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Villains and Tea Leafs: Redefining Cockney & Defying Stereotypes

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Cockney isn't just about rhyming slang and on-screen villains. It's a vibrant, evolving culture that has thrived amidst changing times. From the traditional 'Old School Cockney' to the innovative 'New School Cockney,' the community continues to adapt and flourish.

A new report from the University of Warwick, in collaboration with Cockney Cultures, is shaking up perceptions of East End culture and calling for its celebration as a powerful tool against social prejudice.

Wed 28 Feb 2024, 08:00 | Tags: linguistics

Building blocks of language evolved 30-40 million years ago

The capacity for language is built upon our ability to understand combinations of words and the relationships between them, but the evolutionary history of this ability is little understood. Now, researchers from the University of Warwick have managed to date this capacity to at least 30-40 million years ago, the last common ancestor of monkeys, apes and humans.

Thu 22 Oct 2020, 09:24 | Tags: psychology, linguistics, Evolution, language, Sciences

Warwick researcher to investigate the link between apes and the evolution of human language

Dr Adriano R. Lameira, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, has been awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leader Fellowship, for his project: The ape and the first word: Understanding the origins and evolution of the first linguistic structures in the human clade through comparative research.

Thu 15 Oct 2020, 10:56 | Tags: psychology, linguistics, UKRI, Evolution, speech, Sciences

Bostin’ broadcast celebrates Black Country speech

Warwick dialect expert Esther Asprey of the Centre for Applied Linguistics will be celebrating the voices of the Black Country in a new episode of the BBC Radio 4 series, “Tongue and Talk: the Dialect Poets.” In conversation with presenter and poet Emma Purshouse, Dr Asprey discusses the origins of the dialect and talks about what it means to write in dialect, how we represent sound through spelling choices, and the pressure poets can feel on a national level to use Standard English.


More than words: Migration, Identity, and Translation Network public summit calls for action to tackle the monolingual mindset and language exclusion

Academics, practitioners and activists meeting at the University of Warwick call for language teaching and learning to be seen as essential in today’s global society and urge policymakers to adopt a national and international strategy to break the monolingual mindset which can limit access to social and economic opportunity and wellbeing.


Football managers must talk the talk as well as walk the walk, research finds.

Football managers must choose their words and their interview strategies with care if they want to win over the fans and project a successful image, according to University of Warwick linguistics expert Kieran File.
In a new paper published in the Journal of Pragmatics, Dr File, from the University’s Centre for Applied Linguistics, explores how the language used by Manchester United manager David Moyes in his post-match interviews may have affected the fans’ confidence in his ability to govern the team.

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