Lexis

Show notes for Episode 47

Here are the show notes for Episode 47, in which Dan talks to Fiona McPherson of the Oxford English Dictionary about:

Some of the best articles and updates about #WOTY2023 can be found here: 

‘AI’ named most notable word of 2023 by Collins dictionary | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

AI named word of the year by Collins Dictionary - BBC News 

Rizz named word of the year 2023 by Oxford University Press - BBC News 

Got rizz? Tom Holland memes propel popularity of 2023 word of the year | Social trends | The Guardian 

Dictionary.com’s 2023 Word Of The Year Is…

The Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year 2023

The Collins Word of the Year 2023 is…

Oxford Word of the Year 2023

Word of the Year 2023 | Authentic | Merriam-Webster

Macquarie Dictionary Blog

Cozzie livs: light-hearted term for cost-of-living crisis named Macquarie dictionary word of the year | Language | The Guardian 

» Nominate the 2023 Words of the Year American Dialect Society  

Japan chooses ‘tax’ as kanji of the year amid concern over cost of living   

Opinion pieces about new words

The Collins word of the year shortlist shows we’re more self-obsessed than ever

Hallucinating AIs and What The Words Of The Year Lists Reveal About our Modern World 

Rizz: I study the history of charisma – here's why the word of the year is misunderstood

Thread on Twitter responding to the ‘manosphere’ links

Who's got 'the rizz'? Apparently, just men

I get the need for ‘rizz’, but ‘influencer’ should be banned for ever

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

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

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.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 

Show notes for Episode 46

Here are the show notes for Episode 46, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to Paul Kerswill, Emeritus Professor, Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York about what has driven his interests in linguistics, but mostly about Multicultural London English:

Paul’s University of York page: https://www.york.ac.uk/language/people/academic-research/paul-kerswill/ 

Some of the presentations and papers Paul Kerswill has produced on MLE:

https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/who-made-mle

https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/jafaican 

and the full paper of this workshop is here: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/93713/1/17_Kerswill_corr.pdf 

Some links to early reporting on MLE, MEYD and more: https://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/search?q=MEYD 

Some of Tony Thorne’s reflections on MLE (he denies coining the term ‘MEYD’ though!): https://language-and-innovation.com/?s=MLE 

We talked about Accent Bias Britain too:

https://accentbiasbritain.org/ 

Here’s a York English Language Toolkit session on this too: 

https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/accent-bias-britain 

And previous episodes of Lexis in which we’ve discussed MLE:

Shivonne Gates: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5leNPWkgQTMFzZ2UHRktnC?si=wh-4nKMmTpm7Q5on2x2wIQ 

Matt Hunt Gardner: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7GBFEsLSNKYEpvX2yHIanO?si=_h-_-ROcRpm1llQLiLoSJw 

And we talk about recent reporting on MLE in this episode’s Lang in the News: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0cdODEHoWHIWLfd0gh6xSw?si=pwjAKwHbRyea0jxUBugbiA 

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

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

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.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

Show notes for Episode 45

Here are the show notes for Episode 45, in which we talk to Dr Alex Baratta, Senior Lecturer in Language, Linguistics & Communication, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester about:

In our regular Lang in the News segment we talk about how formal greetings and sign-offs might be becoming a thing of the past and why that’s the fault of… well, pretty much everyone that Daily Mail readers don’t like. We also have a quick chat about the European-wide attempts to make language more inclusive, the first round of WOTY2023 and we big up Rob Drummond’s book, You’re All Talk.

Alex Baratta’s University of Manchester page: 

https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/alex.baratta 

Some of the articles, books and research we mentioned: 

https://theconversation.com/teachers-with-northern-accents-are-being-told-to-posh-up-heres-why-88425 

http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/british_politics/2017/06/putting-an-accent-on-things-the-need-to-clarify-speech-expectations-for-british-teachers/  

https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/clarifying-accent-standards-for-british-teachers 

Understanding all kinds of English accent can improve empathy and learning – and even be a matter of life and death  

Yours Sincerely is dead…

The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/13/yours-sincerely-is-dead-so-how-should-you-sign-off-an-email 

And in the Mail: 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12510471/Is-end-sincerely-Old-phrases-die-decade-language-formal-research-finds.html 

Attempts to promote inclusive language in European languages

What’s in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe 

#WOTY2023 

‘AI’ named most notable word of 2023 by Collins dictionary | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

AI named word of the year by Collins Dictionary - BBC News 

Opinion piece about new words https://archive.ph/kv2UQ 

Rob Drummond’s new book: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/you-re-all-talk-why-we-are-what-we-speak-rob-drummond/7512151?aid=4868&ean=9781914484285 

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

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

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)

Bluesky:

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 

Show notes for Episode 44

Here are the show notes for Episode 44, in which we talk to Dr Kingsley Ugwuanyi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Horizon Europe’s RISE UP Research Project, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS about:

In a Lang in the News bumper segment we talk about recent research into young people’s accents in the south east of England and media reactions to it, including a chat with Dr Amanda Cole of University of Essex about her paper and how it’s been covered. 

