Lexis

Episode 41 - Johanna Gerwin and London English


Listen Later

Show notes for Episode 41

Here are the show notes for Episode 41, in which Dan talks to Dr Johanna Gerwin, a sociolinguist at QMUL and DFG (German Research Foundation) post-doctoral researcher for the London Talks project about London English, including: 

  • The London Talks and Real Talk East projects

  • What ‘enregisterment’ means and how language styles and varieties become enregistered

  • ‘Metalinguistic’ discourses about London English - MLE, Cockney and Estuary

  • The power of discourses around language

  • Slang swag

  • Johanna’s QMUL staff page: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/research-staff/profiles/johanna-gerwin.html 

    Johanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jo_gerw 

    The London Talks project website: https://londontalksresearch.co.uk/ 

    Real Talk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealTalkEast 

    In our regular Lang in the News segment, Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk about ‘cis’ and how it’s been termed a slur by Elon Musk. We discuss where ‘cis’ comes from and all the related issues about language policing in a changing world. 

     

    Elon Musk claims ‘cis’ is a slur…

    Elon Musk sparks outrage with threat to ban ‘cisgender’ as a ‘slur’ on Twitter | The Independent 

    Elon Musk claims use of 'cis' and 'cisgender' on Twitter is 'harassment', threatens to suspend users 

    Researcher who coined term 'cisgender' hits back at Elon Musk 

    Cisgender refers to people whose gender identity aligns with the one assigned at birth. The researcher who coined the term, Dana Defosse, first used the word in a 1994 post on an early internet forum, which Oxford English Dictionary cited when it added the term to the dictionary in 2015

    No, Elon Musk, cis is not a slur | The Independent 

    OED update December 2015:

    New words notes December 2015 | Oxford English Dictionary 

    “Another sign of our increasingly complex understanding of personal identity in the twenty-first century is the inclusion of a cluster of words beginning with the prefix cis–: cis, cisgender, cisgendered, and cissexual. Derived from the Latin preposition cis, meaning ‘on this side of’, until relatively recently this prefix was chiefly visible in English in the adjectives cisalpine and cismontane (‘on this side of the Alps/mountains’), and in the names of certain chemicals displaying a particular type of molecular symmetry. Since 1994 however, when the word cisgendered was used by an American academic appealing for help with a study of transgender issues, cis– has taken on a new lease of life in a group of words which provide a direct equivalent to identity terms such as transgender and transsexual when referring to people who are not trans, i.e., those whose sense of their own personal identity corresponds to their birth sex.”

    What does 'cisgender' mean? | Merriam-Webster 

    Etymology of ‘cis’: The Word “Cisgender” Has Scientific Roots | Office for Science and Society - McGill University

    And Jill is no longer part of the Lexis team - thanks to her for being involved and for all her contribution and insights!

    Contributors

    Lisa Casey 

    blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)

    Dan Clayton 

    blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)

    BlueSky: @danc.bsky.social 

    Jacky Glancey 

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey

    Matthew Butler 

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA 

    Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys 

    Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 


    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store

    LexisBy lexispodcast

    • 5
    • 5
    • 5
    • 5
    • 5

    5

    1 ratings


    More shows like Lexis

    View all
    Word of Mouth by BBC Radio 4

    Word of Mouth

    55 Listeners