Communication

NHS Evidence’s ENT and Audiology online gallery

NHS Evidence , the NHS online library of resources for health professionals, continues to grow. This week the ENT and Audiology section has launched this excellent collection of links to freely available multimedia resources, ranging from 3-D anatomical images to photographs and videos of diseased and healthy larynx, ear canal, etc. This material is intended for educational and medical use, but please check the individual publisher’s conditions before using any of the images.

To mark Dyslexia Awareness Week 2009, this week’s choice is:

The Routledge Companion to Dyslexia,
edited by Gavin Reid. Routledge, 2009.

Jacket image from www.routledge.com/education

Dr Gavin Reid is a world-renowned expert on dyslexia, who has published 23 books on learning disabilities and education. As chief editor of this timely work he presents an overview of dyslexia research and practice, with the emphasis on research from the field as opposed to the laboratory.  The book is divided into 5 sections, covering: research; dimensions (from reading and spelling to maths and dyscalculia); inclusion; further & higher education and employment; and diversity, culture and language. The contributors represent a comprehensive range of experience, from practising speech & language therapists  and specialist teachers, to leading educational psychologists, researchers and consultants.

This volume augments the library’s collection of general works on dyslexia at 616.8553 REI.

Wordcrime: solving crime through forensic linguistics, by John Olsson.
Continuum, 2009.

Jacket image from www.continuumbooks.com.

Forensic linguistics and phonetics is such a new branch of criminology that John Olsson is still “the world’s only full-time forensic linguist”. The use of linguistic analysis in solving crimes, especially murders, was first notably employed in the infamous Christie murders at 10 Rillington Place, London in the 1960s. The confessions obtained from  Timothy Evans, who was convicted and hanged for these murders, were examined after his death and found to be false on the grounds that they contained various incompatible linguistic styles. John Christie was subsequently found to be the real murderer - and the science of forensic linguistics was born.

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Dyslexia Awareness Week 2009 takes place on 2-7th November. Organised by the British Dyslexia Association, this year’s theme is “dyslexia strengths”. A calendar of events can be viewed on the BDA website, including the first “DysFest” dyslexia film festival, which is being held here at UCL! Directed by a UCL postgraduate anthropology student, the festival will screen  films featuring dyslexia, followed by workshops in which participants will examine the representation of dyslexia in the arts. See the DysFest web pages  for further details.

Polari: the lost language of gay men, by Paul Baker (Routledge, 2002).

Very few books have been written about Polari, the secret language used by Britain’s urban gay communities (particularly in London and Liverpool)  for much of the 20th century. Paul Baker attempts to redress the balance with this linguistic study of the language, charting its origins in cockney rhyming slang, sailor speak, Romani, Yiddish and Italian languages (amongst others) and its development up to the 1970s when it fell into decline (partly due to the decriminalising of homosexuality in the 1960s, which reduced the need for secrecy). Polari crept into public consciousness - and popularity - when it was used by characters in the BBC radio sketch shows Round the Horne and Beyond our Ken in the late ’60s, and many Polari words and phrases are now in common English usage (”vada”, “naff”, “camp” even “gay”). Baker’s study also addresses cultural and sociological aspects of Polari, the reasons for its popularity and decline (and 1990s revival), and what it reveals about the ways in which gay men identify themselves and their culture. The debate in the gay community about whether Polari should be proudly preserved as part of gay cultural heritage, or abandoned as a grim reminder of past oppression and stereotyping, brings the study up to date. Baker himself concludes that Polari is a “valuable piece of gay heritage”: I would go further and say that Polari is a valuable part of English linguistic heritage. A Polari dictionary is inserted at the back.

Shelved with books on English language variation and slang, at 427.008 BAK.

22nd October 2009 is the 12th annual International Stammering Awareness day. Activities include an online conference, and a campaign against misleading YouTube adverts which claim to “cure” stammering. For more information, visit the British Stammering Association on the web.

The Travers Reid prize of £300 is awarded annually to a student at BSc, MSc or PhD level, for a research thesis on the subject of stammering. Reid, a lifelong stammerer, is president and founder of the Association for Research into Stammering  in Childhood (ARSC), which supports the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children (Palin will be presenting this year’s award). Students are invited to submit a 500-word abstract (accompanied by a letter of recommendation from their supervisor) by 6th November. See the Centre’s web pages  for more information about the award.

Posh Talk: language and identity in higher education, by Sian Preece.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Jacket image from www.palgrave.com

In Posh Talk, Sian Preece presents a study of 93 multilingual (largely black and minority ethnic) first year students at a London university, enrolled on an academic  programme to improve their written English. She studied their spoken interaction,revealing the ways in which social “identities” are created, especially with regard to language and gender. Students would deliberately avoid the more formal “posh” English of the academic community around them, preferring ”street” language to identify their distinct  status.
Preece aims to show the value of linguistic diversity in the student community, emphasising how students recruited on widening participation programmes can contribute to the university’s culture.  As such, she argues, their knowledge of languages should be viewed as a positive resource, rather than a “problem” to be overcome with remedial English tuition. Ultimately, Preece writes in the introduction “I argue for greater institutional awareness and sensitivity towards these students and for an imagining of higher education as a multilingual space”.

To be found in the Sociolinguistics section at 306.446 PRE.

The latest NHS Evidence update on Neurological Conditions is now available here.

UCL now has a subscription to this new online journal, covering all aspects of cognition. The July 2009 issue has an article on language:
Modeling the Emergence of Language as an Embodied Collective Cognitive Activity (p 523-546), by Edwin Hutchins, Christine M. Johnson.

Access (with UCL login) here.