Thursday, August 31, 2006

Wrinkly coffin-dodgers need not apply

New legislation coming into force in October means that job adverts may need to be radically overhauled to avoid discrimination against older workers, according to the BBC News website. Terms such as "energetic" and "youthful" face the chop, and presumably "Must have own teeth" is set to go as well.

Age-related language is often overlooked when we focus on Language & Representation in ENA1, so this could prove a valuable area of research. Is there a tendency to label older people with demeaning terms such as "crumblies", "senile old gits" and "has beens"? And if so, are these labels out of proportion to those applied to younger people "hoodies", "yobs" etc. ?

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation

Black British English vs MLE

The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...