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Topic: Standards and variation

These resources take an exploratory approach to the nature of English in use, in real-world contexts.

Forensic linguistics: some answers

suggested answers for the starter activity

So, what clues did you find? The police were convinced that the two sets of messages were actually from different people, and that Melinda hadn’t sent the messages on February 16th, but they needed evidence.

Some of the clues in the data are easier to spot than others, but here are some differences:

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Forensic linguistics: a starter

an activity using language clues to solve crime

Forensic linguistics is a growing area of language study that combines the analysis of language with solving crimes. All of us use language in subtly (and sometimes not very subtly) different ways – so when we write or speak, we leave clues that sharp-eyed language detectives can pick up.

In this resource, we take a quick look at the kinds of clues forensic linguists look for when they try to work out the identity of a writer.

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Spoken language: Dialect and slang

[Amended from Dan Clayton's Teaching English Grammar in Schools blog]

The history of grammar teaching has often been associated with prescriptive models in which the "correction" of perceived faults in language has been paramount. While linguists are careful these days to talk about what is 'grammatical' or 'ungrammatical' and 'standard' or 'non-standard', rather than what is 'right' or 'wrong', there is still a tension at the heart of the teaching of English.

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Corpora

A corpus is ‘a collection of pieces of language, selected and ordered according to explicit linguistic criteria in order to be used as a sample of language’ (Sinclair, 1996).

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Regional vocabulary

Looking at the grammar of regional vocabulary items

In the work you’ve done so far on ways to identify word classes, you have seen that many words can be identified by form, function and distribution.

In this activity, we’ll look at how you might use these ideas to identify some words which appear in regional varieties of English. You’ll see examples of regional dialect terms in the context which they were used, and your task will be to work out what grammatical role the word is performing.

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Rastamouse vibrations

A children’s show on television has caused delight to most and upset to some. Rastamouse is a tam-wearing, skateboard-riding mouse who likes to solve crimes and – in his words – make a bad ting good. He also speaks in Jamaican patois.

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Linguistics of lies

In this lesson, students explore the features of lies, from a linguistic perspective.

Goals

  • Discuss the features of lies from a linguistic perspective.
  • Identify pronouns, negative emotional terms, sense terms and causal phrases.
  • Discuss the role of context in interpretation.
  • Present evidence to support an argument.

Lesson Plan

Background

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Speech and writing

Students get a sense of how spoken and written language vary by looking at short extracts of each, on various topics. 

Goals

  • Identify features of speech and writing.
  • Compare and contrast speech and writing.
  • Recognise the importance of genre in anlaysing language.

Lesson Plan

This lesson includes 3 handouts, which can be downloaded below and printed for distribution to students.

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Keeping a Language Log

Introduction

Most of the time, students' work in English is assessed by things that they write about things that they have read. For example, their exams may consist of writing about a Shakespeare play they have studied, or perhaps some non-fiction texts like advertisements or extracts of journalism from a newspaper or magazine.

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Language of spam

Introduction

If you’ve got an email account, inevitably you’ll have received spam. Whether it’s adverts for vicodine or Viagra, single Russian women looking for fun (and your sort code), appeals for money from the daughters of deposed Nigerian generals, or requests to update your details from a bank that you don’t have an account with, spam is all around us.

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Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies