🗣️ I'm hiring! To support my ESRC-funded project 'Accent Bias and Domestic Abuse Victimisation (ABDAVic)', I'm hiring a 12-month fixed-term research fellow.

I got the chance recently to write an article for the @engmediacentre.bsky.social Emagazine, a publication for A-Level English Language students and teachers. Great experience, and would strongly recommend to anyone trying to do public engagement in the written form

EngLangBlog@englangblog.bsky.social · last mo.

And @mchlinguistics.bsky.social offers a fascinating introduction to what we can learn about and from voice pitch.

This looks like a really great event that examines how language bias and social attitudes affect women in football. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gender-pen...

Gender Penalty: language, gender & bias in football

Join us for an evening exploring how langauge, bias and everyday attitudes continue to sideline female voices in the game.

eventbrite.co.uk

At the end of all these cuts, will Linguistics actually be taught outside of a few 'elite' Universities? (and even at those institutions, the field will be much smaller than it once was) If you aren't seeing this as a Widening Participation issue, then you really don't get what's going on.

University of Hertfordshire UCU@uhertfordshireucu.bsky.social · 5mo ago

On Friday afternoon before the Bank Holiday, colleagues in the Humanities department were called to a meeting on Tuesday. They were informed that the University Portfolio Review had decided that English Language, English Literature, Philosophy, History & Creative Writing UG degrees would close

Happy to announce the publication of our latest paper in Gender and Language (utppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3...). Hopefully interesting for anyone interested in language and gender and/or language and sport.

Gender Penalty? Linguistic Discrimination and Perceptions of Female Football Commentators | Gender and Language

Abstract This experimental sociolinguistic study investigates implicit attitudes relating to female football commentators. Several high-profile sports-media figures have claimed that women's voices are “too high-pitched” for commentary on men's football, a domain in which traditional, heteronormative gender relations remain especially dominant. With this critique in mind, we conducted a social perception experiment using voices artificially manipulated for pitch to investigate the interaction of pitch and gender stereotypes in this context. Contrary to the male-centred meta-discourse surrounding female commentators, our results show that listeners actually judge female commentators with lower-pitched voices less favourably compared with higher-pitched female voices. Male listeners, in particular, prefer gender-typical voices and male voices generally. These results support previous claims about the influence of stored stereotypes on the social evaluation of speech, how evaluations are dependent upon the specific gendered dynamics of a given domain, and the pervasiveness of a “double-bind” that female commentators are faced with.

utppublishing.com

Bit late because I've not been on bluesky much recently, but this is my latest article in Journal of Sociolinguistics! It's hopefully the first of many papers for me at the intersection of sociolinguistics and criminology/victimology, so stay tuned.

Journal of Sociolinguistics@jslx.bsky.social · 12mo ago

What does fear sound like? 👂 @mchlinguistics.bsky.social explores how pitch variation indexes femininity in domestic abuse victimisation. Those who don't fit the "expected" sound of fear are perceived as less scared and less rational in heteronormative relationships. 🔗 Read here:

I thought my brain was imploding today while marking a student essay in which the student claimed that Labov had collected some perception data using extracts of Jamaican English in Battersea Park in the 80s. I was convinced that the student had made it up, but after a quick search of the source...

Concluded over Christmas you don’t like your job? Well we’ve got the perfect New Year, new you! Come and work with us at More in Common, we’re recruiting a couple of new roles at various levels; drop Ed a line if you’d like to find out more.

Ed Hodgson@edhodgsoned.bsky.social · 2y ago

Last few days to apply to work with us as a Research Associate / Research Manager at MIC UK - Deadline Sunday evening! more-in-common.jobs.personio.com/job/1853035?... Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the role

My father-in-law just sent me for my second trip of Christmas day down to the compost bin at the end of his garden, which can only mean I'm gaining his approval.

I was just made aware of the UK Government Office for Science postdoc scheme: raeng.org.uk/ukicpostdoc More specifically, people of a #linguistics persuasion might be interested in topic 14: Integrating multimodality and context to automatic language analysis. Please share with relevant people!

