Whereas ‘pants’-wearing Northerners enjoy a ‘bap’, ‘bun’ or ‘barm’ for their ’tea’, Southerners in ‘trousers’ are more likely to tuck into a ‘roll’ for their ‘dinner’, find language researchers at The University of Manchester.
A survey of 1400 English speakers by linguist Dr Laurel MacKenzie and her students reveals a North-South divide on how we describe everyday items such as bread, trousers, footwear and evening meals.
They also show how Northerners and Southerners can pronounce the same words in completely different ways.(more…)
A person’s style of speech — not just the pitch of his or her voice — may help determine whether the listener perceives the speaker to be male or female, according to a University of Colorado Boulder researcher who studied transgender people transitioning from female to male.
The way people pronounce their “s” sounds and the amount of resonance they use when speaking contributes to the perception of gender, according to Lal Zimman, whose findings are based on research he completed while earning his doctoral degree from CU-Boulder’s linguistics department. (more…)
A long campaign season with genuine gaffes and alleged misstatements began its culmination with the first presidential debate. Like many citizens, linguist Geoff Pullum, a visiting professor at Brown, was watching.
Grammarian Geoff Pullum is the Gerard Visiting Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown University and professor of general linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. He is also a frequent blogger on language and politics on Language Log and Lingua Franca.
In a conversation with David Orenstein, he cited several specious analyses of word choice and syntax that have been used unfairly against candidates. The often ill-informed critiques stand in stark contrast to the way people are typically inclined to overcome the misstatements of others as they extract understanding from clumsy speech. Pullum will be listening closely to the presidential and vice presidential debates. (more…)
