One of our hosts, @veronikakoller.bsky.social, switched sides and was interviewed on all things #metaphor for the @discourseacademy.org podcast "Doing Critical Discourse Analysis". Listen and find out more about the Discourse Academy here: www.discourseacademy.org

New episode of Doing CDA with @veronikakoller.bsky.social on metaphor! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/d...

There, it has happened: I have just used the word 'classroom' in an abstract. Come to think of it, I may even have used it in a recent publication. What has become of me?! 😉

**CALL FOR PAPERS: Online Discourse of Gender-Based Violence** Dates: Jan 13-15, 2027 Location: University of Picardy Jules Verne, Amiens The conference will bring together linguists working on the interplay between online discourse & gender-based violence odgbv27.sciencesconf.org/resource/pag...

New @wordsandactions.bsky.social episode on the language of food out today! Featuring interview guest Marcelyn Oostendorp, sound clips from five researchers and quite a few metaphors. Free extra materials at wordsandactionspodcast.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/e... #DigitalPalates

The past year has not been the easiest at Lancaster, but we made it through and things are looking up. And today, @lancslinguistics.bsky.social has been ranked second in the world (!) for Linguistics. I won't lie: it feels really, really good 🙂 www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/lancast...

I will present the latest @mantrap.bsky.social research at the event, on #emotion in anti-feminist YouTube videos

Due date for abstracts: 30 April If it's an incentive (and not a deterrent), I'm one of the keynote speakers

In the physics building at my university - linguistics was definitely the safe choice!

I like a bit of dry humour in a review: "In fact, one might expect that the audience for a paper on a specific construction in [small European language] is extremely small."

For all #metaphor researchers and #discourse analysts out there: Elsevier has published my chapter on metaphor and discourse analysis, part of the Int'l Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. DM me for a copy

Ep. 32 on the language of #food is now in post-production. It features not only one longer interview with Marcelyn Oostendorp (Stellenbosch U, South Africa) but also five sound clips from @instantlinguist.bsky.social, @marbagli.bsky.social, @michaelchesnut.bsky.social, Alla Tovares & Keri Metwick

An obituary of Deborah Cameron in the J of Sociolinguistics: doi.org/10.1111/josl... I never met her, but Don Kulick's writing brings her alive.

My chapter "Language in #Brexit Discourses" has been published as part of Elsevier's Reference Collection in Social Sciences (and will be part of their International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, due out in June). Happy to privately share a copy if you don't have access, just DM me.

This has been a day for podcasting so far: recording the next episode for @wordsactions.bsky.social, on language and food, in the morning, then being interviewed on metaphor and critical discourse analysis for @discourseacademy.org

Next Monday (9 March) at 3pm GMT, my student Tianxin Li will give a talk at @lancslinguistics.bsky.social, on #multimodal discourses of voluntary #childlessness on Chinese social media. The talk is in person and on Teams: shorturl.at/2Wgi8

It's the little things that get us through the everyday: one of my academic visitors saw that I had sent comments on her paper at 11pm last night. When we met in the morning, she brought coffee for both of us, assuming - rightly! - that I needed it ☕😊

Where can you - in one and the same day - give a plenary talk and be part of a working group with MA students? At the CLADES conference on critical language awareness: clades.prd.ugent.be/en

I am very proud of my Phd student Melody Yunzhu Chen, who gave a really good presentation on the metaphors used by sexual violence survivors on Reddit #clades

@jokedae.bsky.social is showing shocking data about gender bias in machine translation and #LLMs. This stuff is taking gender equality back by decades - and that's before we even talk about non-binary people. www.biasshield.org #clades

This is brilliant! I made it back to 1100, but Old English was a struggle, despite knowing German and Danish (and a degree in English).

If you teach social actor representation, today is a good day to collect examples: "Thames Valley police said: 'We have today arrested a man in his sixties from Norfolk'" #AndrewMountbattenWindsor #PrinceAndrew

Next Monday (23 Feb), I am one of the speakers at this @engmediacentre.bsky.social sixth form conference: www.englishandmedia.co.uk/conferences/... I'm looking forward to bringing #criticaldiscourseanalysis to schools!

A shout-out to @multi-ling-mat.bsky.social (and all small, independent publishers) for their openness, integrity and genuine appreciation of academic reviewers - thank you!

