During lockdown this summer, a few linguists (including Billy Clark from Northumbria) launched a twitter feed which we use to watch movies together and to comment on them during or after screening.
We announce the films and where they can be streamed or downloaded from in advance and then anybody who wants to join in presses ‘play’ at the same time.
The viewings are every second Monday at 7pm UK time.
Anybody can join us. There’s no need to be a linguist or a language researcher. And of course there’s no requirement to comment. We just watch a film at the same time and anybody who wants to comment can do so during or after the screening using the hashtag #LinguistsMovies
You can read more about the idea at our twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/LinguistsMovies
and there’s an article about it in Babel magazine here:
Linguists at the Movies in Babel magazine
There’s a review (by Billy) of one of the films we viewed earlier here:
Review of Bodied in Babel magazine
As you’ll see, this film was rated with 2.5 stars (out of 5) for quality and three ‘schwas’ for how its ‘linguistic credentials’.
Tonight (9 November 2020, 7pm UK time) we’ll be viewing Brief Encounter:
Brief Encounter on Linguists at the Movies
It’s an interesting film for lots of reasons, including some insight into language change from the accents and linguistic expressions used by the actors, and also evidence of changing social/cultural assumptions and behaviour (including assumptions about gender roles).
There’s a very interesting discussion by the linguist Paul Baker of the use of gradable adverbs (in this film and elsewhere) here:
Please join us and tell anybody else who you think might be interested!
Email Billy if you have any questions about it:
billy.clark@northumbria.ac.uk
Northumbria Englishes 