Talking etymology with the Lexis linguists!

Show notes for Episode 86⚠️🤬⚠️Contains swearing (obvs) and quite a lot of it…handled seriously and with academic rigour (🧐)⚠️🤬⚠️Welcome to episode 86 of Lexis in which we go in mob-handed with 5 (count ‘em!) interviewers and Dr Chris Montgomery, Senior Lecturer in Dialectology in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. Lisa, Jacky, Dan, Amanda and guest interviewer, Neil Hutchinson ask him about his work on dialect and how this relates to his new project on regional swearing. (We treat the subject with delicacy and restraint until about 46 minutes when it becomes something of a swearing free-for-all, in case you’re interested/want to turn it off.) We talk about:Why swearing is interesting from a dialectology point of viewHow swearing varies regionally in terms of the terms that are used and what they meanHow he is going about this research and how it came to happenDifferent methodologies and their pros and consDialect levelling and swearing: what needs to be done to measure thisAttitudes to academic research on swearing The inventiveness of swearingHow you can contribute to this researchAdvice to students about investigating swearingDr Chris Montgomery | English | The University of Sheffield Your contributions can be made here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSef-QCBddaJ9blKczAv_mrV3pWDHIKuPJHzDNHZ7U1IK0Rcdw/viewform (🔞only sorry)Guardian article: From divvy to dinlo: index of insults aims to record Britain’s diverse dialects | British identity and society | The Guardian BBC feature: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78rr219457o Independent article: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/english-swearing-sheffield-university-midlands-merseyside-b2958087.html Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/15/language-linguists-preserve-britain-swear-words-phrases-map/  and http://archive.today/2026.04.15-173308/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/15/language-linguists-preserve-britain-swear-words-phrases-map/ https://moderntoss.com/ Modern Toss explain the project here too: https://moderntoss.com/2/ https://www.urbandictionary.com/ Internet Archive version of Roger’s Profanisaurus; https://archive.org/stream/RogersProfanisaurusPreviouslyKnownAsSwearyMarysDictionaryOfFilth/Roger%27s%20Profanisaurus%20previously%20known%20as%20Sweary%20Mary%27s%20Dictionary%20of%20Filth_djvu.txt Our previous interview with Dr Emma Byrne on swearing is here: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/K6x7JGgCR2b Our previous interview with Dr Robbie Love on changing swearing patterns in the UK is here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Kq96LDO9jpz0LrcxcBNDr?si=EZVW_Zh0QKGi45XddCdCJw Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social ContributorsLisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey Raj RanaMatthew Butler Music: Serge Quadrado – Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys