Fluent expression is not always evidence of a mind at work, but the human brain is primed to believe so. A pair of cognitive linguistics experts explain why language is not a good test of sentience.
Articles on Sociolinguistics
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Many of the coinages fail to differentiate the mundane from the momentous. Has the suffix’s overuse rendered it essentially meaningless?
To Russian nationalists, if the Ukrainian language is classified as a derivative of the Russian language, the invasion looks less like an act of aggression and more like reintegration.
As political parties spar, insults and catchphrases are adopted, appropriated and reappropriated in a dizzying verbal arms race.
Bothered by ‘expresso’? An expert on speech and language explains why you shouldn’t correct mispronunciations.
For over a century, Black activists have used punctuation marks to subtly challenge official accounts of events.
For decades, forensic linguists have helped crack cases involving false author attribution, masked voices, false confessions in criminal cases and copyright disputes.
Accusing a person or company of ‘virtue signalling’ has become a common putdown. But slurs like these are not new.
Updates to the Oxford English Dictionary provide a fascinating glimpse into how language changes in the face of rapid and unprecedented social and economic disruption.
South African universities should do more to support students from low-income households.
The use of military metaphors in some contexts can be helpful. In medicine? Not so much.
We want to be whitelisted and not blacklisted for jobs. White lies make stretching the truth okay, but you don’t want to receive a black mark on your record.
Generic names can take on a linguistic life of their own, becoming powerful forms of social commentary.
There’s a disconnect between how many low-wage workers are being described, and what they’re experiencing on the ground.
Irony is a slippery concept. Sometimes it’s used in speech, other times it’s used to describe a situation – oh, and it can also characterize an attitude. Is its versatility its downfall?
African American Vernacular English is part and parcel of Black identity. Its distinctive linguistic features are — wrongly — denigrated.
Pronouns rarely, if ever, change. Then along came the gender nonbinary ‘they,’ which was just anointed ‘word of the decade.’
One side wants to ‘get Brexit done’ while the other shouts the ‘NHS is not for sale!’. What does it all really mean?
Examining current attitudes to accents in Britain, do the same biases hold true as they did 50 years ago and what does that mean when it comes to the interview process?
How members of America’s two parties view the country – and its place in the world – might explain this phenomenon.
Top contributors
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Roger J. Kreuz is a Friend of The Conversation.Associate Dean and Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor, University of Memphis
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Postdoctoral Scholar of Linguistics, University of Oregon
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Senior Research Fellow of Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder; Griffith University; University of New England
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Professor of Linguistics and English, Florida International University
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Senior lecturer in Languages and Literature, Nelson Mandela University
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Professor of Computational Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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Senior Researcher at the SARCHI Chair's Higher Education and Human Development Research Programme, University of the Free State
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Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick
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Post Doctoral Research Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland
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Reader in Discourse Studies, Lancaster University
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Professor of Linguistics, English Language and Literatures and Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan
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MD/PhD Candidate, Wayne State University
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Professor of Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh
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Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University