Episode 87 - York English Language Toolkit 2026 with Devyani Sharma & Sam Hellmuth
Welcome to Episode 87 of Lexis in which Neil and Dan talk to Sam Hellmuth, Professor of Linguistics at University of York and Devyani Sharma, Professor of Language and Communication at University of Oxford about the 2026 York English Language Toolkit sessions at York.
We talk about:
What the York English Language Toolkit is and what it’s designed to do.
What’s on this year.
The Generations of London English takeover that’s happening this year.
What the GLE project is and where MLE fits into this story.
The synchronic and diachronic aspects of London English.
The new work that’s being featured and where it fits in.
The importance of real-time data in this project.
Where the work on MLE has been going in recent years.
Recent debates and arguments about MLE and Black British English.
York English Language Toolkit 2026: https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops (https://englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops)
Generations of London English project page: https://generationsoflondonenglish.org/ (https://generationsoflondonenglish.org/)
Devyani Sharma’s university page: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-devyani-sharma (https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-devyani-sharma)
Sam Hellmuth’s university page: https://www.york.ac.uk/language-linguistic-science/people/sam-hellmuth/ (https://www.york.ac.uk/language-linguistic-science/people/sam-hellmuth/)
Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social)
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ (https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog (http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/) & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social)
Jacky Glancey
Raj Rana
Neil Hutchinson
Amanda Cole
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dramandacole.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/dramandacole.bsky.social)
Matthew Butler
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 (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys)
7 May 2026
Episode 86 - Chris Montgomery & regional swearing
Show notes for Episode 86
⚠️🤬⚠️Contains swearing (obvs) and quite a lot of it…handled seriously and with academic rigour (🧐)⚠️🤬⚠️
Welcome to episode 86 of Lexis in which we go in mob-handed with 5 (count ‘em!) interviewers and Dr Chris Montgomery, Senior Lecturer in Dialectology in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. Lisa, Jacky, Dan, Amanda and guest interviewer, Neil Hutchinson ask him about his work on dialect and how this relates to his new project on regional swearing.
(We treat the subject with delicacy and restraint until about 46 minutes when it becomes something of a swearing free-for-all, in case you’re interested/want to turn it off.)
We talk about:
Why swearing is interesting from a dialectology point of view
How swearing varies regionally in terms of the terms that are used and what they mean
How he is going about this research and how it came to happen
Different methodologies and their pros and cons
Dialect levelling and swearing: what needs to be done to measure this
Attitudes to academic research on swearing
The inventiveness of swearing
How you can contribute to this research
Advice to students about investigating swearing
Dr Chris Montgomery | English | The University of Sheffield (https://sheffield.ac.uk/english/people/academic-staff/chris-montgomery)
Your contributions can be made here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSef-QCBddaJ9blKczAv_mrV3pWDHIKuPJHzDNHZ7U1IK0Rcdw/viewform (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSef-QCBddaJ9blKczAv_mrV3pWDHIKuPJHzDNHZ7U1IK0Rcdw/viewform) (🔞only sorry)
Guardian article: From divvy to dinlo: index of insults aims to record Britain’s diverse dialects | British identity and society | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/apr/15/swearwords-census-regional-dialects-language-britain)
BBC feature: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78rr219457o (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78rr219457o)
Independent article: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/english-swearing-sheffield-university-midlands-merseyside-b2958087.html (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/english-swearing-sheffield-university-midlands-merseyside-b2958087.html)
Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/15/language-linguists-preserve-britain-swear-words-phrases-map/ (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/15/language-linguists-preserve-britain-swear-words-phrases-map/) and http://archive.today/2026.04.15-173308/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/15/language-linguists-preserve-britain-swear-words-phrases-map/ (http://archive.today/2026.04.15-173308/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/15/language-linguists-preserve-britain-swear-words-phrases-map/)
https://moderntoss.com/ (https://moderntoss.com/)
Modern Toss explain the project here too: https://moderntoss.com/2/ (https://moderntoss.com/2/)
https://www.urbandictionary.com/ (https://www.urbandictionary.com/)
