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Are we all language chameleons? Language variation as a life-long strategy and everyday tool

Dr. Clive Upton

We may think we are consistent in the way we speak, but we are not. Significant changes occur in people's language during their lifetime, whilst second by second they make minor adjustments to their style of speech too. This talk details style-shifting which speakers use moment by moment and throughout their lives, and speculates on the pressures for communicating and distancing which lead to personal variation.

Clive Upton teaches English Language in the School of English at the University of Leeds. He was previously in the Universities of Sheffield and Birmingham, and at universities in Africa and Papua New Guinea. Co-author of two dialect atlases and of The Dictionary and Grammar of the Survey of English Dialects, he has been associated with the Leeds-based dialect survey for 27 years and is involved in planning and exploratory fieldwork for a new Survey of Regional English. He is also pronunciation adviser to the Oxford English Dictionaries.

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