Peter Stockwell
@PeterJStockwell
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Professor of Literary Linguistics an all that.
Nottingham and Sheffield
Joined August 2013
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My friend and colleague at
@UoNEnglish
Prof Zoltán Dörnyei sadly passed away this morning following an illness. A great loss for the School and for applied linguistics in the world. RIP.
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How not to write a students book.
This is from my daughter’s chemistry textbook. Altogether now: “PoSLICaMZICSG!”
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I can’t believe this disgrace of a govt has forced me to do the ‘I’m a Professor of Linguistics…’ tweet, but here we are:-
The Tory discourse on immigrants is indeed very similar to the language used by the Nazis (and by racists and bigots ever since).
@GaryLineker
is correct.
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I have just slipped on a piece of paper in my office and smacked my face and elbow into the floor and desk. I’m fine.
Linguistics question: at what age does ‘He fell over’ become ‘He’s had a fall’?
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So
#Brexit
kills off pink panther wafer biscuits. Well done British people. Slow handclap.
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Sociolinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Corpus Linguistics
Literary Linguistics
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I am Director of Admissions for English here
@UoNEnglish
With the support of
@EnglishAssoc
I have set up a forum for all admissions tutors in English in the UK. If that’s you, ask your Head of School/Dept to pass on the email message I just sent them.
/small thread …
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My friend, inspiration and mentor Prof Ron Carter has just passed away. I don’t have any words at the moment, so here is a note I wrote for
@UoNEnglish
two years ago.
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English at university.
You might become as famous as one of these people, but even if not, you will study what you love, become a different thinker for the rest of your life, and (let’s not forget nor belittle) you are highly likely to get a great job!
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Urgent things to do today:
~ book copy-editing replies;
~ final revision on an article;
~ support doc for a business case;
~ lecture for next week.
What I will actually do:
~ go for a walk in the Hope valley with smallest daughter.
For the rest, there will be time.
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Let’s be absolutely clear: sudden dept closures and large redundancies in a university are directly the fault of incompetent senior managers with no long-term strategy, and that is where the first sackings should happen.
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RIP Roger Bannister. And here is the brilliant
@HelenMort
‘s ‘Tom Hulatt’s Mile’ - the only runner in that race who was not a University student.
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Every Liz Truss sentence is oddly clefted, topic-fronted or otherwise distanced to the main clause:
“What I think is…
“I am very clear that…
“What I will say is…
“What is the case here is that…
It allows her to avoid answering the question by not echoing the question syntax.
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An open letter setting out the importance of linguistics in UK universities.
UCGAL: University Council of General and Applied Linguistics
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Occasionally Twitter is a joyous push back against the tide of thickery largely from oleaginous men that has engulfed this country. Thanks to
@FernRiddell
and hundreds of brilliant female colleagues, today is that day.
#ImmodestWomen
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I love this picture. It’s as spare as possible, but captures the start of a mother reading to her daughter. It’s by Eileen Stockwell, who passed away 2 years ago today. x
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It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve done, it’s always extremely exciting to get a new book contract!
Coming soon: Reading Fictional Languages - a collection of new work on constructed and imaginary languages, edited with
@jessnorledge
and
@israelnoletto
for
@BloomsburyLing
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Braverman’s ‘hurricane of migration’ speech sounds deliberately framed to update the metaphor of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’: keep the apocalyptic tone but shift from biblical echoes to our current climate crisis. It’s clever, it’s deliberate; it’s disgraceful and appalling.
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I have a baby girl. A while ago, she left nursery and primary school. Recently she finished secondary school. Now she’s applying for university. Today is her 18th birthday. How did this happen?
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At
@HuddersfieldUni
last night to hear
@stephenfry
on the love of language. An event brilliantly organised by the Linguistics staff who are, scandalously, facing redundancy because of incompetent managers
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I’ll soon be on holiday - not ‘leave’, because:
1. I am not in the army;
2. It’s my legal right, not your permission;
3. The workplace is not the presumed default location for life (because deixis!)
#ReclaimHolidays
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I have a chapter on Stylistics in this lovely tome that just arrived. It crackles when you open it and is heavy in your hands. It smells of paper and glue, and the edges are cut sharp and precise. An actual book!
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My mam and dad died within a few weeks of each other a few years ago. I’ll be spending the day thinking of them and others who were close to me. Condolences to anyone who is feeling loss today.
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I used the word ‘nouty’ (grumpy, annoyed, irritable) at an event in London the other day and no one knew what I was saying. I thought it was Standard English. Is it exclusively northern English? Scots maybe? Feel quite nouty about it.
