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It's that time of year again when the newspapers are full of end of year lists, and it wouldn't be complete without their favourite words of the year. So here are a few of them for your delectation and delight (and your ENGA3 and ENGB3 Language Change knowledge). The Independent charts the events of the year through its new words Ben Zimmer - linguist and columnist - takes a look for The Wall Street Journal Steven Poole in The Guardian The Daily Telegraph on Collins Dictionary 's new words of 2013 And to cap it all, here's a best of for a decade from the excellent Kerry Maxwell who charts new words and their meanings for the MacMillan Dictionary blog .

Uptalk is on the rise? And it's not just girls who are using it; it's boys as well? A BBC programme called Inside Science covered this last week (available here and from about 23 minutes in) and it has been picked up by the BBC's own Science writers in this article . Uptalk - or what linguists often call HRT ( High Rising Terminals) or HRI (High Rising Intonation) - is a feature in which the usual falling cadence at the end of a statement is replaced with a rising intonation, so that - to some listeners, at least - the tone sounds more like a question. Like y'know, one time at band camp? In previous research, the phenomenon was shown to be spreading out of the USA and Australia where it might have originated (although views are mixed on exactly where) and into the language of younger British people, mostly young females. But work done by Amalia Arvanati, from the University of Kent suggests that uptalk is spreading into male speech too, although its use may be under...

We're all aware that people from the different regions around the UK tend to use certain words and meanings, pronunciation and even grammatical structures in different ways: that's a basic principle of geographical variation and has its roots in the history of Britain. But a new study at the University of Manchester has identified some interesting trends which suggest that some regional variations - particularly in word choice (lexis) - might be disappearing as southern terms spread north. I'd call them Vans , myself The research is reported on in the Daily Telegraph and the Mail Online , but if you want the real detail and a full look at the language maps that have been created by Laurel Mackenzie and her team at Manchester, go straight to the Multilingual Manchester website . Here you can look at the questions that were asked of the 1400 respondents throughout the UK: questions such as "What word would you use to describe the footwear featured in this picture?"...

Picture from: http://www.freedomarchives.org/audio_samples/Nelson_Mandela.html With the sad, but sadly inevitable, death yesterday of one of the greatest political figures of the last hundred years it might be a good time to look at how language shapes different representations and how those representations change over time. For many, Nelson Mandela was always a hero: a man fighting injustice and racial intolerance in a country that had institutionalised racial separatism like no other. Given the almost-universal praise and warmth for Mandela upon his death, you might have thought that this was what people felt at the time, but it wasn't always like this. While the Special AKA recorded the magnificent single Free Nelson Mandela , making the point that Mandela was not just a figurehead but  - as they put it "only one man in a large army" -  young Conservative Party activists designed tasteless Hang Nelson Mandela t-shirts and posters - an early form of trolling, no doubt ...