Welcome to Episode 87 of Lexis in which Neil and Dan talk to Sam Hellmuth, Professor of Linguistics at University of York and Devyani Sharma, Professor of Language and Communication at University of Oxford about the 2026 York English Language Toolkit sessions at York. 

We talk about:

• What the York English Language Toolkit is and what it’s designed to do. 

• What’s on this year.

• The Generations of London English takeover that’s happening this year.

• What the GLE project is and where MLE fits into this story.

• The synchronic and diachronic aspects of London English. 

• The new work that’s being featured and where it fits in. 

• The importance of real-time data in this project.

• Where the work on MLE has been going in recent years. 

• Recent debates and arguments about MLE and Black British English.

York English Language Toolkit 2026: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops 

Generations of London English project page: https://generationsoflondonenglish.org/ 

Devyani Sharma’s university page: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-devyani-sharma 

Sam Hellmuth’s university page: https://www.york.ac.uk/language-linguistic-science/people/sam-hellmuth/ 

Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social 

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ 

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social 

Jacky Glancey 

Raj Rana

Neil Hutchinson

Amanda Cole

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dramandacole.bsky.social 

Matthew Butler 

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