Episode 46 - Paul Kerswill & MLE

Lexis

Show notes for Episode 46

Here are the show notes for Episode 46, in which Lisa, Jacky and Dan talk to Paul Kerswill, Emeritus Professor, Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York about what has driven his interests in linguistics, but mostly about Multicultural London English:

• What it is

• How it developed

• How it’s used now

• How it’s been reported on (and why it’s not ‘Jafaican’)

• The discourses and metaphors around it

• What it might sound like in the future

Paul’s University of York page: https://www.york.ac.uk/language/people/academic-research/paul-kerswill/

Some of the presentations and papers Paul Kerswill has produced on MLE:

https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/who-made-mle

https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/jafaican

and the full paper of this workshop is here: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/93713/1/17_Kerswill_corr.pdf

Some links to early reporting on MLE, MEYD and more: https://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/search?q=MEYD

Some of Tony Thorne’s reflections on MLE (he denies coining the term ‘MEYD’ though!): https://language-and-innovation.com/?s=MLE

We talked about Accent Bias Britain too:

https://accentbiasbritain.org/

Here’s a York English Language Toolkit session on this too:

https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/case-studies/accent-bias-britain

And previous episodes of Lexis in which we’ve discussed MLE:

Shivonne Gates: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5leNPWkgQTMFzZ2UHRktnC?si=wh-4nKMmTpm7Q5on2x2wIQ

Matt Hunt Gardner: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7GBFEsLSNKYEpvX2yHIanO?si=_h-_-ROcRpm1llQLiLoSJw

And we talk about recent reporting on MLE in this episode’s Lang in the News: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0cdODEHoWHIWLfd0gh6xSw?si=pwjAKwHbRyea0jxUBugbiA

Contributors

Lisa Casey

blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)

Dan Clayton

blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog)

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social

Jacky Glancey

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey

Matthew Butler

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA

Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys

Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys