Tag: Discourse

I apologise for not having an allergy

In recent years, servers in cafés and restaurants in England (particularly younger servers) have taken to saying ‘no problem’ or its near-synonym ‘no worries’ in response to each order by each customer. This sometimes leads to odd results. Fussy, but no problem I presume that ‘no problem’ used in this way originated as a response…… Continue reading I apologise for not having an allergy

Talking with ET

Who knew that a word exists to describe the study of extraterrestrial language? The word—Xenolinguistics—features in the title of a recent book Xenolinguistics: towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language (2024), edited by Douglas A Vakoch and Jeffrey Punske. In the book, biologists, anthropologists, linguists, and specialists in communication explore what is known about human language…… Continue reading Talking with ET

Structuring texts to make them clearer

Rachel Cayley’s blog Explorations of Style gives some excellent writing tips. She was running the blog as a graduate student and has since distilled her advice in a book Thriving as a Graduate Writer: Principles, Strategies, and Habits for Effective Academic Writing (2023). https://explorationsofstyle.com/book/ What I particularly like about her blog is the advice on…… Continue reading Structuring texts to make them clearer

Saxon Genitive

English has two common ways of expressing possession: the ‘Saxon genitive’ form adds -’s to the end of the last word in a noun phrase referring to the possessor:the king’s wifethe King of England’s wifethe man over there’s wifeFor more on the Saxon Genitive, please see Does English really have case? – Language Miscellany the…… Continue reading Saxon Genitive

Careless talk cost a goal

The introduction of video assistant referees (VAR) has led to a lot of discussion in many sports, particularly football. That is because VAR has slowed decisions down and hasn’t cut out  all referring errors. One particularly shocking example arose from poor communication between the on-field referee and the VAR team at a Premier League football…… Continue reading Careless talk cost a goal

English Grammar Day

I went along yesterday to an event at University College London (UCL) called English Grammar Day. This was the first time I have been, though it has been held for the last 10 years. The event seems to be aimed mainly at school teachers and academics. I give below summaries of the 6 talks, which…… Continue reading English Grammar Day

Fronted adverbials

Periodically, a debate breaks out in the British press about whether schools in England teach too much English grammar or too little English grammar. The trigger for the latest outpouring was an academic study suggesting that teaching grammar does not improve children’s writing. For some commentators, the phrase ‘fronted adverbials’ now exemplifies excessive focus on…… Continue reading Fronted adverbials