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Into the office for the staff do, and this lovely-looking thing was waiting for me. I’m in here, but otherwise it’s a stellar list of contributors, and
@RoutledgeLit
have done a beautiful production job on it
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Got this, with my
@UoNAppEnglish
team. I haven’t had a certificate for years! It’s going on the fridge, obv.
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Supportive update from
@UniofNottingham
VC
@ShearerWest
ends with a note giving additional leave to all staff around Easter. A welcome moment to breathe.
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When your paper at the conference is up against a big name in the field in a parallel session
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Some questions
@Keir_Starmer
can have for free (short thread):-
~ why were actual GCSE performances not included in the A-level algorithm?
~ why wasn’t the scaling done in June, leaving 2 months to correct anomalies and evident injustices (C’s down to U’s)?
/1
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In a couple of days, I will have been at
@UoNEnglish
for 25 years!
Martinis are being served in my office right now, if you are anywhere near
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So let’s do this the other way round.
Congratulations to all my excellent colleagues in English depts who don’t have the historical resources, cash and support that I am fortunate and privileged to have here
@UoNEnglish
and yet produce brilliant, world-leading research.
#REF2021
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I did an actual seminar today. In an actual room, with actual students. They were brilliant.
We were safely set out, drenched in sanitizer, wearing masks, and trying to make it clear when we were smiling just by eye-movements.
It was great to be back.
#LitLing
@UoNEnglish
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MAK Halaliday- burgers with a systemic functional linguistics twist
(niche joke of the month award)
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This is my father, in Yugoslavia, probably in 1959. He passed away a year ago today. I never really talked to him about this trip, or a thousand other things, and I’d give anything just for another hour with him. RIP Dad
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What’s this? A well-written article on language and cognition drawing on actual linguistics experts (apart from the bit about English having a future tense, obviously) on the BBC:-
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Lockdown supplies just delivered. See you on the other side.
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How my students see me;
how my colleagues see me;
how I see myself.
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Old and new. This book is just out. Meanwhile I’ve found my plans for an online PhD by email from 1999 on this 3.5” floppy disc!
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This is awful. I’m more upset by this than seems reasonable. I slept on a bench in that square on the bicentenary of the revolution in 1989, formed the idea for my first book, essentially started there on an academic life, lit a candle for my family in the church.
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Lovely lovely new book: Digital Teaching for Linguistics. Buy it / order it / ask for it
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Nearly done with ‘Cognitive Poetics: A New Introduction’, and trying to do justice in the Acknowledgments to 30 years of the brilliant scholars and students I have had the privilege of working with - it’s impossible!
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If you are ready to go to uni or are the parent of someone worried about going in September, read this. This coming year’s students will be the most cared-for freshers ever; it might even be the best, most interesting, unique and exciting time to be a student.
Universities’ Covid-19 response: not perfect, but far from cack-handed latest blog on how universities and their staff are responding - extraordinarily well - to the crisis.
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It are Grammar Day! A reminder: no one knows precisely how language works. Grammars are our best guesses as to the different possible working systems, but all grammars are not quite right.
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I’m really happy we’re teaching on-campus
@UniofNottingham
I also hold weekly ‘isolation seminars’ for anyone who needs them, and can switch with no notice. The university is controlled and safe.
I’m there for the students who want to be there. That’s the job.
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Just about to do my plenary gig here at
#PALA2023
If you’re not here at the PALA conference, watch it at this link (and if you are here, you can sing along!)
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Sean Connery once told me to fuck off after I inadvertently walked across the set of The Hunt for Red October.
RIP
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The
@Babelzine
lecture tonight is given by Jessica Coon, the linguist advisor on the sf movie ‘Arrival’. Here are some alien Hexapod language biscuits for the event here
@HuddLinguistics
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So it’s the last
#LitLing
of the year, in which I do the lecture without preparation on a text that is suggested in the room.
#PrayForPeter
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And with that, The Nottingham Stylistics Toolkit is launched!
- free online resources for teaching and studying language and literature.
This is the start; more entries to come over the next few months
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The Nottingham Stylistics Toolkit will go live from 3pm BST - free online resources for teaching and studying language and literature.
Once more to the stylisticsmobile!
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Teaching A-level Lang/Lit in the UK? Or just interested in stylistics?
The Nottingham Stylistics Toolkit is a free, open and online resource for you (and will double in coverage over the next year)
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Hard copies of
#CogPoIntro
have just arrived! Looking forward to the paperbacks. Find them at Routledge.