Kingsley Ugwuanyi’s SOAS page: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/kingsley-o-ugwuanyi 

The paper (with Folajimi Oyebola) that we discussed: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Attitudes-of-Nigerian-expatriates-towards-accents-Ugwuanyi-Oyebola/ed2c0e7ac631c4a10fad45021abc8028c1305efc 

The BBC article we talked about: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66569668 

Kingsley’s PhD: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344951319_English_language_ownership_perceptions_of_speakers_of_Nigerian_English

Amanda Cole's recent accent research 

https://theconversation.com/cockney-and-queens-english-have-all-but-disappeared-among-young-people-heres-whats-replaced-them-215478

The Mail covers it… And its readers comment: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12691143/Kings-speech-cockney-silenced-rise-new-accents-popularised-Ellie-Goulding-Adele-Stormzy.html 

Telegraph

https://archive.ph/c56Zb

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/30/kings-english-cockney-replaced-new-accents/ 

BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-67289519

The Guardian Pass Notes: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/31/language-barrier-why-even-harry-has-stopped-speaking-the-kings-english  

The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/05/cockneys-out-all-speaking-multicultural-now-accents 

Accent intelligibility 

https://theconversation.com/understanding-all-kinds-of-english-accent-can-improve-empathy-and-learning-and-even-be-a-matter-of-life-and-death-215922  

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

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

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)

BlueSky:

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 

Show notes for Episode 43

Here are the show notes for Episode 43, the second part of a Language & Gender double episode special, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan discuss ways to teach Language and Gender at A Level, from the 3 / 4 Ds models, to slightly tweaked and reverse Ds, through to corpus methods, treating gender as part of a wider ‘identity’ approach and much more. 

Some of the resources and links that we mention in this episode

Cameron et al. on tag qns: https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/CameronTags.pdf 

Clare Feeney’s Twitter thread with a suggested approach: https://twitter.com/ClareFeeneyUK/status/1672172689224605697?s=20

Cameron, Deborah. and Shaw, Sylvia. (2016). Gender, Power and Political Speech: Women and Language in the 2015 UK General Election - Research Portal | Lancaster University

Corpus for Schools | Corpus resources for A-level English Language and English Language Teaching 

Teaching unit 17: Being Asian in London – Ethnicity, gender and social networks Background Audio clips 

Alessia Tranchese’s paper on sexualised violence against women: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/publications/covering-rape-how-the-media-determine-how-we-understand-sexualise 

Alessia Tranchese’s paper on the language of incels on Reddit: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/projects/online-misogyny-new-media-old-attitudes 

Previous Lexis episodes that we mention in this episode. 

Episode 10: Lucy Jones gender, sexuality and identity special https://open.spotify.com/episode/1m9UKNUUysD6Vawj61C2kW?si=U8fBAYFyRHSonV9NQ85qag 

Episode 14: Emma Moore

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1j6MyddIEivQ8x2e2cObhR?si=uLwnyY10QDy_92UEpk4EhA 

Episode 15: Dana Gablasova

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nagsHhogFSfJmexecKlXt?si=U5ehaxmxQWSN57J5dAtjkQ 

Episode 19: Elena Semino

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ISaApHlLITDd7l9npXKKj?si=Wlei19KwTTyTeWfbK15qvg 

Suggested reading: 

Deborah Cameron’s blog, Language: a feminist guide: https://debuk.wordpress.com/ 

Deborah Cameron’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Cameron_(linguist) 

Deborah Cameron wrote this Research Update for Teachers for the EMC back in 2015: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/language-gender-a-research-update-for-teachers 

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 

Here are the show notes for Episode 42, the first part of a Language & Gender double episode special, in which we talk to Deborah Cameron, Professor in Language and Communication at Worcester College, Oxford about:

• Robin Lakoff 50 years on from Language and Woman’s Place

• Where language & gender research has headed post-Lakoff

• Deborah Cameron’s forthcoming book, Language, Sexism and Misogyny 

• What kinds of more recent research we could be looking at for the A Level

• Online misogyny and Disney princesses

• The other Deborah (Tannen)

We’ll be back soon with a follow-up episode in which we look at how we can approach the teaching of language and gender in a world that’s changed since the earliest days of research into this field. 

Deborah Cameron’s blog, Language: a feminist guide: https://debuk.wordpress.com/ 

Deborah Cameron’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Cameron_(linguist) 

Robin Lakoff’s 1973 article for Language in Society can be found here: https://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist156/Lakoff_1973.pdf 

Some articles about Deborah Cameron’s Myth of Mars and venus from around the time it was published: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/01/gender.books 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/03/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety1 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/oct/02/gender.familyandrelationships 

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/language-common 

Deborah wrote this Research Update for Teachers for the EMC back in 2015: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/language-gender-a-research-update-for-teachers 

Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer, ‘The Princess Problem’: https://www.kareneisenhauer.org/projects-and-publications/ 

A Q&A with Karen Eisenhauer about her work: https://english.news.chass.ncsu.edu/2017/04/20/language-gender-and-disney-princesses/ 

