Local dialect advertising #Bolton #GreaterManchester #Lancashire

Don’t worry. I spoke to BBC Newsround and said everything was fine 😁

Huge improvement to the 100ml rule

"Holliday...was running a marathon recently, some kids were holding a sign at 6.7-miles...she yelled “six, seven” to their delight. “For a brief moment” she says, “in our lonely, isolated, algorithm-driven world, I connected with those kids on something we shared" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A good thing, surely? Nonce will always remain an awkward example of UK English homonymy

In my latest blog post I delve into the implication of Trump's Compact on the field of educational linguistics--and it is not pretty. Why Trump’s Compact Poses an Existential Threat to Educational Linguistics educationallinguist.wordpress.com/2025/10/27/w...

Manchester, from Bolton.

Meet Patty, today’s editorial assistant

Italian blasphemy and German ingenuity: how swear words differ around the world www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

1998. Before singular 'they' came bursting onto the scene in.... oh... 14th C.

📖 Happy World Novel Week 2025! 👀 Butteries and wagger-pagger-baggers - read Katie Wales on Charles Dickens and university cant: babelzine.co.uk/wp-content/u...

So interesting! I’ve always wanted to look into the visual aspect of accents. ‘Different accents look different' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Worker sacked for mocking Irish accent unfairly dismissed www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Good to see a classic Traitors ‘yourself’ last night. First of the series I believe.

A brilliant night in Manchester with @threebeansaladpod.bsky.social!

As a new dog owner, I have to say that nothing prepared me for how committed dog-related businesses are to dog-related puns. They really commit.

A very narrow view of the English language! www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

EMC CPD Face to Face: Starting to Teach A Level English Language "I would strongly recommend it to all teachers of A Level English Language whether new to teaching the course or experienced teachers in need of new ideas and prompts." Book by: 8am on 2nd October buff.ly/fLPFvtl

Manchester, from Bolton

Exciting news: I've got a 3-page article on the Grasmere Dialect Plays in the Oct 2025 issue of 'Cumbria Life' magazine! Really hoping this will bring them to a wider audience @drpennybradshaw.bsky.social @countrystride.bsky.social For more on the Plays, head over to @grasdialectplays.bsky.social

The start of a new academic year. Seems like a good time to remind students and teachers who are looking at spoken language and identity for the first time that this is available and very accessible! In all the usual places. Please leave a review if you can😁

Sometimes it depresses me how little impact decades of the study of sociolinguistic variation and change has had on other areas of the language sciences (I get the same feeling about gesture studies), but I didn't even realise that this idea was prevalent in some areas of my own field!

1/4 Another recent language favourite comes from the really quite wonderful Dr. Rob Drummond. The book is focused on, well, how we 'talk'. Do you have an accent? Does it make you sound educated, powerful, or perhaps a bit dim and poor.

“Westminster isn’t kind to people with accents”

So was that! 😊

That was good

That was good

The irony, of course, is that the “phonetic way to say umami” is [umami].

A lovely walk up Winter Hill this morning☀️ #Bolton

Loved this episode of Cautionary Tales. A re-evaluation of ‘world’s worst poet’ and performer William McGonagall! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/c...

Morning

After a frantic few weeks pulling the last bits together, this book manuscript has just been submitted to the publisher 😅

If you extend a deadline by 6 months, but then deliver 3 weeks before the 6 months is up, that’s still ahead of schedule, right?

We've just advertised a 12-month research fellowship at Northumbria (a corpus-based diachronic project on words for 'yes' and 'no' in European languages) Please share with anybody you know who might be interested work4.northumbria.ac.uk#en/sites/CX_... #linguistics #research #postdoc

Meaningful linguistic typos: Diphthing: an indeterminate diphthong.

This morning The Guardian has thrown its weight behind the campaign for oracy education. This is an important moment for the oracy movement. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

BBC commentators seeing how many different ways they can pronounce Salma Paralluelo in the course of one game #ENGSPA

Fascinating and concerning www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Just seen a guy wearing a t-shirt that says: “Some men are born targets, others are born weapons” Is it just me or…..? 😂 Maybe just a UK issue? 🤔

A perfect pun for those UK speakers who have [bu:k] for ‘book’ (it’s a hotel that is apparently themed around books and flowers)

Shiny Franz Kafka

Today I learned that ‘wig’ is short for ‘periwig’ 🧐

Today’s sockwear

My first journal article 'Publishing the North: Bias, Diversity and the North–South Divide in the UK Book Industry' out now in Publishing Research Quarterly. It's open access, anyone can read it, and I think if you work in the UK book industry you really should. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

“It should arrive by dinner time tomorrow.” I’ve lived in the north of England for over 25 years and I’m still not certain what time this is 🤷🏻‍♂️

A penguin joke that relies on two phonetic features: th-fronting and non-rhoticity!

I’m waiting to give a plenary, and the session before me is a group of primary school kids from Spennymoor talking brilliantly about accent and identity, and performing some of their own poetry! Talk about a tough act to follow 😬😬😂 I might sneak out now 🤫 #VoiceNE

Today I’m at the Voice North East Oracy Exhibition! I’ve seen worse venues! #VoiceNE