no blood test 4 mental issue. Difficult to assess. In many practices GP does not know you (unlike family GP). What if GP refuses & gets it wrong & patient harm themselves (or worse) Hundreds of GPs tell BBC they have never refused a fit note for mental health concerns www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When Policy Starts to Sound Like Pursuit: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Restore Britain’s Deportation Paper How a 100-page (+)policy document turns migrants into a threat, the state into an instrument, and coercion into common sense linguistically.substack.com/p/when-polic...

How does a social order make its categories feel natural? Ideology works through institutions, rituals, and practices that shape how we recognise ourselves. Louis Althusser: Interpellation, Institutions, and the Language that Makes Subjects open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Hannah Arendt and Public Speech Arendt was not a linguist. But she treats speaking as a condition for political action, and she explains how totalitarian movements attack the conditions that make public speech usable at all. My latest article 👇 open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Pardon My French: why the joke works when a French person says it in Britain Linguisticsto the rescue! open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Stop @royalmailchat.bsky.social leaving our mail undelivereree. Signe the petition 38d.gs/rm_letters_df

My latest article: The Quiet Censorship of AI AI is sold as partner in thinking. But beneath this narrative lies a structural problem: AI systems routinely block, filter and refuse content based on rules that users cannot see. linguistically.substack.com/p/the-quiet-...

My article on Deborah Cameron who died a few days ago. When we argue about “correct” English, pronouns, swearing, accents, sexist language, or whether men and women “speak different languages”, we are actually living inside questions she helped formalise. open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

My latest article on Penelope Eckert ans her rôle on treating variation as social meaning, not just a variable linguistically.substack.com/p/penelope-e...

Here we go again. Trump has told the UK that if we want a UK-US tech deal, we need to buy chlorinated chicken from the US! 🤢🐔 How dare he try to impose poor food standards in Britain. Sign the petition to keep chlorine-washed chicken off our shelves: act.38degrees.org.uk/act/chlorine...

Liberation Linguistics: Language as a Site of Emancipation The words we speak, the accents we carry, the dialects we inherit are not just communicative tools but markers of identity, dignity, and belonging. Yet they are also sites of discrimination. open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

A critical discourse analysis of Steven Miller's speech at Charlie Kirk's memorial service with echoes of discursive strategies used in periods of democratic crisis, including fascist mobilisation in the twentieth century. open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Can Bourdieu still explain how language shapes inequality? My latest: Pierre Bourdieu: Promises and Problems A sociolinguistic framework that provokes more questions than answers. #Linguistics #CriticalTheory #SymbolicCapita open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

The Continuous Nature of Polysemy Traditional linguistics got polysemy wrong. Words don't have fixed multiple meanings. They exist on continuous spectrums. BERT and other AI models show how human meaning-making actually works. #linguistics #semantics #cognitivescience tinyurl.com/2h249psa

Gadamer saw understanding as dialogue, not solitude, shaped by language, history, and shared horizons. #Hermeneutics #Philosophy #Linguistics linguistically.substack.com/p/hans-georg...

Otto Jespersen shaped how we teach grammar, word order & language change, yet most linguists barely mention him. Visionary or relic? His ideas on efficiency & typology still echo today, but so do his biases. Should we reclaim his legacy or leave it buried? open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Ever fallen in love with language? This isn’t about grammar rules—it’s about the architecture of speech, the politics of words, and the poetry of "innit" open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

I just published Beyond Simple Categories Linguistics Typology reveals the boundaries of human language, what’s possible, what’s common, and what’s rare. It helps us understand both the diversity and the underlying unity of human linguistic capacity. medium.com/p/beyond-sim...

Construction Grammar challenges traditional linguistics by treating language as stored patterns rather than abstract rules. Explore this very different approach. open.substack.com/pub/linguist... #Linguistics #grammar

We are not just losing lives. We are losing the language to mourn them. Gaza. Israel. Humans first. Read my piece : “Losing Our Humanities” #Linguistics #Gaza #Israel #Philosophy #WarLanguage Losing Our Humanities... One Sentence At A Time open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Robert Stalnaker: Shaping Meaning through Context A critical analysis of Robert Stalnaker's influential work on common ground and conversational context. Does his formal framework capture how we actually communicate? #Pragmatics #PhilosophyOfLanguage open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Critical Discourse Analysis is a useful tool for linguistics to understand language beyond structure and look at it as *social practice*. Updated from the article first published in 2024. open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

He stripped linguistics down to science. No introspection. Just patterns, data, and rigour. Was he brilliant, or blind to meaning? Read more 👉 Leonard Bloomfield: Describing Language Without Meaning open.substack.com/pub/linguist... #Linguistics #Bloomfield #Language

He tried to challenge racist science, insisted every language deserved study on its own terms, and founded modern descriptive linguistics. Yet, very few have heard of him! Franz Boas: Language, Power, and the Limits of Cultural Relativism open.substack.com/pub/linguist... #linguistics #Anthropology

I am always puzzled that when I go and see my doctor he greets me with "are you well?". The clue is that i have an appointment! Just me?

