Lauren Hall-Lew

The Profa Republican Party is an international crime syndicate

well, one good thing is, I'm delighted to say I'll be sharing my work on "The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-To-Speech" with wonderful collaborators @ninamarkl.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social @lhlew.bsky.social as a poster at @chi.acm.org 2026! ⛱️

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

🇮🇷🇮🇱🇺🇸 BREAKING: ISRAEL BOMBED 20 volleyball players in a sports hall in Iran.

Thanks! See you there!

BAAP 2026 The University of Warwick is pleased to host the 38th Colloquium of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians. The colloquium is organised by Applied Linguistics, part of the School of Educatio...

Anyone on here also attending BAAP this year? Should the hashtag be #BAAP2026? Here's hoping the detailed programme is posted soon! #phonetics #speech #conference

sites.google.com/view/baap2026

❓What can an intersectional approach to reverse linguistic stereotyping tell us about the raciolinguistic and misogynistic complexities of language proficiency in Italy? Check out Gabriella Licata's paper available through early view this month 👇
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

🚨Not to be missed! Check out Annette D'onofrio's interview with Penelope Eckert, who reflects on her pioneering ethnographic work in schools, her 'ground up' approach to research, and what it means to be doing sociolinguistic research in times like these. A bold and brilliant interview! 👇

Journal of Sociolinguistics: Vol 30, No 1 Click on the title to browse this issue

... and 3 fantastic book review essays on dialect studies, Kurdish language politics and linguistic landscapes, as well as an author interview on Language as Hope 🙌. Not to be missed!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14679841...

... voice pitch variation and perceptions of domestic abuse victims, Gender-inclusive language on German youth radio, and self-referential speech of Taiwanese politicians! We have two fantastic interviews with Bill Labov (H. Samy Alim) and Momoko Nakamura (Mie Haramoto)... (2/3)

🥳 The latest issue of the Journal of Sociolinguistics is here! February's issue contains a brilliant and wide-ranging set of orginial research in Sociolinguistics, including the indexicality of 'bad' schools in Chicago, variable ING in Australian indigenous boarding schools... (1/3)

Forging the Future of Sociolinguistics: The Expanding Pluriverse of Language and Social Justice Click on the article title to read more.

❓What can a social-justice oriented, pluriversal sociolinguistics look like? @yecidortega.bsky.social reflects on this question in his review essay of 3 brilliant new books on critical sociolinguistics, language & social justice. Early view version here! 👇

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

How rightwing rhetoric has risen sharply in the UK parliament – an exclusive visual analysis In the past five years, MPs’ attitudes in the House of Commons towards immigration have swung harder to the right than at almost any other time in the last century

Striking analysis from the Guardian that shows that anti-immigrant rhetoric in Parliament is higher than it's ever been since the 1920s

www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-...

Petition: Call a public inquiry into pro-Israel influence on politics & democracy We are concerned about reported Israeli state-linked and pro-Israel lobbying activity in UK politics. We believe it is important to determine the scope and impact of any such influence campaigns.

A petition calling for a public inquiry into pro-Israeli influence in Britain has reached over 50,000 signatures.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/75...

Book prize announcement from the American association of applied linguistics

🎉Huge congratulations to our associate editor Daniel Silva @dnsfortal.bsky.social and Jerry Won Lee for this very well deserved prize!! 🏆

Check out Branca Falabella Fabricio’s transcribed interview with the authors just out in this month’s issue of Journal of Sociolinguistics! 👇

NEWS RELEASE: Hi-Ema Celebrates Hawaiian Language With Mahina ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi In February | Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency HI-EMA CELEBRATES HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE WITH MAHINA ʻŌLELO HAWAIʻI IN FEBRUARY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEFebruary 16, 2024 HONOLULU  ̶  The beautiful and vibrant Hawaiian language is being celebrated throughou...

Today is the first day of #Hawaiian #Language Month
dod.hawaii.gov/hiema/news-r...
(H/T @becauselanguage.com)

A screenshot of the word "Middle-Class" in black font with three words below it in grey font: Unadventurous, Staid, Predictable.

LOL these are the synonyms Microsoft automatically offers up for "Middle-Class"

Please consider supporting this cause, being led by the amazing sociolinguist and "Language of Hope" author Daniel Silva. Brazil has strict rules on crowdsourced funding so when you click on the donation link choose the "Tip" option. Thank you 🙏

In Oct 2025, Rio police killed 117 men in the Alemão and Penha favelas—the deadliest operation in its history. I’m crowdfunding to support women who lost partners, sons, or fathers. Funds go directly to them. Please donate or share: ko-fi.com/danielsilva2...

Articulating Shala Qazaq in America: Chronotopes and Language Ideologies in Central Asian Kazakh Families This article examines how Central Asian Kazakh families in California draw on spatial–temporal chronotopes, including Soviet legacies, diasporic minority governance, post-independence nation-building...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🚨 New JoS publication just out on early view! Check out Becker, @montreallx.bsky.social, Petty & @parkerjscarpa.bsky.social’ exploration of #uptalk, indexical field and social personae in the US. Link below 👇

Last week @clrnance.bsky.social was on BBC Radio Lancashire and Radio Cumbria talking about rhoticity and accent change. If you’re in the UK, you can still catch up on the segment!

Link on: phoneticslab.github.io/general/2026...

Trump administration wants to deport five-year-old detained by ICE in Minnesota — Sky News Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were taken into custody by immigration enforcement agents outside their home in Minneapolis on 20 January.

They would, wouldn't they?

Trump administration wants to deport five-year-old detained by ICE in Minnesota - Sky News

It's near-white out conditions in Chicago as the snow comes down, and tonight's anti-ICE/CBP rally is wrapping up in front of city hall.

But not before the crowd bounces and chants, "I believe that we will win!"

Was just talking about the Parsley Massacre a couple days ago. Fascism closer to home and too rarely mentioned.

“The words did not come out”: Nigerians who stutter navigate work in ‘speech centric’ professions - Minority Africa Image Description: A close-up of a person’s lips slightly parted as if speaking. From the mouth, fragmented blue sound waves float outward like scattered shards of glass. In March 2020, the Nigerian I...

minorityafrica.org/the-words-di...

"Like many people who stutter, Oko never asks for pity. Still, he appreciates simple accommodations, such as a little extra time to speak, patient listening without finishing his sentences, and interactions that don’t make his stutter the center of focus."

Via @aclyu.bsky.social

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43355/...

Reasons to Stay - Letters From Strangers Reasons to Stay is a suicide prevention project reaching people at difficult moments through anonymous letters written by volunteers. Each letter on this site was written by a real person and delivere...

CN: suicide

I just stumbled across a wonderful website. If you're struggling with the world right now and looking for reasons not to just give up, read these letters.

www.reasonstostay.co.uk

Share please, someone might need it.

There's a whole depressing list of them
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

"Those who failed to correctly pronounce the trilled –r, as in the shibboleth perejil ‘parsley’, were deemed to be Haitian and, as a consequence, were murdered.”

Bullock & Toribio. 2014. "From Trujillo to the terremoto." Int'l Jrl of the soc. of lng, 227: 83-100.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley...