As I get older and I get a few more years experience I become more like Dad, you know, King Lear.

In effect we are, bending and breaking the rules of the language. And if someone were to ask why we do it, the answer is simply: for fun

Text messaging is just the most recent focus of people's anxiety; what people are really worried about is a new generation gaining control of what they see as their language.

A feature of English that makes it different compared with all other languages is its global spread.

As I get older and I get a few more years experience I become more like Dad, you know, King Lear.

Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument.

Several of us linguists at that time would record our own kids, just to get some data. There was some literature on it then, but no day-by-day, blow-by-blow examples. I recorded all my children over the years in some shape or form. It's what linguists do. You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point in time.