Richard Ogden

in your defence -- the metre of 'JEremy CORbin' is easier to chant than 'ZACK PoLANski'

Four syllables in Zack Polanski, five in Jeremy Corbin

#EMCA alert!
The 25th Conference on Discourse and Conversation Analysis is taking place 25-27 March 2026 in Mannheim, Germany.

The theme is Technology Use and Social Interaction, and it has a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers and workshop leads!
www.ids-mannheim.de/aktuell/vera...

It's that time of year when many start thinking about applying for PhDs. If you're applying for a UK PhD position, here is a blog post I wrote a while back that might be helpful

#cognition #psychscisky #neuroskyence #psychjobs

Oops **named**. No one has banned languages or linguistics yet, but who knows….

Banned as particularly vulnerable: languages and linguistics, which is what my department is all about.

New powers to further restrict protest are unnecessary, undermine our rights to freedom of expression and ability to practice our religion freely.

'We also recently came across your other research paper, "," and shared it with our community of scientists.'
.... who, I am sure, are excited about its successor, ";".

Now with added poster! The theme is: Technology use and social interaction: new interactive practices, new data and methods.

In Germany I saved them up and enjoyed the tinkling sound as they smashed in the bottle bank. Then I realised most of them had a deposit on them. Oh well, well worth the 40c or whatever it was per jar!

Nor languages

It's the 25th Arbeitstagung zur Gesprächsforschung / Conference on Discourse and Conversation Analysis in Mannheim, 25-27 March 2026. I'll be running a phonetically-oriented workshop -- details to be confirmed! www.ids-mannheim.de/aktuell/vera...

Since today is the #EuropeanDayOfLanguages, let's not forget that you are not required to keep your languages separate, pure, intact or in any way feel inadequate about your way of using your own language/s.
And don't let anyone take away your co-ownership of the languages you have.

Please let it have a design by Cold War Steve on it

Our paper on how phonetic resources help to coordinate laughter draws on cases of joint laughter from conversations in English, Spanish and Finnish. Here's a summary of some of our findings (which rely heavily on Chafe, 2007), along with acoustic records of a laughter bout in Spanish.

Our approach is an interactional one, and we hope this contributes to a better understanding of some of the variability that has been described for laughter.

Laughter that's more formulaic (less mirthful, more stylised; more 'volitional) seems to be structured a bit differently, as well as having different features of production.

The phases of a laughter bout have different phonetic affordances, including features like rhythm and pitch. We've also got cases where pitch intervals within laughter are roughly musical.

We show that laughter has an internal structure that can be used to coordinate phases of laughter, and most notably reaching the end of a laughter bout together

Using dual channel recordings, we show how participants in conversation coordinate laughing together in real time.

Our paper with @marinanc.bsky.social and Jürgen Trouvain on Phonetic features in the management of laughter has just come out in Interactional Linguistics #phonetics #EMCA doi.org/10.1075/il.2...

No it's not common. Here it's done for effect, obviously: glass raised, loud voice, social ritual, naming. I've got one case of an elderly RP speaker who does [bʙ] for /br-/ in 'brining'; it's part of an announcement of the technical term, and she goes on to explain what it is.

The most chilling sentence in the whole article.

I'm examining a PhD in Oslo -- a different kind of pleasure!

Looking forward to reading my copy! I’ve so much enjoyed his other work.

A very thoughtful thread for those in the UK universities on the REF pause

That sounds like a story with a very serious moral!

Front cover of a booklet from the Scottish national Gallery, "Gaelic in the Gallery". Small icons representing pictures in the gallery (they look like postage stamps), and the word Glossary at the top.

On the left: text explaining that the booklet was prepared by school children. Each glossary entry is in English, Gaelic and then there are some pronunciation hints. Above each glossary entry is a picture from the gallery. On the right: a picture called Saint Bride by John Duncan. The words given are colourful, warm, sunset, calm, angelic and sea.

From a visit to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh last week: a great little Gaelic glossary for English speakers, compiled by schoolchildren. Each entry shows a picture from the gallery and some key words for it. Brilliant!

Here's an article by our Head of Department at York arguing for languages on the curriculum in the UK. As a polyglot I usually take it for granted that I can operate (with varying degrees of competence!) in several languages; I experience that as real wealth.

www.ciol.org.uk/languages-uk...

Very excited to announce this faculty search at Rutgers! Looking for a wonderful new colleague to join us in Communication #EMCA #LSI @ica-lsi.bsky.social @lansi2024.bsky.social
jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/258...