Computational Linguistics job (Assistant Prof level, permanent) at our lovely linguistics department in Queen Mary. We're starting a new MSc in Lings and AI. Deadline Jan 5th, interviews late February. linguistlist.org/issues/35-33... #linguistics please repost!

LINGUIST List 35.3363 Jobs: Lecturer in Computational Linguistics, Queen Mary University of London

The LINGUIST List, International Linguistics Community Online.

linguistlist.org

So I recently saw a post doc advertised as being nearly 3 years, but at 0.9 FTE. My immediate reaction was that this felt like someone who'd got a chunk of grant money, and was trying to stretch it out by underpaying a postdoc, but is this normal in some countries? Western European, not UK.

The call for the ESRC-SCDTP Postdoctoral Fellowship funding is now open. It would be great to receive applications for the linguistics pathway at the University of Southampton. More details are here: southcoastdtp.ac.uk/funding/esrc... #postdoc #funding

Lidl have started doing cronuts, so it's game over for me

Lidl have started doing cronuts, so it's game over for me

TW: racism, SA Alcohol banned from France team gatherings - www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-... If the only thing stopping you from saying racist things and/or r*ping someone is not consuming alcohol, then perhaps alcohol is not the problem...

France rugby chiefs ban alcohol at team gatherings

The French Rugby Federation bans players from drinking alcohol during national team gatherings to help improve off-field discipline.

bbc.com

TW: racism, SA Alcohol banned from France team gatherings - www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-... If the only thing stopping you from saying racist things and/or r*ping someone is not consuming alcohol, then perhaps alcohol is not the problem...

France rugby chiefs ban alcohol at team gatherings

The French Rugby Federation bans players from drinking alcohol during national team gatherings to help improve off-field discipline.

bbc.com

I had a great time today at a local sixth form colleague talking all things English Language & Linguistics, including one my favourite topics [pictured]: the amn't gap! (via a clip from The Traitors).

I had a great time today at a local sixth form colleague talking all things English Language & Linguistics, including one my favourite topics [pictured]: the amn't gap! (via a clip from The Traitors).

Agreed - Bluesky doesn't currently feel like an echo chamber, and frankly if it did, it'd still be preferable to what you get exposed to in the other place. I'd take echoes over overt racism and videos of murders every time.

Michael Chesnut@michaelchesnut.bsky.social · 2y ago

I don't think of Bluesky as an echo chamber. I see different opinions here, and I've seen a few 'terrible accounts' jumping on certain topics just for angry engagement, but I don't think that type of angry engagement works well here, so I really don't see much of it. www.ft.com/content/6596...

Agreed - Bluesky doesn't currently feel like an echo chamber, and frankly if it did, it'd still be preferable to what you get exposed to in the other place. I'd take echoes over overt racism and videos of murders every time.

Michael Chesnut@michaelchesnut.bsky.social · 2y ago

I don't think of Bluesky as an echo chamber. I see different opinions here, and I've seen a few 'terrible accounts' jumping on certain topics just for angry engagement, but I don't think that type of angry engagement works well here, so I really don't see much of it. www.ft.com/content/6596...

Because I'm weak, I occasionally flick back to the old place to see how things are doing, and it's more hellish every time

Because I'm weak, I occasionally flick back to the old place to see how things are doing, and it's more hellish every time

One day I will look back at a paper currently under review at a journal and I won't notice a glaring error in the abstract. But today is not that day.

I spent the last 3 days at the interdisciplinary social science conference In_Equality hosted in Konstanz. A super eye opening experience to see the work of economists, political scientists, sociologists, ecologists and more (alongside a few linguists). Lesson 1: my data is rather small...

Just submitted my first manuscript on number 1) below - very happy to have it off my desk and onto someone else's for a bit!

Matthew Hunt @mchlinguistics.bsky.social · 3y ago

1) To what extent is accentism an issue in domestic violence policing? (Using experimental methods), and 2) how do incels use scientific vocabulary to construct their identities? Doing what I can to only look at the bleakest topics.

Oh pairwise comparisons, why do you undermine me so

I was minutes away from quitting my job because I was successfully fixing a uPVC door, but then I was defeated by my lack of the correct allen key. Fine, back to LaTeX I'll go.

Mini Queen Mary Linguistics reunion in Brooklyn Heights!