How can we build better language models with less data, boost performance, and mitigate bias? Our position paper argues a sociolinguistic perspective offers key insights to tackle these challenges.

.Jack Grieve is now introducing his innovative corpus-based research on fake news at #ccrss24!

Note that our departmental name will be changing to the Department of Linguistics and Communication on 1st August 2024! This change reflects the fact that we now offer degrees in English Language and Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, and Digital Media and Communications. 😊

At #iclave12 I was part of the panel “Embracing variability in NLP”. Together with Yves Scherrer, Aleksandra Miletić and Noëmi Aepli I had a talk on extracting dialect features from dialect classifiers. Slides & panel details are now online at mainlp.github.io/iclave12/

Brief recap of my visit to University of Helsinki and Helsinki-NLP :)

A funded PhD studentship is available at University of Birmingham to study music, groove and Parkinson's Disease. Deadline ➡️August 12th, start in Sept/Oct!! More detail here: birmingham.ac.uk/research/centr…

Excited to be on my way to Lancaster University and NLPAICS to talk about our (+ Yves Scherrer & Aleksandra Miletić) work on explainability of dialect classifiers in forensic linguistics. Conference proceedings here: nlpaics.com/conference-pro…

From today, we have a new department name. Welcome to the Department of Linguistics and Communication at Uni of Birmingham!

Our own Dirk Geeraerts evaluating the influence of Firth and Harris had on #DistributionalSemantics at ESSLLI #ESSLLI2024 You shall know a linguist by the company he keeps 😉

When we hear someone speak a dialect, we can often tell where they're from. Can LMs do the same? Our #TACL paper addresses this question and shows how to boost LMs' geolinguistic skills. 🌍 This paper has been in the making for almost three years, so glad it's finally out! 🧵

Thanks @sean_trott for this great write up on our preprint! seantrott.substack.com/p/what-languag…

I don't know if is it just me, but being offered the equivalent of £74 (to be paid within 6 months) to review a grant proposal for a major European national funding agency seems like more of a disincentive than anything

New paper with 3 pre-registered experiments demonstrating that gestures can influence quantifier comprehension (project part of #FLF, led by Alexandra Lorson with Vini Macuch-Silva & Christopher Hart) Quick overview below 🧵⬇️ doi.org/10.1037/xlm000…

Very excited to be co-hosting my first panel on forensic linguistics with Helmi Siiroinen at the autumn symposium of the Finnish Association for Applied Linguistics. We'll be joined by Antti Kannisto and Daria Dayter Dasha Dayter. Looking forward to the discussions!

Congrats, Nouf! Great job at the Viva!

Coming soon: My book 'Corpus Approaches to Discourse in Forensic and Legal Contexts' will be published in February 2025 by RoutledgeLinguistics, in Tony McEnery and Jesse Egbert's Routledge Advances in Corpus Linguistics series. Pre-order from January: shorturl.at/t2gze

Maybe time to revisit our attribution? We named Nick Szabo as the most likely candidate as part of an undergrad course I ran but Sassaman wasn’t in the set. slate.com/business/2014/…

I am excited to share that my first paper, co-authored with professors Matteo Fuoli and Jack Grieve, has been published in Discourse & Communication! Our study examines how fake news stories are discursively constructed to appear newsworthy and persuasive to the reader.

Une version française et adaptée de mon travail sur les doubles modaux en anglais américain avec Jack Grieve, pour un public enseignant et non-spécialiste, vient de paraître à la Clé des Langues de l'ENS Lyon! En accès libre ici: cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/langue… ENS de Lyon Laboratoire ICAR

New paper out on fake news language research today w Matteo Fuoli and Bashayer بشائر باعيسى, who led this project, which comes out of a fantastic recently defended PhD here at Ling&Comm@UoB! Please take a look! doi.org/10.1177/175048…