Last month I took part in my first academic conference, thanks to Will Turner and his work on the politics of BBC Voices. I wrote a short article about it, which was published in today’s Ariel, the BBC’s in-house newspaper.
They even spelt my name right – bonus!
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VOICES: Legacy of
language project lives on
by Philippa Law
Download clipping (jpeg, 399kb)
‘I’m quite shocked at the horrible things people find to say about each other,’ admitted Ann Thompson, PhD student at the University of Leeds. ‘The phrase ‘A face like a…’ is especially productive,’ she added with relish, before reeling off a list of unsavoury similes.
Thompson was speaking at a linguistics conference, presenting her analysis of the many words for ‘unattractive’ submitted by the public to the BBC Voices website.
The online survey of dialect and slang words attracted more than 30,000 submissions from the public. Thompson is now mapping the geographical distribution of some of those terms, such as ‘twag’, ‘dog’ and ‘nick off’ for ‘play truant’ and ‘kaylied’, ‘blootered’ and ‘stocious’ for ‘drunk’.
Her research is just part of the legacy of the Voices project, which was run by BBC Wales New Media. Voices presented a snapshot of the many ways we speak and culminated in a successful week of output about the languages, accents and dialects of the UK in August 2005.
From Radio Newcastle’s Fraudie to Geordie, to BBC Four’s Pronunciation Night, colleagues from all over the BBC helped put Voices on air.
Having worked on Voices, I was delighted to be invited to take part in the International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English in London in July, and over the moon to discover how well-regarded the project still is.
Our primary aim had been to create fantastic content for audiences, but the conference highlighted the enduring value of the Voices project, well beyond our original ambitions.
Academics and teachers were itching to point out that they still use the BBC Voices website regularly. Almost everyone in the room had a story to tell about how they were using Voices material to enthuse a new generation about language in the UK.
The project also has a personal legacy for me, as I’ve been inspired to leave the BBC to start a linguistics PhD of my own.
I’m going to research audience engagement with media in languages other than English. I’m looking for BBC departments to collaborate on the project. It’s an opportunity to ask in-depth questions about minority language broadcasting and gather concrete evidence about what works for our audiences.
If you produce content in another language – from Gaelic to British Sign Language – and would like to find out more about engaging your audience, email me.
