Prof Claire Hardaker

This has been the best day. 🤩

How easily can you tell if text such as a hotel review is by a human or AI? You can test your skill in this survey run by Lancaster University: lancasteruni.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... (Tried after fascinating talk on this by forensic linguist @drclaireh.bsky.social at CYBERUK 2025 last week.)

Forensic Linguistics: a great classroom motivator How teaching forensic linguistics can inspire your students to take their English Language study further

Forensic linguistics is definately* on the agenda in this blog by EMC's language neek @englangblog.bsky.social
englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/forensi...

(* Could the writer of this post really be the mysterious 4th man... H?)

Language, Speech, and AI: A Forensics Summer School, Monday 28 July, 12:00pm - Lancaster University Join us 28-30 Jul for a hands-on three-day journey into forensic linguistics, speech science, and the (mis)use of AI, particularly in fraud. No prior expertise required. The £30 fee includes sessions,...

The forensics summer school run by @drclaireh.bsky.social can be found here too: www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/...

GUESS WHAT?? The sixth episode of Slowburn Shakespeare finally, finally happened. Find it now wherever you get your podcasts.

What is Slowburn Shakespeare? Settle in, it's quite a ride...

Language, Speech, and AI: FACTOR Summer School 2025

📅 28-30 July 2025
📍 Lancaster University, UK
💼 Theme: Fraud & the (Mis)use of AI

Countless frauds and scams are being perpetrated all around us right now, and AI has made it easier than ever. And we'd like to fight back...

Brutalist, graphic-novel-style illustration, muted, earthy color palette, deep ochre, slate blue, charcoal. A chaotic social media debate on fragmented speech bubbles, some censored, others highlighted in red. A mechanical moderator, cold and rigid, clashes with a human moderator, expressive and conflicted, both struggling to define 'offensive'. background hints at political discourse, silhouettes of clashing ideologies

🗣️ It's the last FACTOR talk of the academic year! Join us for Dr. Tharindu Ranasinghe's discussion of the challenges of offensive language detection in political discourse, including how human and machine moderators often disagree on what's considered offensive.

Front page of the journal article referenced in the post

I suppose one way to start here is to share a new publication. Here it goes:

'‘I am still unsure’ - Spontaneous expressions of vaccine indecision on Mumsnet'

with @vaclavbrezina.bsky.social @elenasemino.bsky.social @williamdance.bsky.social @drclaireh.bsky.social et al.
#healthcomm #vaccinations

the follow-up to Samuel L Jackson's narration of "Go The Fuck To Sleep" (a book i own, obviously)

i feel like we haven't had enough content like this in a while

the fact that i have spent some considerable hours today staring at this and trying to figure out the tune

Lancaster University How easy is it to fool a voice authentication system? Can we identify cyber-criminals from their words? Are those texts really from a long-lost friend... or is this a...

⏰ 18:00-19:00 GMT
📅 Tuesday 28th January
💻 Teams
🔗 lancaster-uk.libcal.com/calendar/fac...
Make sure you register and join us to explore whether this MSc is the next step for you.

Did you miss the MSc Forensic Linguistics & Speech Science (FLiSS) face-to-face info session in December? Don't worry - we're running another one, and this time it's online! 🕵️‍♀️

Dr George Brown and I talk about FLiSS, funding, and how to tackle the interview.

⬇️ Details ⬇️

We're thrilled to announce our next talk: Sophie James (LUMS, SPS) and Prof. James Cronin (LUMS) will present: "Digital Dreamscapes & The Spectralisation Of Reality" Exploring digitally networked horror as a new frontier in dark tourism.

people who've ever had to OCR large numbers of poor-quality image-based PDFs quietly sobbing at this story…

yeah but hear me out

1) collect a corpus of the bible, coding manuals, historical fiction, and product reviews

2) write a string generating the four components

3) bot-post these affirmations daily…

"Hark ye! Your sysadmin RDP setup is most bewitching. Delivered on time."

deleting more apps than i'm downloading these days

lemerenguin was right there

bet you didn't think a plant pot would make *you* cry today either, did you

so that makes two of us

So that’s the first run of the Foundations of Speech Science module done (and the first term of our inaugural MSc Forensic Linguistics and Speech Science cohort!)

What a term it’s been 😮‍💨

Give the double gift of helping Bella with her research AND getting your own bit of dissertation inspiration! 🎁✨ Curious? Take part here: lancasteruni.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... (Psst - no spoilers when you find out the secret!)

Thinking ahead to your dissertation? Looking for a project idea that’s creative and innovative? 👀 One of our students, Bella, has designed a survey with a clever twist - perfect for sparking your inspiration! But you’ll need to follow the steps carefully to uncover it.

how forensic linguistics can unwittingly make you feel like a dinosaur: this seems to neatly divide the population into those who knew Tupperware was (once) a trademark, and those who don't 😭

forensic linguistics klaxon: when impersonating a famous lexicographer, you might want to do a tiny bit more homework… 😬

chaos just broke out. the vandalism has triggered a primary school aged riot

an inebriated stuffed Erica Elf who was properly a wine bottle decoration but I got to the shops too late for a proper Elf on the Shelf is sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, clinging onto a rose gold confetti cannon, which has detonated all the way up the stairs creating an ungodly mess. The Christmas season has arrived here. May the odds be ever in our favour.

waiting for the kids to notice…

godspeed to everyone else waiting that last hour before they start committing tiny acts of Elf on the Shelf hooliganism around their own homes

for us, December will open this year with an inebriated Erica Elf in charge of a rogue glitter cannon 🥲

two panel meme. on the left a cheerful white cat is quoted thus: saying "have a nice day" to someone sounds friendly. on the right, the same cat looks faintly quizzical and is quoted thus: saying "enjoy your next 24 hours" sounds threatening.

in case you needed any more reasons to become a forensic linguist: the infinite magic of pragmatics

🚨 Exciting news from FACTOR! 🚨 Dr. Hansi Hettiarachchi (Lancaster University) will explore how temporal word dynamics can inform event detection from social media streams. From crisis management to market analysis, learn how this approach tackles vast, unstructured data.

Why is this important? ->

🙃