The Washington Post on the Disney Princess research: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/25/researchers-have-discovered-a-major-problem-with-the-little-mermaid-and-other-disney-movies/ 

Alessia Tranchese’s paper on sexualised violence against women: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/publications/covering-rape-how-the-media-determine-how-we-understand-sexualise 

Alessia Tranchese’s paper on the language of incels on Reddit: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/projects/online-misogyny-new-media-old-attitudes 

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 

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: 

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 

Show notes for Episode 40

Here are the show notes for Episode 40, a bumper edition in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to four linguists from the University of York about their York English Language Toolkit website and teacher CPD sessions. We talk to:

The York English Language Toolkit website can be found here: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies 

This year’s sessions can be found here: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops 

York English Language Toolkit on Twitter: https://twitter.com/YorkToolkit 

Sam Hellmuth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/samhellmuth 

Claire Childs on Twitter: https://twitter.com/childs_claire 

George Bailey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/grbails 

University of York Department of Language and Linguistic Science: https://twitter.com/UoYLangLing 

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

Jill Lavender

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs 

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

Show notes for Episode 39

Here are the show notes for Episode 39, in which Lisa and Dan talk to Dan Collen, an online hate researcher from Canada about his work on the Weaponized Laughter: Memes and Hate in the Canadian Digital Landscape report he has helped produce. We talk about:

🚩As might be obvious when looking at hate speech, this episode comes with a content warning for themes of racism and discrimination.🚩 

And for a Lang in the News special, we talk to Heddwen Newton about her newsletter English in Progress, some recent news stories that have caught her eye and how to stay on top of news stories about language. 

Dan Collen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpinelessL 

The Weaponized Laughter Memes report:  https://cdn.sanity.io/files/rdq6owff/production/6b78f8630669069025ea145da2221ef2c1fac032.pdf 

Hatepedia site: Hatepedia 

“Hatepedia is an online database and resource centre built with original research to provide educators, parents, lawmakers, and researchers with tools to identify and counter the proliferation of online hate.”

Heddwen’s Language in Progress newsletter: https://englishinprogress.substack.com/ 

Heddwen’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Heddwen 

Susie Dent’s ‘banished words list’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65634829 

And the Tweet that started it: https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1658380887698931712?s=20 

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

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

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)

Mastodon: 

Jacky Glancey 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey

Jill Lavender

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs 

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 

Here are the show notes for Episode 38, in which Lisa and Dan talk to Dr Anna Islentyeva of Innsbruck University, Austria about the representation of masculinity in advertising, including: 

Anna’s university page: https://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/staff/islentyeva/islentyeva.html 

Anna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hei_anni 

The “Real Men Score” paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HZsad35JBMD0kM4FqpXpWn8xWnIzAiL-/view?usp=share_link 

Anna Islentyeva, Elisabeth Zimmermann, Nadia Schützinger & Andrea Platzer (2023) ‘Real Men Score’: Masculinity in Contemporary Advertising Discourse, Critical Discourse Studies, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2023.2173625

The study that Anna mentioned into perfume advertising was by Helen Ringrow and this is her book The Language of Cosmetics: The Language of Cosmetics Advertising | SpringerLink

And in our regular Lang in the News segment, Jacky and Dan talk about linguistic accommodation, the power of accents and why politicians love to talk down to us. 

Northern lessons for southern Tories

https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1649520363926110210?t=pCM6q2gelPqBiOFGy4bQcA&s=19

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/21/how-do-you-sex-a-limpet-susie/ 

Rishi Sunak’s downwards convergence

Here’s the clip: https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1640280827086143488 

Is it “hilariously inauthentic”(Alex Andreou)? 

Is it “sheer desperation by an out of touch rich boy trying to show he is in tune with the public” (Dave Lawrence in replies to tweet above https://twitter.com/dave43law/status/1640326877842685954?s=20 )?

Or is it just another example of politicians (of all parties) trying to sound more human and a perfectly natural way of doing language? 

Jane Setter article about people keeping/losing accents: 

https://theconversation.com/why-some-people-lose-their-accents-but-others-dont-linguistic-expert-201986 

George Osborne:

'Mockney' George Osborne backs working Briddish with dodgy accent 

George 'Mockney' Osborne: Chancellor in Estuary accent shocker

George Osborne, gawd bless yer | Victoria Coren | The Guardian

Academics 'dropping regional accents' to fit in at elite universities (linked story to accommodation)

Ed Miliband with Russell Brand:

Accent on common ground as Miliband takes on Russell Brand's estuary twang 

The cultural significance of Ed Miliband's mockney accent | The Spectator

Has Ed Miliband changed his accent to get elected?

Tony Blair:

London Journal; Britons Prick Up Their Ears: Blair's a Li'l Peculiar 

I don’t have a posh accent – am I bothered? | Suzanne Moore | The Guardian 

Accents in Higher Education:

Academics 'dropping regional accents' to fit in at elite universities

British academics try to hide regional accents, study finds  

Alex Barratta’s work on accents and teaching 

Research exposes prejudice over teachers with northern accents 

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

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

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)

Mastodon: 

Jacky Glancey 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey

Jill Lavender

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillLavs 

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