Internet Archive version of Roger’s Profanisaurus; https://archive.org/stream/RogersProfanisaurusPreviouslyKnownAsSwearyMarysDictionaryOfFilth/Roger%27s%20Profanisaurus%20previously%20known%20as%20Sweary%20Mary%27s%20Dictionary%20of%20Filth_djvu.txt (https://archive.org/stream/RogersProfanisaurusPreviouslyKnownAsSwearyMarysDictionaryOfFilth/Roger%27s%20Profanisaurus%20previously%20known%20as%20Sweary%20Mary%27s%20Dictionary%20of%20Filth_djvu.txt)
Our previous interview with Dr Emma Byrne on swearing is here: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/K6x7JGgCR2b (https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/K6x7JGgCR2b)
Our previous interview with Dr Robbie Love on changing swearing patterns in the UK is here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Kq96LDO9jpz0LrcxcBNDr?si=EZVW_Zh0QKGi45XddCdCJw (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Kq96LDO9jpz0LrcxcBNDr?si=EZVW_Zh0QKGi45XddCdCJw)
Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social)
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ (https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog (http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/) & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social)
Jacky Glancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
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 (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys)
6 May 2026
Episode 85 - Rob Topinka & digital rhetoric
Show notes for Episode 85
⚠️⚠️⚠️We talk about some topics and forms of language - the language of incels and the manosphere, for example - that might be considered unpleasant and upsetting for some listeners⚠️⚠️⚠️
Welcome to episode 85 of Lexis in which Dan talks to Dr Rob Topinka, Reader in Digital Media and Rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London.
We talk about:
Why language is important to politics
What rhetoric is, its characteristics and what it’s designed to do
How rhetoric works in online spaces
The kind of rhetoric used to promote extremist views online
Incels, red pills, maxxing and NPCs
What happened to ‘woke’
The pitfalls of ‘free speech’ and language policing
Avoiding reactionary narratives and promoting progressive alternatives
Why being ‘unbiased’ is not really an option
Rob’s Birkbeck page: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/9151496/robert-topinka (https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/9151496/robert-topinka)
Rob’s ResearchGate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Topinka (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Topinka)
The Guardian articles Rob has written: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/22/racist-meme-nigel-farage-cameos-online-far-right (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/22/racist-meme-nigel-farage-cameos-online-far-right)
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2025/oct/20/boriswave-fighting-age-men-cultural-marxism-how-the-far-right-is-changing-how-we-speak (https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2025/oct/20/boriswave-fighting-age-men-cultural-marxism-how-the-far-right-is-changing-how-we-speak)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/jan/31/digital-politics-the-right-internet-digital-politics-extreme-political-ideas (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/jan/31/digital-politics-the-right-internet-digital-politics-extreme-political-ideas)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/feb/01/digital-politics-progressives-internet-the-left-online-world (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/feb/01/digital-politics-progressives-internet-the-left-online-world)
More on NPCs:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/language/slang/npc-meaning-and-history (https://www.mentalfloss.com/language/slang/npc-meaning-and-history)
A report on Clavicular’s interview in Australia: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/clavicular-incel-60-minutes-andrew-tate-looksmaxxing-b2957021.html (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/clavicular-incel-60-minutes-andrew-tate-looksmaxxing-b2957021.html)
‘Are You Mogging Me Right Now?’ https://bsky.app/profile/theserfstv.bsky.social/post/3mjhr6v2lek2r (https://bsky.app/profile/theserfstv.bsky.social/post/3mjhr6v2lek2r)
Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social)
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ (https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog (http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/) & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social)
Jacky Glancey
Raj Rana
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 (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys)
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Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Dr Laura Smith-Khan
Sam Hellmuth
Catherine Laing
Lauren Harrington
Salina Cuddy
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
4.7 / 5
34 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 43 / 100
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Quality
52
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
85
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