I just published Why Language Keeps Cleaning Itself Up What drives "verbal hygiene", our collective impulse to ‘clean up’ language, to correct grammar, remove offensive words, or enforce ‘proper’ usage? medium.com/knowlobby/wh...

Parmenides had a radical idea: you literally cannot talk about things that don't exist. This creates chaos for modern linguistics. How do we discuss Santa Claus, Sherlock Holmes, or "what if I had wings"? New article explores this 2,500-year-old puzzle 👇 open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

It wasn’t ‘project fear’ it was project reality - The cost of Brexit is now clearer than ever.

The battle of thoughts? Continental Vs Analytical Philosophy Derrida in the right corner Vs Searle in the left corner. open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Traditional question: How did humans develop language? Better question: How did language reshape what it means to be human? The "recursive feedback model" shows language as both product AND driver of cognitive evolution open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Am i the only to think that a doctor (medical) greeting me with "are you well?" is very odd?. Were I, I wound not be having an appointment!

From Convention to Context Language works because we expect it to. David Lewis saw communication as a coordination game based on social convention—not fixed rules. open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

I was listening to the French radio this morning, for a couple of hours. This agreement between the EU and the UK was not top of the news. Nowhere to be found on the main page of Le Monde online, nor Le Figaro, nor Liberation.

Too many of our representatives do not attend Parliament. We deserve proper representation from MPs . chng.it/LxD7GcwJw8

More on #Linguistics Karl Butler. He challenged the idea that linguistics should focus purely on internal structures. Instead, he asked what language is for open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

If you studied French you were taught that the pronoun 'on' = one, or you or we or perhaps the passive voice. There is much more to this little word! open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

You can say "I'm" or "It's" but you don't say "yes, I'm!" or "yes, it's!". Find out! Read “Is It Good English ? Yes, It’s.“ by Antoine Decressac (#LinguisticallyYours) on Medium: medium.com/education-we...

The book i bought and what it actually is! What happened?!

How did Michel Foucault reshape linguistics? From discourse and power to institutional language and critique. A balanced look at his influence and its limits. #Linguistics #Foucault #DiscourseAnalysis #CriticalTheory open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

What if writing isn't just a copy of speech? What if meaning is always deferred? Explore how Derrida "shook" the foundations of linguistics Read my latest article: Derrida and the Question of Language open.substack.com/pub/linguist... #Linguistics #Philosophy #Derrida #Deconstruction

Read my article on "Ablaut Reduplication": jibber jabber, washy wishy, tik tok, zigzag, ping pong and why we just don't say pong ping or tok tik. Find out the linguistic rule we are unconsciously following medium.com/education-we...

Read my Substack "Bivalence in Language" bivalence challenges language boundaries, blending identity, politics, and meaning in multilingual communication open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

I just published Lost in Translation? Why Dialects Matter medium.com/p/lost-in-tr... Dialects reflect not only how we speak but also where we come from, who we interact with, and how we see ourselves.

I put something away, telling myself 'I know it is here for when I need it again'. Today is that day. Can't recall this 'here' I thought i'd never forget! Been looking for over an hour, turned drawers inside out. Found stuff I forgot I had kept I'll never need. Still searching!😡

After attending for many years, I canceled my trip to a conference in the U.S. due to increasing reports of foreign nationals being detained at US borders. I reflect on what's lost when bridges are broken.

Tempted to do my postgrad linguistics at the #OpenUniversity but I cannot seem to find the info I want. I contact the OU but the replies I got were not really addressing my questions. Maybe I was not clear enough. Tried Unibuddy, but have not heard back :-( Any suggestions welcome.

Vowel Hamonisation; why is geese the pluralof goose but meese is not the plural of moose? Click on the link below to read my article medium.com/education-we...

Read Bakhtin & the Battle for Meaning Bakhtin didn’t see language as a system of rules—but as a battlefield of voices. Meaning is never neutral. It’s shaped by power, history, and dialogue. Forget ideal speakers. Every utterance is a struggle. open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

That is a really pathetic excuse. So much abuse, best say nothing!!!! Christianity as it really is? BBC News - Justin Welby: I failed to act on abuse scandal as scale was 'overwhelming' www.bbc.com/news/article...