June 05, 2022

The Power of Language

28 minutes

Three conversations presented by Fi Glover.

Oksana, a newly arrived Ukrainian refugee, and her host Pippa reflect on the experience of coming together from both perspectives. Jahmal, a semi-professional footballer and football coach, and Sam, also a coach, share their own similar stories in the light of professional footballer Jake Daniel’s recent decision to come out as gay. And in our 10th year we are taking the opportunity to look at how The Listening Project archive at the British Library is being used. In this edition Dr Vaclav Brezina, Senior Lecturer in Corpus Linguistics, Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, explains how he and his team have been using it to study how we speak.

The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation lasts up to an hour and is then edited to extract the key moments of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in this decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Producer: Mohini Patel

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