The Linguistics Research Digest, run by the Department of Linguistics, provides up-to-date reports on the latest research papers on language issues in an engaging, jargon-free way. This is a pre-selection of some of the most interesting, thought-provoking and innovative articles from a wide range of scientific journals, which also flags up articles that are particularly relevant to GCSE and A-Level English Language.
Accent Bias in Britain, which was headed by Professor Erez Levon uncovered ways in which the way we speak can decide about our chances of success on the job market. If you’d like to see how this research was conducted, find out which accents are seen as more or less desirable and how we can stop ourselves from experiencing accent bias, have a look at the project page. You can even check whether you are biased yourself!
The Accent Bias in Britain website links to some content you will learn when you study Linguistics with us, too.
There’s also Language Unlimited! Professor David Adger’s book has been described as a highly readable introduction to the big questions in linguistics. Some of those questions include how more than 7000 languages in the world appear to share the same deep scientific rules and what happens to our brains when we try to learn the impossible languages that don’t follow these.
It’s not available in paperback yet, but the audiobook should be out in May. If you want more of a taste of Prof. Adger's work, you can visit his popular science page.