Professor Lynda Mugglestone
I have been working on language and its social and cultural history for a number of years, looking at aspects of spoken language, representation, race, gender, as well as the work of Pembroke’s own famous language alumnus, Samuel Johnson. I am really interested in language change and standardisation, language attitudes, and the different kinds of evidence we might use in tracing language history. A lot of my recent work is interdisciplinary, focusing on language change and WWI as part of the ‘English Words in War-Time Project’.
I usually teach first-year undergraduates in Pembroke for Paper 1; English Language, in which we explore language in areas such as news discourse, politics, advertising, and in relation to issues such as class, gender, place, and identity etc.
I lecture on the language side of the English course, covering aspects of language history, language change and codification, language and identity, language and diversity. I run a third-year special option on ‘Language, Persuasion, People, Things’ which examines language, persuasion and commodification from Middle English to e.g. Goop! I’m very interested in advertising and its tactics and techniques (and have recently co-curated an exhibition at the Weston Library in Oxford on ‘The Art of Advertising.’ I also supervise undergraduate and graduate work on English language.
Recent topics include gender and lexicography, gender ideologies and news discourse, writing voices in literary texts, and the ‘cookie’ as new linguistic text type.
English language is a fascinating subject to teach and to research – it is always changing, and open to new interpretations. Language history is everywhere- there are no limits !
I have published widely on the social and cultural history of English, with particular reference to lexicography, lexical history, and the history of spoken English (and ideas of ‘talking proper’). I am interested in dictionaries as repositories of cultural opinion, and sites of cultural change, and am always fascinated by what gets included – and what doesn’t.
An earlier project looking behind the scenes at the making of the OED – and the words that didn’t make the cut – was very rewarding, as was looking as Samuel Johnson’s annotated books made as he gathered material for his own Dictionary in 1755.
While Johnson remains one of my research interests, my current project on language in WW1 examines the lexical scrapbooks which Andrew Clark constructed between 1914-1919, and his decision to focus on popular discourse in news and advertising as prime resources for living and often ephemeral language history. New projects include interdisciplinary work looking at links between Johnson and France as part of an international project; the language and letters of Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson's principal legatee who came to England as an enslaved child. I am also a Trustee of Johnson's House in London.
Writing a War of Words: Andrew Clark and the Search for Meaning in WWI (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2021)
‘Stranded in Time. Andrew Clark and the Language of WW1’. In Stranded Encyclopedias: broken dreams of complete knowledge (1700–2000) ed. Linn Holmberg and Maria Simonsen (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021).
‘The language of advertising’, in ed. Julie-Anne Lambert, The Art of Advertising (Oxford: Bodleian Publishing, 2020), pp. 45-68
‘Gissing and the Auditory Imagination: Language, Identity, and Estrangement in Born in Exile’, Victoriographies 10 (2020), pp. 132-146
Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words (Oxford University Press, 2018)
‘The Values of Annotation: Reading Johnson Reading Shakespeare’, in Anthony Lee, ed. Revision and Revaluation: New Essays on Samuel Johnson (University of Delaware Press, 2018), pp. 3-24
http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/jjcoll/2020/06/17/lets-buy-an-antipestilential-quilt-guest-post-by-lynda-mugglestone/
https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-lynda-mugglestone-0#/
The English Words in War-Time Project https://wordsinwartime.wordpress.com/
Professor Lynda Mugglestone
I have been working on language and its social and cultural history for a number of years, looking at aspects of spoken language, representation, race, gender, as well as the work of Pembroke’s own famous language alumnus, Samuel Johnson. I am really interested in language change and standardisation, language attitudes, and the different kinds of evidence we might use in tracing language history. A lot of my recent work is interdisciplinary, focusing on language change and WWI as part of the ‘English Words in War-Time Project’.
I usually teach first-year undergraduates in Pembroke for Paper 1; English Language, in which we explore language in areas such as news discourse, politics, advertising, and in relation to issues such as class, gender, place, and identity etc.
I lecture on the language side of the English course, covering aspects of language history, language change and codification, language and identity, language and diversity. I run a third-year special option on ‘Language, Persuasion, People, Things’ which examines language, persuasion and commodification from Middle English to e.g. Goop! I’m very interested in advertising and its tactics and techniques (and have recently co-curated an exhibition at the Weston Library in Oxford on ‘The Art of Advertising.’ I also supervise undergraduate and graduate work on English language.
Recent topics include gender and lexicography, gender ideologies and news discourse, writing voices in literary texts, and the ‘cookie’ as new linguistic text type.
English language is a fascinating subject to teach and to research – it is always changing, and open to new interpretations. Language history is everywhere- there are no limits !
I have published widely on the social and cultural history of English, with particular reference to lexicography, lexical history, and the history of spoken English (and ideas of ‘talking proper’). I am interested in dictionaries as repositories of cultural opinion, and sites of cultural change, and am always fascinated by what gets included – and what doesn’t.
An earlier project looking behind the scenes at the making of the OED – and the words that didn’t make the cut – was very rewarding, as was looking as Samuel Johnson’s annotated books made as he gathered material for his own Dictionary in 1755.
While Johnson remains one of my research interests, my current project on language in WW1 examines the lexical scrapbooks which Andrew Clark constructed between 1914-1919, and his decision to focus on popular discourse in news and advertising as prime resources for living and often ephemeral language history. New projects include interdisciplinary work looking at links between Johnson and France as part of an international project; the language and letters of Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson's principal legatee who came to England as an enslaved child. I am also a Trustee of Johnson's House in London.
Writing a War of Words: Andrew Clark and the Search for Meaning in WWI (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2021)
‘Stranded in Time. Andrew Clark and the Language of WW1’. In Stranded Encyclopedias: broken dreams of complete knowledge (1700–2000) ed. Linn Holmberg and Maria Simonsen (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021).
‘The language of advertising’, in ed. Julie-Anne Lambert, The Art of Advertising (Oxford: Bodleian Publishing, 2020), pp. 45-68
‘Gissing and the Auditory Imagination: Language, Identity, and Estrangement in Born in Exile’, Victoriographies 10 (2020), pp. 132-146
Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words (Oxford University Press, 2018)
‘The Values of Annotation: Reading Johnson Reading Shakespeare’, in Anthony Lee, ed. Revision and Revaluation: New Essays on Samuel Johnson (University of Delaware Press, 2018), pp. 3-24
http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/jjcoll/2020/06/17/lets-buy-an-antipestilential-quilt-guest-post-by-lynda-mugglestone/
https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-lynda-mugglestone-0#/
The English Words in War-Time Project https://wordsinwartime.wordpress.com/