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Come and work with us
@UoNEnglish
- we’re lovely.
Full-time permanent lectureship (‘Assistant Prof’) in applied linguistics (digital SLA).
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Apparently there is a copy of my book, The Language of Surrealism (Macmillan, 2016) for sale on eBay, SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.
I only sign copies given to friends and family, so which twerp has done this?! You will be cut from the christmas card list.
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This was moving and impressive. An unbearably poignant show of support, love and community from staff and students to family and friends
The crowd just keeps growing at the
@UniofNottingham
vigil, but you could hear a pin drop as they all wait in near total silence
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I’m about to attend the launch of the Modernist Literature Project: 20 million words of tagged corpus available for literary researchers. Have a look here
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Phonetics lesson from
@UoNEnglish
Bilabials (p, b, m) involve the lips touching. Approximants (like w) involve a pout.
#Corbyn
used 2 bilabials in that second word so it is not physically possible for him to have said ‘woman’.
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Before all the spin, excuses, gloating and boasting, let’s all remember that the
#REF2021
does not actually measure the most valuable research. It’s a game for money, and is a terrible way of ‘measuring’ UK universities.
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My colleague Prof Jim Moran, everyone. Chapeau.
Had a lecture on waiting for godot and the lecturer walked out 'to get something' at the end and we all sat there waiting for him. 10/10
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Daily report
@UniofNottingham
shows most student Covid cases are in private accommodation, very low in halls. Transmission to teaching staff is zero, suggesting the classroom arrangements are working. I am opposed to a full online switch, as long as my students want to be there.
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Four decades ago, my Grandad finished 30 years at British Steel and got a long service gift - they called it the ‘blood watch’.
Now I’ve done 25 years mainly as Professor at
@UniofNottingham
and was just presented with this letter and money. A lovely thing, but thanks Grandad
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Dad would have been 82 today. Here he is age 20 with a butchers van they drove from Teesside to Yugoslavia
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Remember: online teaching does not reduce the need for university staff (fee income reductions cause that problem). If anything, you need more time to create and teach, and even then you’re standing on the shoulders of learning tech people who’ve done a ton of work already.
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The School of English
@UniofNottingham
is one of the best in the world: a third of academic staff are not Brits
@UoNEnglish
#1DayWithoutUs
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New lip-visible mask appeared in my pigeonhole
@UniofNottingham
this morning. A bit Hannibal Lecturer, but I’ll give it a go at today’s
#LitLing
seminars
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Now students going home for Christmas is an ‘evacuation’. The UK government’s obsession with WWII is really embarrassing.
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I am sorry to pass on the news that the great stylistician, literary scholar, former chair of PALA
@PoeticsLinguist
and dear friend Peter Verdonk died on Friday. If you want to enhance your life, go and read anything he wrote. RIP.
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This got stuck when it was hit by lightning last week
@UniofNottingham
Now where’s my De Lorean?
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A decade on - reckon I’ve not really changed at all!
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Physics, but let’s cut all the formulas; Music, but excluding anything with the notes B or G; Maths, but don’t mention prime numbers; Literature, but never looking at poetry.
BBC: students allowed to drop poetry in English Lit in 2021
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Well now look at them beauties!
Last-minute Christmas prezzie for the stylistician / narratologist / literary critic / English student in your life?
#CogPoIntro
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Fall in love with English again, with the next generation of online masters programmes.
(Grateful for retweets!)
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Just done a 4000-word analysis of this poem. Stylistics is so brilliant!
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Out celebrating GCSE results. Out out. Here’s the view from the pub garden
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A busy morning! While you lot are talking about cake and parties, I’ve been discussing the changing idioms of English on BBC Radio Nottingham, and BBC Radio Hereford and Worcester. What a glow up!
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Just put a comment on an essay that this student should ‘proff-read your work more carefully’. Sigh. Time for a cup of tea and a kitkat.
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The latest issue of
@LangLit_Journal
is a chonky thing - 200 pages of top stylistics!
@PoeticsLinguist
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Apparently Lord Digby Jones has said something about accents, but his voice is so plummy I couldn’t really make out what it was he was trying to mumble.
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Just arrived, collected in memory of my predecessor the great Ron Carter. I have a thing in this, alongside some really brilliant chapters. Sonia and Greg - you’ve done him proud.
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So,
@BorisJohnson
it was all for nothing. You trashed yr country, provoked racist thuggery, ruined a whole generation. For nothing.
#Brexit
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