I have been charting the linguistic and cultural framing of emerging tech from Dolly the Sheep onwards. This week's post is about Moltbook, a social networking platform for AI agents which was a bit of a viral sensation makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/13/m... #AI #metaphor #AIMetaphorObservatory

It’s the fourteenth of February…

Job alert for translators! @wasafirimag.bsky.social is seeking a UK-based Translator in Residence working with/in Endangered Languages. Applications are due February 15 - learn more at:

Literally crazy. If the Linguistics department at @essexuni.bsky.social is at risk, then our entire field is at risk. This is incredibly short-sighted given that linguistics (with anti-immigration discourses, AI, and linguistic discrimination on the rise) is arguably needed more than ever.

Plan 2 student loan interest is unfair, says Lucy Powell Deputy Labour leader says her son is in ‘egregious’ scheme under which many graduates face repayments that allow the debt to grow www.thetimes.com/money/family...

In this week's post I finally catch up with #Moltbook in my quest to hunt for #AI #metaphors and cultural framing makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/13/m...

This is shocking. Cost of living crisis laid bare as almost half of Britons ‘have under £25 left at end of week’ Majority of UK adults forced to make difficult choices, with almost two-thirds found to be cutting back on essentials like food and heating www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

‘Passionate’

Update from suburbia…

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Our latest update to the very well-received @engmediacentre.bsky.social New Directions pack is now available! Written by Amanda Cole of University of Cambridge & me, it features 5 new summaries and Q&As, along with an updated glossary. Download it here: www.englishandmedia.co.uk/publications...

A reminder of one of the loveliest pairs of siblings in the dictionary: ‘muscle’ and ‘mouse’. To the Roman imagination, the flexed biceps of a (typically naked) athlete resembled a rodent scuttling under the skin. ‘Musculus’, in Latin, means ‘little mouse’.

Includes a chapter by the @mantrap.bsky.social team on using #corpus linguistics to address the effects of manosphere language

Dusk…

The post on "platty joobs" slang cites (and may be of interest to) @darach.bsky.social, @maddysherratt.bsky.social, @tonythorne007.bsky.social, @christianilbury.bsky.social, @anghyflawn.net, @mscaitlinmoran.bsky.social, @gretchenmcculloch.com, @drwhen.bsky.social, and others.

Been saying the EU target should be "2 languages (English plus)" forever. Spaniards sometimes say they can't make room to teach Catalan or Galician or Basque to Castilian-speakers because their English is so poor. Wrong! Good language learning culture benefits all.

This of course could have been resolved ages ago if Starmer had bothered to appoint a Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

Did one! Not listed and should be? Let me know 🙂 go.bsky.app/AT6KX6X

Fake and AI generated 'experts' are being quoted in articles in the UK press. "Out of a sample of 250 expert-quoting articles published in The Sun, Daily Express, Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Star in 2025 and late 2024, 28 experts do not exist". pressgazette.co.uk/news/faces-o...

The verb ‘to worry’ has surprising family members. Within Germanic, it’s related to German ‘würgen’ and Dutch ‘wurgen’, which mean “to strangle”. A little further down the family line, they’re related to Latin ‘urgēre’ (to press), which gave English ‘urgent’. Click my new graphic to learn more:

📣Calling teachers of #French in all education sectors in Scotland! Sign up for the online launch of our Teachers of French in Scotland association, aka TOFIS on 23 Feb at 4.15: https://loom.ly/q3sz-VA#French PS - you'll want to save the date for our next Future of French en Écosse forum too!

🔐 My paper "Semantics and pragmatics in Construction Grammar” is now Open Access! It challenges the blurred lines between semantics and pragmatics in CxG, advocating for clearer distinctions to enhance our understanding of linguistic constructions. 🔗 Read it here: doi.org/10.1075/bjl....

Word of the Day (it was used of Farage's latest promotion of weaponised nostalgia yesterday): 'boomerslop'...https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ai-vibes-app-videos-trump-slop-boomer-2025-11

Jobs: General Linguistics, Phonetics: Lecturer in Linguistics (Teaching & Scholarship), Queen Mary University of London

Advanced notice 👇 The 18th Biennial Conference of the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics (IAFLL 2027) will be held in Porto, Portugal, 12-16 July 2027 hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. #ForensicLinguistics

Feb emagazine is now online and the print issue will be in schools in the next couple of weeks. It's chocabloc with great pieces. In this thread I'll give a taster of some of them. If you've not yet subscribed or re-subscribed, it's not too late! 🧵 1/ englishandmedia.co.uk/emc-magazines/

Much maligned - and wrongly so...https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/09/gordon-brown-by-james-macintyre-review-a-very-different-kind-of-politician?CMP=share_btn_url

Here's the abstract for my talk in two weeks at Columbia U's linguistics department on profanity and what it's good for. It will be, as always, very fun.

Chi ha scritto questo titolo non conosce il significato della parola BANDO in italiano. Presumo sia una traduzione dell'inglese BAN, ma sono #falsiamici. Dettagli: www.terminologiaetc.it/2017/06/27/f...

My WORD OF THE WEEK for the coming week is ‘weary’ (not bc I’m exhausted, haha 🤭 but bc it popped up in Richardson’s PAMELA which we’re reading with the second years & it made me think of its etymology in Old English, ‘werig’ and Grendel limping back to the mere ‘werigmod’, weary in spirit).

Apart from everything else I think the word ‘loser’ is only ever used by the very worst people in the English-speaking world (it is borrowed by French and German speakers too, sometimes ironically, sometimes not)

the miniature therapy horses that do hospital visits have little sneakers that they wear inside so they don't scuff up the floors

📜 From Old Books, 19th Century "Your image never fades from my heart, Even if valleys lie between us. For you, I have sown the seed of love in my heart; Harvest it each year until my death."

And so much of this is culturally determined. How Sweden survives without small talk. youtu.be/_JrfZH3VZSI?...

Are you an early career researcher interested in communicating linguistics to broader audiences? Consider applying for a @lingcomm.org grant! Deadline April 30, via @lingthusiasm.com lingcomm.org/grants/

A particularly fun one. Thank you Yoïn!

VENUE, un anglicismo* sotto osservazione: www.terminologiaetc.it/2026/02/07/s... *superfluo!

Please stop using substack

The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Austria, invites applicants for the position of Rector. This is an exceptional opportunity to lead a renowned institution dedicated to the humanities and social sciences. www.iwm.at/news/the-iwm...

This is bleak: Jes Staley, currently CEO of Barclays, reassuring Epstein that popular revolt against financial elites is unlikely because capitalism and pop culture have defanged social movements, leaving people more invested in consumption than justice.

YOU SIGNATURE MATTERS! Help us save Modern Languages at Leicester. Sign the petition: www.change.org/p/save-moder...

this is just good manners, we went to it last time

In other news…….its still February

Why are the men’s names redacted and the victims names exposed?

Why Some Messages Are More Convincing Than Others; UC San Diego research shows how marketers can choose specific words to boost confidence in a brand’s claim

As a slight distraction here are some young deer and egrets braving the incessant rain…

Yes, quite. It's the biggest scandal of this administration, so far, probably. It's an average Tuesday under Johnson.

‘Briefcases’