studies, Barcelona) will now be joining us on Tuesday 11th November, 1–2pm (UK time) for his talk: Title: Discourse and Ideologies of the Radical Right Location: MS Teams Online link: lnkd.in/eAXSgT6r

Working on metaphors in political speech right now and the 'history will/won't...' metaphor is an interesting one. First of all, who/what is history? Secondly, surely it is future generations that won't forgive us (the history)? I guess it comes from 'the history books won't be kind' metaphor...

📚 Lexical Priming: Evolution, Evaluation and Applications to English and Japanese is out now! In it, we build on and expand Hoey’s LP theory by applying it to specific varieties of Japanese and English, as represented in corpora 🔗 You can find it here doi.org/10.4324/9781... & more details below👇

The Mainichi has an English article on the incident yesterday morning, when a bear broke into a high school gym in Yamagata, had a bit of a frolic, then left. mainichi.jp/english/arti...

Another update to the fall-spring transition plans (h/t @rbyryo.bsky.social) - of the ¥10.8 billion the league has set aside for the transition, ¥5 billion ($32.9m) will be used as subsidies for northern clubs to buy cold-weather equipment such as air domes, heating systems and pitch covers.

This week’s Literary Linguistics seminar on metaphor features this seasonal absolute paranoid cracker by Hugh Sykes Davies (1936)

Please read our statement, share it with your networks, and support us if you can. www.python.org/sponsors/app... psfmember.org/civicrm/cont...

Akita is considering asking for the deployment of Self-Defense Forces troops following a spate of bear attacks across the prefecture.

Bear attack survival tips released in Japan as encounters surge

Akita City Surroundings, Japan #Japan #Nippon

@mynameisjef.bsky.social Kawano starting at CB against his old club. May the best team (not) win! 😅

NEW POD RELEASE (GENERAL) This week’s JTET (40 mins) is now live on the free @jtalkpod.bsky.social PodBean feed! - Full J2 Round 33 review - Chat section with @mynameisjef.bsky.social focusing on Mito v JEF Chiba - Regular MBP & weekend preview segments jtalkpod.podbean.com/e/jtet-j2-ro...

We have just rejected our first submission where the use of Gen-AI to rewrite the article was acknowledged. Given the way that they commandeer public water resources and contribute to climate collapse, we do not think that there is an ethical way to use such tools.

Join us for our next LIP talk We are delighted to welcome Teun A. van Dijk (Centre of Discourse Studies, Barcelona) for the third talk of the term. Title: Discourse and Ideologies of the Radical Right Date & Time: Tuesday 28th October, 1-2pm (UK time) Location: MS Teams Online link: lnkd.in/eyvGGc7G

Sumo wrestling at the Royal Albert Hall – picture essay

As the familiar refrain of learning English = greater integration, I thought of Dr Sundus Ameer's well-researched study on this, which shows it is not so simple. I am biased as I was the supervisor! Read the whole thesis here: share.google/tYLWZ710rbQo...

The new 2025 online edition of @letrasumu.bsky.social Corpus linguistics & applied linguistics research series is happening during November. Our first speakers will be Dr. Lisa Cheung & Dr Peter Crosthwaite Nov 3, 11:00 (Madrid) 17:00 (Hong Kong).

my gen AI teaching statement

My new Open Access article in Discourse and Society with Rickey Lu: Holistic, nurturing and sustainable: Discursive shift in corporate social responsibility reporting. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

@aizuyabanjin.bsky.social, I have a retirement project for you! 😅

This week, I take a look at our new book published with Candlin & Mynard. Many thanks to my co-editor, Matt Wilson, for always keeping it positive, all the authors for their amazing patience, and Jo Mynard for her support in the publication process. sielpabooks.com/blog/f/publi...

How good are LLMs at identifying and tagging metaphors in text? Turns out, pretty good! In our new study, we ask 10 different open- and closed-source LLMs to label all metaphorical expressions in a dataset of film reviews using <Metaphor> and </Metaphor> XML tags. arxiv.org/abs/2509.24866

"Employing multiple case study methods, Ferguson colorfully illustrates and critically examines how social structure, power and ideologies shape policy implementation, focusing on English education in Japanese elementary schools." buff.ly/5QtmXlr

American Psychiatrist Association Statement on White House Announcement on Autism

Featuring a few items available in my print store this week. There's been a fair bit going on during summer but, honestly, I could use a little boost financially right now. So, reposts of the print store posts are welcome. Many thanks. japanorama.darkroom.com/products/124...

🚨New article published! 🟦C. Gardam et al. analyse how conspiracy theories are spread on denial communities. 🟦They draw on a corpus of Instagram posts & propose a visual-first #methodology 🟦They prove the intertextual intermodal nature of posts. 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New Word of Mouth podcast with @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social and @jessaiston.bsky.social on language and the ‘manosphere’ www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... #linguistics

Congratulations to my colleagues @elenasemino.bsky.social @chrishartlinguist.bsky.social @vaclavbrezina.bsky.social @juditkormos.bsky.social @jculpeper.bsky.social @paulari.bsky.social Alison Mackey & Jason Rothman for being in the Stanford/Elsevier top 2% of scientists list. I’m in good company!

This week's blog post takes a sneak preview to an upcoming chapter on TBLT and student motivation. sielpabooks.com/blog/f/first...

***RESEARCH PAPER OUT NOW*** “I agree with this”: A multi-modal register analysis of lexical bundles in the ICNALE by Trevor Sitler (Kansai University) and Martin Spivey (Akita University) icr.or.kr/apjcr_2025_6... #learnercorpus #corpuslinguistics #JapanEFL #ICNALE

秋田駅前広場で「秋のビアフェス」　12年続くビール祭が名称改め開催へ ↓ akita.keizai.biz/headline/4000/ #クラフトビール #ビアフェス #秋田県 #秋田市 #秋田 #Akita #Akitacity

In this week's blog, I take a look at a new book that will be published by SielpA Books this coming November. sielpabooks.com/blog/f/intro...

After our very succesful Corpus Linguistics 2025 conference hosted by @robbielove.org at Aston, CL is going on tour! Our next conference will be Easter 2027 in Hong Kong at HK Poly U. In summer 2029 we return to Europe when @michamahlberg.bsky.social will host CL at Erlangen!

I feel this is a bit misleading. The concept of 'shrinkflation' has existed in Japan for a few years now and has certainly been happening over the past decade or so. What IS new is that consumers now face rising prices on top so face a double whammy.

OUT NOW: Alan Partington and @diegolieugenia.bsky.social advance Lexical Priming (LP) theory, responding to Michael Hoey's desire that the theory be tested on discourse types that go beyond newspaper texts and in languages other than English – in this instance, Japanese. doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Corpus linguistics for safeguarding children online 🔓 Out now with @crkennedy.bsky.social as part of a special issue on Corpus linguistic approaches to tackling online crime edited by the brilliant @wrightdw.bsky.social @livunienglish.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...