One of my PhD students told me today that they had attended three talks by me over the last month. That not only shows great loyalty, but also reminds me of Stefan Zweig, who, in The World of Yesterday, notes that his passion has become an enterprise.

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

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

This is happening tomorrow (10 Feb) at @liprg.bsky.social #metaphor #discourseanalysis

There, it has happened: I came across a reference to Koller (2008), for a book I did not write🤦‍♀️#hallucination

I am halfway through the #AI slop of an automatically generated grant application and I am using the will to live. Call me cranky and out of touch, but this is *not* what I signed up for when I became an academic.

Today I learned that there "humaniser" programs that reduce "AI smell" in automatically generated texts. Strange cross-modal metaphor I think, wouldn't AI "sound" be more obvious? @bnerlich.bsky.social

Will it ever end? Then again, no shortage of data, in this case for a handbook chapter on critical #metaphor analysis. @samtbennett.bsky.social Also, a reminder of this bibliography-in progress on #Brexit and language: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

In 2026, our CASS Summer Schools offer two free-to-attend courses in corpus linguistics, focused on Language, Discourse and Society, and Language Teaching, Testing and Assessment. Applications are now open! wp.lancs.ac.uk/corpussummer... #LancsSS26

Many thanks to @discoursenet.bsky.social for inviting me to their monthly London seminar to speak about analysing #emotions in social media comments. And many thanks to the 100+ audience for attending and asking thought-provoking questions! Video of my talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHSE...

Last night read a chapter of a book (Ahmed's Cultural Politics of Emotion). Not another version of a grant application, not a research proposal, not a mapping document. An actual book, on paper. It took me right back to my student days 🥲

The first part features a conversation between the editors and me. This book must have been a mammoth task and has turned out really well, so please get your library to buy it if you can.

My first(!)-year student David Wu made me very proud today: he and another first-year PhD at @lancslinguistics.bsky.social, Luke Liu, have a forthcoming paper in one of the top discourse analysis journals! I will post details on publication

I always forget during non-term time how much I like teaching - fantastic bunch of undergraduate students on "Professional 'Communication" at @lancslinguistics.bsky.social today 😊

Just a heads-up that I am giving the next talk in the @discoursenet.bsky.social monthly seminar series. Make sure to check out the rest of this year's programme as well: discourseanalysis.net/DN/seminars/...

Next Monday (12 Jan) week will start early for me, with this online seminar for postgraduate students. Feel free to share and invite your students! UK: 7-9am Central Europe: 8-10am Malaysia, China: 3-5pm

I first parsed the headline as penguins talking and got quite excited.

Always good to start the year with a publucation! This one includes a chapter by the @mantrap.bsky.social team about using corpus linguistics to address the effects of online misogyny.

Delighted that Jennifer Moreno has a forthcoming article in the J of Language and Discrimination which she worked on while visiting @lancslinguistics.bsky.social ("The Ozempic Phenomenon: Linguistic representations of weight issues in the Spanish press"). Always go for a suitable top journal first!

Reading a Christmas present ("Babel" by R.F. Kuang). It need not be Oxford, I'd take "quiet, solitude, and a serene place to think" anywhere.

If you celebrate Christmas, how do you feel about it: excited, stressed, dreading it, warm and fuzzy? For some festive listening, may I suggest theWords & Actions latest episode, on the language of emotions: wordsandactionspodcast.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/epi… See you in 2026!

Nice things to do on a Thursday morning: have an online roundtable discussion on critical discourse studies with Rodney Jones & Jan Zienkowski, courtesy of @unisouthampton.bsky.social's Linguistics department, where two of my former PhD students work 🙂 @alexiconartist.bsky.social, Lexi Webster

My MA course on discourse analysis was popular with - and hopefully useful for - visiting researchers from China this year😊

I will shortly be talking about discourses on LGBT+ rights in Europe here at 12.30pm GMT / 1.30pm CET: meet.google.com/rww-cmmp-itk I will be joined by a human rights lawyer from Taiwan for a comparative perspective and discussion. Free online event!

Advent and Christmas are times of intense #emotions, ranging from joy and gratitude to stress and anger. Take some time out this weekend with Words & Action's latest podcast episode: wordsandactionspodcast.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/e... @linguadigitalis.bsky.social

I'll be talking about critical discourse analysis at this event for A-level students, in very illustrous company