Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary who is embroiled in a scandal about his relationship with an "adviser", has made some mistakes apparently, not that he would put it that way. He would say "I accept that it was a mistake to allow distinctions to be blurred
between my professional responsibilities and my personal loyalties to a
friend". And that, as Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian says, is a pretty rubbish way of saying sorry.
Freedland's article looks closely at Fox's slippery language, particularly his abuse of the passive voice, a grammatical technique that he describes as "grammar's way of telling you somebody is hiding something", which is a neat turn of phrase. It's a good bit of textual analysis and something that would make a sound starting point for a language investigation.
Black British English vs MLE
The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...
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As part of the Original Writing section of the NEA, students will be required to produce a commentary on their piece. This blog post will pr...
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As lots of students are embarking on the Language Investigation part of the Non-Exam Assessment, I thought it might be handy to pick up a fe...
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When Dan asked what he should post about next on this blog, one of the most common responses was this, the World Englishes topic. Maybe ...