Our English Language A-Level students attended a day of lectures in central London. 

They heard from Dr Rob Drummond, who discussed urban youth language, and in particular his research into grime music.  This lecture started to bring to light the theme of the strong relationship between language and identity, which also featured in the subsequent lectures. Next, Dan Clayton explored the use of language in the media and then Amy Bidgood, (Research Associate for the Language 0-5 Project) explained some of her findings about children’s linguistic and cognitive development. This was followed by Tim Grant’s discussion of forensic linguistics which involved us all in an experiment on Twitter.

The final (and much-anticipated) lecture was from renowned linguist Professor David Crystal, who explained the story of punctuation in English, and how it has changed so much over time, and continues to do so. It was a fascinating day providing rich insight into the study of English Language and Linguistics.