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St Mary’s Hosts Linguistics Research Seminar

Wednesday 6th February - St Mary’s University College, Twickenham hosts free public linguistics lecture with Prof Antoinette Renouf.

A free public lecture exploring linguistics and the occurrence of new words is being held at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, on Wednesday 6th February. Organised by St Mary’s School of Communication, Culture and Creative Arts (CCCA), this lecture forms part of a series, which explores a range of topics including film, Irish culture and linguistics. This lecture is being led by Prof Antoinette Renouf (Birmingham City University), who will present her research paper, ‘New words and their patterns of occurrence in diachronic newspaper text’. The occurrence of new words is of vital importance to members of the language professions. Each profession needs to assess the status of a new word: the nature of its novelty, its function and use, its degree of assimilation into the language and its likely staying power.  Until recently, however, such information could only be discovered impressionistically. Prof Renouf’s research at Birmingham City University, developed a method of studying language change by registering and analysing unbroken flow of printed text. Using this resource, her lecture will reveal some patterns of new word occurrence, which usefully add to understanding the evolving vocabulary of English. The free public lecture will take place at 5pm on Wednesday 6th February at St Mary’s Strawberry Hill campus and is suitable for a non-specialist audience. For more information please contact Dr Michelle Paull on michelle.paull@stmarys.ac.uk

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